A Messy Job I Never Did See a Girl Do [Paperback]

Mary Jane Ryals (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

A collection of stories that brings Florida's panhandle area alive in a way that tourist-y Florida never will. These carnies, these crackers in their cement block houses, these young girls facing death, racism, poverty, and abuse--all of them will float into your memory as eerily as the Spanish moss surrounding them. This book has been reviewed in The Atlanta Constitution-Journal, The Tallahassee Democrat, and The Orlando Sun Sentinel Times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"From trailers to barrooms, from barns to piney woods, Mary Jane Ryals writes about bitter and hopeful souls adrift in a Southern Gothic landscape. A Messy Job I Never Did See a Girl Do is an impressive debut by a writer of many gifts." -- Connie May Fowler

"Mary Jane Ryals is on the case. Her new collection cave-dives into the funky depths of the Florida panhandle that tourists never see." -- Diane Roberts, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

[...] In the hazy heat of the southern swamps, in the racial tension of the southern towns, Mary Jane Ryals explores stories of female adolescence and sexual and social awakening. These are painfully familiar. In "Bring Buffalo Punch" Lou Ellen tries to make sense of her father's infidelities, her mother's drunkenness and desperate sexual philandering. So she goes out, drinking too much, is felt up by a strange boy and finally finds herself with her mother, both drunk, disheveled and disappointed, in the 7-Eleven early in the morning. And yet Ryals finds great wisdom and peace amidst the sordid and sad actions of ordinary, confused human beings: "Someday I will fly off, but not like hair flying off. I climb the steps dizzy as a wobbly wig and open the door to the smell of rhubarb and strawberry pie homemade and finally feel a warm soak towards my bones. When I leave someday, I'll fly in a car with red lights, whiz-roaring through the highway. And I won't check the rearview mirror for a long long time." -- Sundog: The Southeast Review, Selina Samuels, forthcoming Spring 2000

[...] In the title story, a young girl tries to save her horse from being beaten by her violent, drunken father, but ends up staring down gun barrel held by her own mother. "We've lost, she and I," the narrator says. "Lost to the quiet haze, the desperate frogs calling mates, lost to the leaves breathing deep, ticking off heavy water drops collapsing onto leaves, lost." Amazingly, the story manages to have an ending that gracefully uplifts the reader after the hard ride with these hard people [...] Ryals never uses the hardships of her characters' lives to manipulate the readers' emotions.

These are all part of the landscape, and Ryals' characters are so resilient, so tuned in to life's abundant pleasures that we cannot help but admire the human spirit shining through these pages. -- Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Pat MacEnulty, Sun., May 16, 1999

[...] Mary Jane Ryals is particularly adept at the voices of children--indeed, most of the protagonists and first-person narrators are young girls. In "At the Other End of Nowhere, a flood ravages a Gulf Coast community as a child with a "silver-film eye" chooses to see miraculous metamorphoses rather than deal with barges piled high with the dead.

This is a clever riff on [...] Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying"--"My mother is a fish"--and a kind of kid-surrealism at which Ryals excels. The angry, hurt, love-hungry and sometimes just plain hungry children in her stories string words together like they're willfully Crayola-ing outside the lines in a coloring book, infused with a sense of magic--sometimes beatific, mostly malevolent. [...]

Ryals' fiction sometimes echoes Carson McCullers or Connie May Fowler in the power with which she can enter the mind of a child in pain. "A Messy Job" is an impressive collection, as sweet-sour as the taste of mayhaws, as evocative as the smell of fresh-fried mullet. -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Diane Roberts, May 30, 1999

[...] [In a story set against] the civil rights movement, a white girl shares the night-fears of her friend Lazzie Mae, daughter of a black cleaning woman, as they wait for the sheriff to come to Smokey Hollow. And in "Sheer Curtains Going Down," a black girl and a white girl play together like sisters in a secret hideaway, until the white girl's father comes and forbids their association. The families depicted are typical American dysfunctional families, and there's such a vivid sense of place you can almost smell the pungent fish and oyster smells at Posey's, and the barn smells in ramshackle farms. Mary Jane Ryals grew up in rural North Florida, and she not only knows this region's landscape, its fauna and flora, she knows its soul. Several of the stories in this collection have won awards, and it's easy to see why. It's a pleasure to say "welcome" to a new and distinctive Southern voice. -- Yourvillage.com, Verna Safran, Entertainment Section

From the Back Cover

In this collection, Flordia's Panhandle comes alive in a way that tou risty Florida never will. These carnies, these crackers in their cement block houses, these young girls facing death, racism, poverty, pregnancy-all will float into your memory as easily and eerily as the Spainish moss surrounding them. Not only are the stories permeated with the swamps, alligators, and oppossums of panhandle Florida-they're filled with that area's soul.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Livingston Pr; 1st edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942979591
• ISBN-13: 978-0942979596
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,772,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SHE BRINGS THEM TO LIFE!, October 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Messy Job I Never Did See a Girl Do (Paperback)

IF YOU EVER GET THE CHANCE, GO HEAR RYALS READ FROM HER BOOK. LISTENEING TO HER BEAUTIFUL SOUTHERN VOICE BRINGS THE CHARACTERS ALIVE. THE BOOK IS GREAT, AND THE AUTHOR IS TOO!

4.0 out of 5 stars Ms. Ryal's stories make you laugh out loud, cuss and spit..., August 5, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Orlando FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Messy Job I Never Did See a Girl Do (Paperback)

A Messy Job I Never Did See A Girl Do, by Mary Jane Ryals, is a kaleidoscope of tumbling words that ultimately fit together into a highly perceptive, rough-edged picture of southern U.S. culture. The result is stories that make you laugh out loud, cuss and spit, and cry revival empathies for the banged-on unheard. Mary Jane captures the native intelligence of young people who, in their own awkward ways, expose the weaknesses, the bigotry and emotional insensitivity of the adults in their lives. At the same time, we feel all of the characters' fears behind the numbness or the anger, the anxiety and the outrage, or the wiry strength and simple stubbornness. Her characters make us believe that the scars on the new generation will not run so deep and not be as debilitating as on the old. We are left with the hope that the new generation will be better in some ways, kinder or more accepting, willing to look over walls, kick them, and knock them down.

5.0 out of 5 stars You can feel the heat on your face and smell the sweat...., June 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Messy Job I Never Did See a Girl Do (Paperback)

This book of short stories is so descriptive you can close your eyes and feel the muggy heat and sandy dirt of the South, as well as smell the the acrid sweat of people around you. These beautifully written stories cover a myriad of subjects from young girls struggling with the knowledge that their voice doesn't have real meaning, to the pain of living in poverty in the rural South. The wonderful thing about these stories is the sense of hope that some of the characters continue to have, even against seemingly tough odds. "I don't know where I'd go from here, but somehow, my words would get me there." "When I leave someday, I'll fly in a car with red lights, whiz-roaring through the highway"

Mary Jane Ryals' words have certainly gotten her there, she has done a wonderful job capturing the essence of both pain and promise in the souls of these young girls.

Highly recommended reading!!