Customer Reviews

The Practical Heart: Four Novellas

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In this loving, startling book, Allan Gurganus has outdone himself. I don't know of anybody writing who takes more emotional risks and who seems to know more about how very much people offer each other and the universe. There are writers who can do big crises, and there are others who specialize in the world of the everyday; but nobody can do both this well. There's a suspense you feel. I loved "Oldest Living Confederate Widow" and "White People" and also "Plays Well". Don't know why the novella form seems to work best for his talents. But each one of the works is different in tone and outlook. Each seems to have been written by another kind of writer. But, when you finish "Saint Monster", the last of the short novels, the generosity of vision, the dark humor and lighly accepted tragedy, both breaks your heart and leaves you somehow happy. Can't explain it. Both. Woody Allen claims: Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy.
In Gurganus's work, there's a willingness to let the story tell itself, to stay out of the characters' way. Not to be "Clever" or "show off", but to always brilliantly have the right word, the telling scene, the tone needed. I believe that Gurganus cares more about his people than anybody writing. He sees them, faults and all, until you feel ready to adopt him as your sponsor, or your god. This quiet funny book should win all the prizes. The day after I finished it, I looked around for something else good to read. Something somewhat like it. Then I just started The PRactical Heart again. You'll see what I mean. I think he has broken through to a different and a higher level of meaning and heart. The work is so lovingly shaped. It makes most everything else feel pulpy, like junk. This one will be read forever.

I have read all of Mr. Gurganus' catalog. "The Practical Heart" being his last. I liked the book but had problems with the first novella, the book's namesake "The Practical Heart" I found it choppy with to many flashforwards and flashbacks somehow the story gets lost in all of them. "Preservation News" was wonderful about a dying gay man who saves old houses, as was "He's One To" about a gay man who is outed when he is traped in a public restroom hitting on the cheif of Police's son. "Saint Monster" stands as the best of the four novellas in depth. It is about the son of man who delivers Bibles to motels and his mother who has a motel mentality making love to the town vet while father and son are away. His search after his father dies to find out more about him and eventually how to come to terms with his mother. I found the writing in "Saint Monster" similar to one of John Irving's twisted plots and I mean that in a good way. I like John Irving.

"The Practical Heart" has some fine writing, but also some awkward constructions and digressions that repeatedly chop up the flow of the stories.

The title story has a postmodern shift that distracted me and broke my emotional involvement with the main character. You're reading about a nephew writing about his aunt, then you learn the nephew was fictionalizing her life. The rest of the story is his true picture of her and their relationship, which is far less engaging.

In the second story, "Preservation News," the writing becomes even more precious and self-indulgent. Gurganus beats the reader over the head with forced whimsy.

For me the final straw came during the first conversation between a young historical preservationist and a widowed eastern North Carolina matron. Encouraging her to help with his work, he says, "You need to get your excellent, sinewy ass in gear, girl."

I'm from eastern North Carolina, I've met hundreds of matrons, and I have several gay friends, one of whom does historical preservation. I can assure you that Gurganus' line would never be spoken in the situation he presents. It was so absolutely phony that, coming after the book's other annoyances, I lost all interest in continuing.

Allan is what they call an "old soul"---someone whose compassion and wisdom seem beyond what we are capable of seeing and understanding, and make us wish to become finer and nobler induviduals. Unlike so many modern novelists, his work is void of condecension and cynicism. I hope he finds the man who 'is one too..." If not, here at least is one who understands...