Customer Reviews

Ruby River

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Imagine what would happen if Fannie Flagg (the author of ``Fried Green Tomatoes'') had written one of Faulkner's novels, and you'll get a fair idea of the tone of Lynn Pruett's first novel.

The book crackles with fresh imagery, imaginative dialogue, and characters developed far beyond the usual small-town southern stereotypes.

This is a strongly feminist novel, without a word of visible femonist rhetoric. It's about women grabbing hold and taking control of their lives, even if some of the choices they make do not necessarily take them to good ends.

Pruett's male characters are awkward, shambling, but each bears a shred of redemptive grace, even the fire-and-brimestone preacher who gets caught--quite literally--with his pants undone.

Pruett is not afraid to leave loose ends at the end of the book. There is no neat denouement or resolution of some characters' core conflicts. It is as if a second volume ot stories about these same folks is waiting in the wings.

I read this book in a single sitting, and caution future readers that they will be compelled to do likewise, no matter what more compelling tasks lurk. All in all, a great read.

Wonderful! This is being presented as a "debut novel," but it is supremely accomplished, in both content and style. I read slowly, and put aside as many novels as I finish, maybe more, because sooner or later the author starts slacking off, delivering flat predictable scenes or long stretches of humdrum prose. That never happens here. Lynn Pruett is unfailing good company for 276 pages, and as you make your way through her numerous short chapters, each one offers its own distinct thrill of discovery and insight. The prose is the same way: always graceful, apt, and basically easy, it always has more to offer when you want to pause and savor the full import or the exact tone of what is being said.

Story-wise, what first captures you is the humor of the early chapters, the wonderfully strange mixture of horniness and holiness: that, and of course the human interest of Hattie's quest, as she basically takes on the world in defense of her truck stop and her four girls. Part of what the girls need to be protected from, though, is their own uncontrollable sensuality, with its disastrous tendency to involve them with men twice their age. I don't want to give away too much, but there are enough off-center, ill-advised, oh-no sexual entanglements here to supply a dozen episodes of ER. But whenever you start thinking you have met these people before, on The Jerry Springer Show, you notice again how completely Pruett's writing captures what the tube never can: their humanity, the inner dignity that even the most mistaken and sinning of chracters have in this world.

There are plenty of laughs here, but in the end the story shapes up as a serious quest for redemption, taking us down into the worst places of family hurt and betrayal, then back up again, beautifully, just when we think it can't happen, to forgiveness and reconciliation. Reading for laughs, you end up with much more: a kinder take on the species, and some solid advice on how to turn your life around, should you happen to BE one of those people on The Jerry Springer Show.

When I spotted this book,the cover ( the paperback edition shows a girl in a farm field ) was the thing that caught my attention.It immediately made me think of the Southern novels by Erskine Caldwell.God's Little Acre,Tobacco Road and many,many,more made him the best of the Southern,earthy novelists.For several reasons,he is almost unknown today ;but at his height he even outsold Steinbeck.The reasons why his works are hard to find,have more to do about bucking the establishment and political correctness and not over the supurb,quality,popularity and originality of his work.
If one has read much by Caldwell;it is very natural to compare Southern novels with his.This book is an easy read and it did keep my interest; all the way to the end ,but I kept looking for more than there was there.
For me,I have to feel the author's passion and experiences with the location,stories and most of all the characters.Caldwell lived and knew the characters in his novels and even when he created fictional characters they became real.
Obviously,while Pruett is a well trained and literally connected author,there is no feeling that she ever really knew the people,or types of people, she developed in this book.
Can a female writer compete with the likes of Caldwell,Faulkner and Steinbeck? Yes,I think so ,Margaret Mitchell immediately comes to mind.
This book gives me the feeling it was written by a 'trained artist'rather than by one who 'walked the walk'.
Maybe this is the quality of what one gets from the American Voice,Southern Exposure,Black Warrior Review and The Writing Group Book, Limestone and The Louisville Review;I don't know,not having read any of them.I think the success of great authors comes from life experience gained by living with the people not by being a writer-in residence in some center of literacy.

Sure, compare this fun amusement to Fannie Flag, but comparing this to Faukner IS pushing it. It's a fun beach read, enjoy.