Customer Reviews

July the Seventh (Penguin contemporary American fiction series)

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After reading about 50 pages of July 7th I had some doubts about whether I would finish it. A variety of characters were introduced fairly rapidly, and I thought gee this should be one of those books where they list all of the personae on a page before the book begins. I did finish July 7th and really enjoyed it. The author uses a McGuffin of a convenience store murder to establish the story, but the book is really about a group of related people in a small town in North Carolina. While JM has at least one serious message to present, the novel is essentially an intelligent, witty development of her characters during a 24 hour period of their lives. A central event is the birthday party of "Granner" the gift loving matriarch of the clan (She thought it a shame that her birthday and Independence Day didn't coincide so she has her clan celebrate July 4th on her birthday July 7th).

Difficult book to like, but there is some salvageable material in it. The novel starts with 21-year old Sam Swett, drunk and deserting NYC in a southbound truck. He gets dropped off in a small town of NC, very close to where he grew up. Eventually, many more characters enter the story. All are related to one another by virtue of living in a small town.

July 7th is Granner's birthday, and the scenes at the party are the best this book has to offer. Granner's two children, Kate and Harold, are as different as you may imagine. Kate is pretentious, and cringes every time someone reminds her of her humble origins. Of course, her brother Harold loves to do that every chance he gets. The family dynamics at Granner's party become evident, the reactions are hilarious, and overall extremely accurate.

What i am most disappointed with are the dialogs between Sam Swett and Corky. Sam wants to be different but does not know how, and is a very confused person. Corky is sad, trying to survive a family tragedy. They make a likely pair at the beginning, but the way their relation came to be is too unrealistic, and i was unhappy about the ending of it. There was no reason it should have been so.

Without giving too much of the ending away, i did not like that there was no resolution to the murder, and that Sam Swett, a man of such strong convictions, never pursued truth in this case. What a hypocrite!

This book could use a good proofreader. Although i can understand spelling "going to" as "gonna" to emphasize the personality of certain characters, missing commas are unacceptable.