A Song I Knew By Heart: A Novel [Paperback]

Bret Lott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2005

During a cold Massachusetts winter, a tragic car accident leaves a mother childless and her daughter-in-law a widow. Naomi and Ruth are now each other’s only comfort. Naomi lost her own husband eight years ago, and now she has lost her son. Carrying a deep secret in her soul, Naomi decides to return to her childhood home in coastal South Carolina. When she tells Ruth her plan, she receives an unexpected reply: “Where you go, I will go.” So the two women plan the journey together, arriving at a place that is flooded with a love they are nearly too fragile to accept. Surrounded by the warmth of their newfound family, Naomi and Ruth begin to find themselves reawakened–and open to the possibility of redemption.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Praised for his portrait of a strong-willed mother raising a Down's syndrome child in Jewel, Lott returns to the notion that some burdens are in fact blessings in this quiet, tender novel about what it means to go home again. After her only son, Mahlon, is killed in a car accident, widow Naomi Robinson is sure of one thing: she must leave New England, where she and her husband settled after WWII, and head home to South Carolina. In trying to recapture the joy of her childhood, Naomi hopes to find serenity and redemption, a process hampered by a 50-year-old secret she's kept hidden from all but her best friend. To Naomi's surprise, Mahlon's wife, Ruth, vows to join her. The book unfolds slowly, as mother and wife cope with their shared grief amid a loving, working-class family they barely knew they had. Based on the biblical story of Ruth, Lott's novel doesn't pivot on plot turns but rather on small observations about the power of mementos and rituals to give one a sense of history and belonging, and about how forgiveness can weigh the heart down more than guilt. At times, the writing shines with pathos-as when Naomi recognizes that "[l]oss was alive down here too.... You'd have to be a fool to believe otherwise, to think that loss lived only where you left it"-while at other times, it feels greeting card-like, with plenty of repetitive, treacly telegraphic paragraphs ("Eli. Her husband. Her love"). Lott misses the opportunity to make Ruth more interesting; she comes across as a one-dimensional martyr, beautiful, devoted and boring. The blessing is that readers will find it easy to identify with Naomi and Ruth's tragic loss, and aren't likely to notice.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In this highly emotional depiction of grief and its aftermath, Lott (Jewel, 1991) expertly avoids the sickly sweet sentimentality that often torpedoes books of its ilk, such as Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie (1997) or Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook (1996). Instead Lott brings gravitas and a biblical cadence to his story of seventysomething Naomi, a widow forced to confront death once again when her son, Mahlon, is killed in a car accident. As Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, stumble through the weeks following the funeral in a haze of grief and sadness, Naomi keeps returning to an image from her South Carolina childhood--a slant of light scattered on pine straw. This memory inspires her to move back to her hometown, and her daughter-in-law goes with her: "Where you go, I will go." Lott's great gift here is the way he elevates the small rituals of everyday life--a child's Thanksgiving drawing, homemade biscuits for breakfast--into transcendent moments of human connection. Although the relationships presented are idealized, with nary a cross word exchanged, they are never less than persuasive. Lott's rhythmic and repetitive phrasing, revealing the source of his inspiration--the Book of Ruth--is both artful and soothing. This is a radiant, achingly tender portrait of the grieving process. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (May 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345437756
• ISBN-13: 978-0345437754
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #242,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bret Lott is the author of thirteen books, most recently the novel Dead Low Tide(Random House 2008); other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men, the nonfiction book Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life, and the bestselling novels Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has appeared in, among other places, The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review and in dozens of anthologies. Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, where he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching. His honors include having been named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and writer-in-residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel; having spoken on Flannery O'Connor at The White House; and being appointed a member of the National Council on the Arts. He and his wife, Melanie, and live in Hanahan, South Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Old Testament story placed in a contemporary setting that tells the story of grief and healing, August 3, 2005

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Song I Knew by Heart (Women of Faith Fiction) (Hardcover)

For those who love beautiful writing and a quiet read, Bret Lott's A SONG I KNEW BY HEART, a tender contemporary retelling of the biblical Ruth and Naomi story, is a competent exploration of grief and healing.

Lott's narrative opens as Ruth loses her husband in a terrible accident. Her mother-in-law, Naomi, a widow whose husband died eight years before, is plunged into renewed grief (the song she knows by heart). Throughout the book, Lott uses the image of light and darkness to illustrate deeper meanings. As the two inconsolable widows wait for morning together, "Shadows outside eased and shifted, made way for new shadows, all of this movement only the empty fruit of that faithless sun." Later, as Ruth and Naomi try to do ordinary things, such as see a movie, they find it devastating, "like sitting in the dark and watching a life played out just beyond your reach, that life your own."

Seeking healing from her pain, Naomi declares her intention to go back home to South Carolina, "called by the force of whatever mystery the place I'd once called home and would call home again held out to me." As readers of scripture will quickly guess, Ruth vows to go with her. After a yard sale where the women divest themselves of almost everything, they journey back to Naomi's childhood region.

Other themes unfold. Naomi grieves over a secret from her past for which she is unable to forgive someone --- and herself. She finds the area she was nostalgic for from her childhood is not as she recalled it. Now, there are satellite dishes, video stores, tattoo parlors, sushi bars, Taco Bells. "Time moved, whether you liked it or not." Naomi also realizes she is not the same person she once was in this place. She has run, but "I hadn't run from me. I'd only run from our home, and from the death of our son, and from God for having taken from me the last evidence of the love Eli and I shared," reflects Naomi.

Things have changed. Yet, "It's still beautiful here," Ruth tells her. "The light is just like you said it would be." It is the light --- and descriptions of the light --- that serve as a reminder by Lott that God can pierce the darkness of grief by his love and grace. "Still He was with me," says Naomi.

Readers will enjoy how Lott adapts the Old Testament story to a contemporary setting. Ruth gets a job as a checker at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, then finds a better one as a shift supervisor at a Harris Teeter. Naomi finds some peace in returning to her family, full of interesting characters, and Ruth finds a welcome as well. A quilt serves as a symbol of the relationships left behind, and the possibilities for mending their lives. When Ruth falls in love with a fireman, the quilt becomes the proverbial blessing/covering passed on by Naomi for their new relationship.

Although readers have criticized Lott for choosing style over plot substance in A SONG I KNEW BY HEART, the joy of this book is exactly that --- in how Lott can take a familiar subject (both the biblical account and the loss of a loved one) and make it sing. Of his early Oprah-pick novel, JEWEL, the Boston Globe noted, "Bret Lott has a gift for making the ordinary seem luminous." This gift is in full evidence here, as Lott illuminates the ordinary landscape of grief and reminds us that light always overcomes the darkness.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby. (...)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a fine womanly read, September 27, 2004

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Song I Knew by Heart (Women of Faith Fiction) (Hardcover)

After Naomi's son is killed in a New England winter car crash, her daughter-in-law is cast into the pit of grief, just as Naomi had been 8 years before when her Eli had died. This is a song she knows by heart.

When Naomi decides to move back to South Carolina, the land of her childhood, Ruth utters the Biblical words: "Where you go, I will go. Where you live, that's where I'll live too." & the two women say their goodbyes to their marriages & head south.

Written in 70-year-old Naomi's voice, Bret Lott takes us into the grey, cold world of grief where numbness & despair dwell. Then, in the plans, actions & journey hope blossoms, as the Southern sun melts their frozen hearts & souls.

Rebeccasreads highly recommends A SONG I KNEW BY HEART as a rich, dreamy & memorable read, superbly written.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A terrific retelling of a comforting story, July 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: A Song I Knew by Heart (Women of Faith Fiction) (Hardcover)

I was surprised when I started reading A Song I Knew by Heart to find it a retelling of the Naomi and Ruth story from the Bible (see the Book of Ruth). Some names are the same - Naomi and Ruth - and some are different - Beau instead of Boaz, but in essence it is a modern telling of an ancient story. The story challenged me to think as Ruth and Naomi . . . what would I do if I was widowed? I enjoyed Bret Lott's writing style and encourage anyone who wants a good romance without sappy endings to pick up a copy.