Customer Reviews

Sufficient Grace: A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From The National Alliance on Mental Illness Newsletter:
by Bob Carolla

"Sufficient Grace, by Darnell Arnoult, is a Southern novel that explores themes of faith, family, love, and redemption. It's sensitive, at times humorous. It's also about schizophrenia, inspired by the mother of the author.

The book opens with Gracie Holloman drawing a life-size picture of Jesus on the walls of her house to watch over the family she is about to leave -- in response to commands from spiritual voices. She wanders and is discovered miles away -- mute and incapacitated -- by two women.

No one sees her as mentally ill. The only doctor in town who still makes house calls confirms she has no physical injury. "She may have a condition not so readily diagnosed," he observes.

In fact, the words "mental illness" do not appear until page 140 of the book. "Schizophrenia" not until page 153. Gracie emerges as a character without labels, introduced without presumption.

The lives of two families--one white, one black--end up being profoundly affected by Gracie's illness. Two worlds collide and family ties are redrawn. Compassion transforms an elderly widow. An abandoned husband finds a second chance at love. A daughter learns to accept her mother's illness.

And Gracie's genius as a painter is revealed.

But first, there are difficult moments.

"How many crazy people have come to the ER?" Gracie's daughter wonders after learning her mother's diagnosis. "How many mothers and daughters? How many husbands and wives? How many mothers and children? How many people adrift and separating, trying to hold on to each other, the distance between them all constantly growing wider and wider? How many of them laugh to the point of tears as the seam between them, the thing holding them together, rips open?"

"Is there a history of mental illness in the family," Gracie's doctor asks her husband.

"Her daddy shot hisself. I guess that requires a certain amount of crazy."

"Has she ever been hospitalized?"

"There was this one time when she was in college. She told me about it before we were married, but she never talked about it after that...My wife has always listened to her own drummer. But she's never been what you'd call depressed. Just different. Always looking at things from a different angle."

Mythology and religion play important roles in the novel as "cornerstones" in the way Gracie sees the world. Cooking gives it additional flavor. One reviewer calls the book "southern story-telling at its finest."

Another describes it as "a hymn of praise to the possibility that wells in the shadows, the promise that waits within the most broken among us, and the power of love in all its infinite variety."

Lee Smith, Kaye Gibbons, and Alan Gurganus move over and make room for Darnell at the notable Southern writer's table. Darnell has crafted a rich story about how family relationships break, mend, bend, grow and deepen. Two families, one white and one black, are drawn together by one woman's mental illness, which is approached with compassion, humor, frustration and acceptance. The characters are beautifully drawn and walk off the page into your living room and into your heart. Mama Toot, in particular is unforgettable. Lots of the action and relationship building happens around food - tables laden with fried pies, pound cakes, biscuits, shelves full of home canned fruits and vegetables, and doughnuts. Darnell's prose is delicious..I could eat it with a spoon! This book feeds the soul..I did not want it to end! I will be eagerly awaiting Darnell's next book!

When you read this book, you try to think of another writer for comparison...and when you get that list going, it contains just a few names, those authors whose work stuck in your head - and your heart. Then you might wonder if Darnell isn't better at it than the rest you've read - and this is her first novel!

The flow of language and plot is so natural, but masterful; the connection with the spiritual world can't be taught in a writing workshop. The kinship with the characters - Darnell's and the reader's - must have been pre-destined in some unearthly place because now I know these people as well as Darnell does!

It has been several weeks since I finished SUFFICIENT GRACE; I think about the story almost every day.

This book is a jewell. Remarkable read for a first time author.
It is a joy to read a book by someone who has such a command of the language.

This story is so richly told through characters so real I wonder what they are doing today - this minute - because surely they live on. After finishing this book I have been amazed by the number of times I am reminded that life's challenges can be met with sufficient grace.

Read this book not only for its exquisite language, moving story and memorable characters, but for the lessons that linger.

It happens sometimes that I accidentally buy a book on amazon that is more religious in themes/messages then I care for. When I started this book, I thought this was one of them. However, while the book has some general tones of forgiveness and redemption, the religious overtones are gentle and uplifting. I enjoyed meeting these characters and learning about their world. I appreciate that the author could walk a balance that I enjoyed.

Anyone who knows Darnell knows she is a warm and caring person. These characteristics emerge in her beautiful novel of a life with a mother who is mentally ill. Deftly and skillfully, Darnell pulls us into the story and sweeps us along for the ride.

Absolutely loved this book. It was a surprise as it took a little reading to find just how delightful a read it is ... with a lot of thoughts to ponder. I'm still thinking about it. Best thing I can say about it ... I didn't want it to end.

(taken from full review printed in Roses & Thorns)

If Sufficient Grace were a painting, the color-words would be three-dimensional, bursting off the canvas, wrapping around the reader in an embrace, entering the reader's pores, ears, nose, mouth, eyes, and all the tiny cuts in the skins of our lives--and through this enveloping of Darnell Arnoult's breathtaking creativity, the reader is transformed and changed, just as the characters in Sufficient Grace are. There is no stopping once you've opened Sufficient Grace; there is only the reading, the taking in of the word-colors, the characters, and the experience of love, family, sorrow, forgiveness, trust, and the multi-colored surprising delights that are Sufficient Grace.

Gracie is the stationary object around which the other characters revolve--for Gracie does not change so much as reveal--and the characters around her do the changing. In the beginning, it seems as if Ed is a bit selfish and unaware, but as the novel progresses, Ed strikes out on his own journey of growth. I rooted for Ed to find happiness, strength, and love more than any other character in Sufficient Grace.

My few issues with Sufficient Grace are the "preachifying," and switches in points-of-view. I had to skim through sections that out-and-out preached, such as in Sister Reba's sections with so many AMEN's and preaching that I found it a bit tedious to read. And again, as in Sister Reba's sections, I felt as if too many points of view may have taken away from the novel instead of adding to it. I would have been more than satisfied with Gracie, Ed, Mama Toot, and perhaps even Mattie's points of view as the only voices. At times the switches between characters in the same chapter didn't allow me full immersion in that character's view, so that I would be "bumped" from the story until I found my bearings again; this was distracting until I got into the rhythm of Arnout's style.

Finally, however, the novel is beautifully written, with Arnoult's original and unique phrasing that caused me to stop, re-read, and nod my head, smile, or smooth out the page with my hand as if to touch the words. Arnoult's use of the language, her memorable characters, her love of words and colors and how they taste and feel and look is apparent to this reviewer. I read the book quickly, and with pleasure.

As grounded as a cream-colored Rubbermaid stepstool and as ethereal as the beckoning Jesus mural Gracie created with that plastic boost, "Sufficient Grace" takes us on an exquisite journey of delicious discoveries and transformed lives.

When middle-aged Gracie disappears from her husband Ed and daughter Ginger and turns up unconscious on Arty's grave, it's Arty's bereaved widow Mattie who sees it as a sign. So she and her wise mother-in-law Toot take her in, feed her and name her Rachel.

Mattie's son is incredulous: "Mama, that's a white woman you found, not a stray dog...."

But the ties that bind transcend place, color and definitions of normal. It's love the soul seeks when the adult psyche breaks under the weight of a childhood horror, and as Gracie closes the circle and faces everything else, neither family, one black, one white, will ever be the same. And we all come to believe in love, in families in all their wondrous forms, and, of course, in fairies....