Tear Down the Mountain: An Appalachian Love Story [Paperback]

Roger Alan Skipper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2006

In their tiny, secluded mountain community, Sid Lore and Janet Hollar are misfits: Sid because he wasn’t born here, Janet because she can’t satisfy her Pentecostal church’s demand to speak in tongues. The two drift together and get married, and soon the optimistic, independent newlyweds vow to forge their own reality. Appalachian life, however, proves difficult: family and friends die or move away and Sid’s work-related injuries make it impossible to earn a living. As his enters a rut of odd jobs, bar brawls, and dog fights, Janet discovers new worth — and a hidden talent for destruction. Just when they don't think they can sink any lower, the "superior" outside world discovers their mountains, their lake, their forests, and their “rednecks” — which brings new problems. Incisive prose, vivid characters, and a compulsively readable narrative make this novel about lives cramped and cornered by economic and cultural forces a stunning debut.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Poverty and pipe dreams mark the lives of Sid Lore and Janet Hollar, the outsider couple—he, from Tennessee, she, unable to speak in tongues (the mark of a true believer in her Pentecostal church)—at the heart of Skipper's promising debut. A teenager when he moves to West Virginia's Union County, Sid spends the next decade trying to fit in, but a back injury prevents him from finding work that's anything above menial. The balance of power shifts when Janet becomes the breadwinner, emasculating an insecure Sid (her well-meaning anniversary gift to him of a cooking apron doesn't help). After years of struggling, they leave and spend 14 years in an unnamed city, where things are reliably bleak. His marriage on the rocks, Sid returns to Union County (Janet follows later, separately), where SUV-driving yuppies have scooped up cheap land and built luxury homes. Things, of course, end badly. Skipper's earthy prose helps paint a vivid picture of rough-hewn Appalachia, though the dialect can wear thin. This rocky romance will appeal to those who take it dark. (Sept.)
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Review

If you love to read, read this book. -- Lawrence Sutin

In the tradition of such acclaimed southern novelists as Tom Franklin and William Gay, Skipper is a remarkable storyteller. -- Howard Frank Mosher

Skipper writes in the richly textured language that is unmistakably the voice of Appalachia. -- Erik Reece

[A] welcome addition to fiction set in contemporary Appalachia. This book is terrific. -- Chris Offut

[A]n unsentimental, clear-eyed look at what happens to people caught between hope and limitation." -- Barbara Hurd

[B]rings both protagonists and environment to life in powerful language that ultimately becomes a sort of hard-edged poetry -- William Gay, author of Provinces of Night

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Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (September 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368349
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368344
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,561,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild Ride, Wonderful Journey, October 10, 2006

By 

Carol W. Bachofner "bleary-eyed reader" (Rockland, Maine) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tear Down the Mountain: An Appalachian Love Story (Paperback)

Tear Down the Mountain is a wild ride into a part of the US most rarely visit and almost no one gets to inhabit the way Skipper does. He takes the reader into the intimate spaces between the valleys, gulleys, and heart chambers that ARE Appalachia. Although the book starts out slowly, it definitely picks up momentum, much the way a coal cart does as it rattles to a crashing conclusion at the end of a mine. But what Skipper does here is to make us crave the ride. HIs mastery of characterization and language is nothing short of sublime. He is nearly poetic, evoking in the reader a sense of sympathy and a gasp for breath as the views of this place, this human space, unfold page after page. The raw and sometimes brutal views are well worth the trip.

Skipper has a definitely male Margaret Mitchell approach to regional fiction. But unlike Mitchell, this author will be no "one book wonder." I eagerly await the next in what is surely to be a long line of first-rate fiction from Roger Skipper.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Afresh new voice, October 18, 2006

By 

Judith B. Merriman (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tear Down the Mountain: An Appalachian Love Story (Paperback)

Recently my wife and I had the pleasure of reading Roger Alan Skipper's novel, "Tear Down the Mountain". We were greatly impressed with Mr. Skipper's ability to intertwine the stresses associated with religion, poverty and love in a young couples search for happiness. Mr. Skipper's choice of narrative comes across as both authentic and poetic. We were particularly impressed with his description of the ginseng hunt in Chapter Five and the night time expedition with Harlin Wall in Chapter Seven. Clearly in Mr. Skipper, the people of Appalachia have fresh new voice to chronicle their rich and rewarding history. We highly recommend this novel.

Bill and Judi Merriman
Alexandria, VA

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love in a Rusted-Out Trailer, October 11, 2006

By 

Helen W. Mallon (Philadelphia, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Tear Down the Mountain: An Appalachian Love Story (Paperback)

Skipper's engrossing first novel is about love in the hard landscape of rural poverty. This account of Sid Lore and Janet Hollar's courtship and marriage is an all-out run down mountains, across yards ruled by angry dogs, through beer joints, and into the hearts and minds of a couple whose tenacity and passion seems to redefine 'until death do us part.'

In Skipper's Appalachia, language is something you chew and savor; characters "masticate their words." Sid's encounters with animals, butchered or alive, dog or mouse, are vivid to the point of being odorous. Janet uses words, sometimes like a whip, sometimes as a gentle wind to fan the couple's hopes into flame. Every word is believable; when Janet "lams" Sid in the mouth with a flowerpot, breaking his front teeth, his acceptance of this indignity seems as natural as relying on duct tape to fix appliances too rusted out for conventional treatments.

The plotting is a bit arbitrary; when Sid and Janet make decisions, they have a random feel. Characters I grew to love in section 1 seem to have dropped off the map without explanation by section II. Yet would more tightly-knit book have conveyed so well the drifting nature of lives bound both by their love of `the mountain' and the poverty that environment engenders?

Tear Down the Mountain is an honest picture of the scrappy nature of love; and a paean to an urge to survival that finds life to be `enough' no matter how tough the circumstances.