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Vacuum County

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It was in November 2008 when I read Vacuum County, but the relation that it made is still plain in my mind.
In Texas they have their own sort of Southern Hospitality. It might be called Aggressive Hospitality, no less aggressive than the appetite for sexual pleasure.
The heroine, Verity, soon understands that in Vacuum County, where she's confined to semi-house-arrest by the sheriff's law, that a young woman who does not respond to hungry nature is not considered natural or human.

The second half of this novel unfolds in directions no reader might foresee, with a defiant ending at arms.

"Where is she going with this?" I wondered at the end of the second part. The themes of this book are candidly uncommon. Verity reminds me of Adam in As You Like It, or Kent in King Lear, someone who is glad to serve another. There are stories of slaves in Greece and Rome who truly loved their masters. Shakespeare would use the Elizabethan phrase, "Coming into the world," for someone like Verity, who desired to come into the world even at the expense of her volition. And this world is quite unlike what she might have expected.

And the third part was exceptional literature. Not since Lucky Jim, which I heard a few years ago, have I been so struck by a literary scene, all kept within congruent limits.

The dramatis personae are likable and memorable.

Were it rightly promoted, Vacuum County might have its own cult.

Vacuum County by author Aya Katz is a book that completely took me by surprise, making it high on my list of books that everyone should be reading. Hidden within its many subplots, characters, and themes is a kaleidoscope of typical American small town life truths and realities that are not only relevant and timely to things that have happened in our country, but that are continuing to happen while the majority of us just simply don't connect the dots or look the other way. For me personally, it is a book that parallels the real life aspects of small town life and the realities of county politics that are the norm in America.

Its messages and themes are numerous, intricate and multi-layered. Just to name a few: Loyalty; dependence, co-dependence, and interdependence; self-confidence; fate, mankind's relationship to the land he owns, dirty little secrets about old boy politics, small town life where everyone knows everyone and everyone's business; truth and especially the real truth about justice and what democracy is and isn't.

Aya Katz's writing style is sheer perfection, much like the finest dish of paella where each bite is a morsel of nuance, different that the last and the one to follow, with a subtle undertone that allows you to see the big picture in the end. It's not a read for the timid or those seeking to be merely amused. Just a small sampling of word bites from Vacuum County is going to leave your mind wanting more, hungry to read on, and thus making it in short, the kind of book you can't put down until you finish it because that's the only way you are going to be fully satisfied. For some, like myself, it's a book that I'll return to again and again knowing that I'll discover some nuance that I missed the first time or even second time I read it.

There are so many sustaining big and small concepts expertly crafted together in this story of a college student who finds herself alone and in hot water, simply because she has a flat tire and spurns the unwanted attention of her would-be rescuer. Before she knows what's happening she finds herself arrested and sentenced to remain in a small town while battling seemingly impossible probationary terms for a crime she never committed. As Vacuum County's main plot unfolds - the reader is taken down many roads that eventually bring them and the characters to some very thought provoking conclusions, and hopefully leave them with some questions of the kind we should all be asking ourselves.

How far will a young woman go to find a place she belongs? What will a rancher do to preserve his heritage? Just what does "community" mean in a small, small town?

Murders, distorted justice, witchcraft, politics, and family pride combine in the richly written "Vacuum County" by Aya Katz. While some of the events in the fictional Texas county echo the Federal siege of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas in 1993, the foundations of the plot reach much farther back, to the first book of Samuel. Surrounded and controlled by a fascinating and unexpected slice of history, deeply troubled characters wrestle with their own demons and with each other.

Katz's clean, powerful style shapes itself effortlessly into the strong voices of several key players while keeping the story gripping, fast-paced, and accessible. With reverence and a sharp eye for irony, Katz crafts her modern take on age-old conflicts into a thoroughly enjoyable read for anyone not satisfied with the "official" version of an important story.

Vacuum County
By Aya Katz
Inverted A Press
#ISBN 9781618790033

I remember as a young child being appalled by something that was blatantly unfair and being told by an adult at the time that "life is unfair" and I remember thinking that the resignation in his voice was heartbreaking. Vacuum County is a bizarre mythical metaphor for the unfairness of life and reminds this reader of such classics as Alice in Wonderland, Gulliver's Travels and the grimmest of fairy tales, not to mention the stories in both the new and old testaments. Several characters embody either a virtue or a sin and are thereby metaphors for what we aspire to encourage or discourage in human nature. The back cover description includes this statement: "A familiar saga about taxation, lechery and covetousness of Biblical proportions" and indeed biblical themes provide a constant underlying current as does the inevitable corruption of career politics. The protagonist reads about or is lectured on the history of the prominent family she lives with going all the way back to Hannibal, so we glimpse the continuing and universal saga of persecution, domination and enslavement that has characterized human civilization from its earliest history to the present day.

The tale is told through various sets of eyes and voices: The entries in the protagonist's journal are interspersed with her probation officer's reports, letters to and from various characters as well as the dialogues Verity has with other characters. Some of these voices are enlightening, some confusing but that is the nature of any society and this small Texan town is indeed a world apart from the more urban environments Verity had experienced before a flat tire got her stuck in the middle of an alien place. Her inability to figure out how to use the jack in the trunk to extricate herself from her predicament lands her in court on trumped up charges of drunk driving and thence to a year's probation without permission to leave Vacuum County and the need to work as a waitress to pay her fees before she is taken in by the strangely arrogant Nabal Cabeza de Vaca (whose failure to help her with the flat tire in the first place led to this predicament). Thus does she become witness to the tangled political and family associations that involve corruption, adultery, and murder. In an odd way, she does feel love for Nabal, himself enslaved by his family history and painful childhood, and ultimately he does reciprocate in his own strange way but this is not a love story, this is a story of age old conflicts among men who battle openly or surreptitiously for land, power and glory and the women who help, hinder, love or betray them.

Read this book when you have plenty of time to devote to the reading and to the pondering it inspires, because this is a book that will force you to think long and hard about the nature of human history.

I was immediately pulled into the story of Verity who is accused of DWI without any evidence. Verity is put on probation for the crime of drinking and driving, which she did not commit, and is forced to remain in Vacuum County against her free will. It is quite an intriguing tale, but there is more too this story than just how the characters interact with each other. I must admit I was intrigued by some of the odd characters and exploring how the characters interacted with each other.

Vacuum County was a book unlike any other book I've read. It's intelligent and thought-provoking. The writer draws you in to the story so that you can't put the book down. I particularly liked the way the story was presented through diary entries, police reports, probation reports etc. Very, very clever the way it was done. Beautifully woven together like a rich tapestry.

It has been a while since I read a novel that really made me think. This is one of those. Its genre can't be defined; it's a Western murder suspense story with a little sex and religion thrown in. And a twist of ironic humor.

The story kept me interested all the way through. The characters were well-developed and realistic, and dialect is particularly well-done. There was always an undercurrent of something not right, but I could never pin it down. Even at the end, I'm not sure which were the "good guys" and which were the "bad guys".

Servitude vs. freedom is the main theme, raising questions like "Why would anyone voluntarily take a position of servitude?" "Can you impose freedom on someone against his/her will?" This theme pervades the novel in the details: the local restaurant is the Brown 'N SERVE. The main character, Verity, has a phobia of waitresses, or SERVERS, but then she willingly enters into servitude. Pipa has escaped servitude in Cabeza de Vaca's house but thinks she is free as a server in the restaurant. Lou Ann was "liberated" from her husband and children.

Negatives are few: I got bogged down in the legal jargon in the last chapter and skimmed over it quickly. The idea of using diary excerpts for the narration works well and ties in neatly at the end, but I doubt that diarists write so much direct dialogue. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the sections written in the form of reports from the probation officer and the newspaper reports.