Customer Reviews

Wolf Whistle

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

 

 

Whew! What a book! I've never read anything like this before. Loosely based on the lynching of 14 year old Emmet Till in 1955 (for whistling at a white woman), Nordan's novel is as far away from a crime novel as you can get. A grim and bizarre comedy of callous, drunk, and stupid people, the telling of this tale took me to new destinations in odd but often hilarious ways of telling a story. From the fourth grade teacher who takes her students on a field trip to a mortuary to watch an embalming, to the drunk, befuddled, savvy, vicious, and remorseful Gregg who decides to murder his family except for his eldest daughter (lest she miss her wedding), the residents of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi abound in eccentric, twisted, and macabre individuals (most of them drunk most of the time).

The hard realities of racial segregation and deep poverty and ignorance keep one foot of the novel in reality. The murder of fourteen year old Bobo is just barely made tragic. It's striking and believable, in spite of a certain bizarre style of narrative.

Overall the narrative holds the reader tightly to itself, but there were a couple rare places where a savvy editor could have lopped off an entire page and spared the reader from an authorial excess.

There's no mystery here: you know who commits the crime. There's no forensic story at all. This is a novel of who did it and what they were thinking and how the different residents of the small community were effected by the impact of the tragedy.

This book tells an often retold tale in such a dramatic way that you feel you are living it and remembering the murder, the southern town racism, along with the author. I read it and read it again. Then bought it for my collection. Then went and read another title by the author...which didn't live up to this one, but how could it?

Lewis Nordan always manages to write great novels, and WOLF WHISTLE is no exception. This book is a little more serious than his other novels, but, somehow, it still manages to be very funny. At times, you want to laugh out loud. At other times, you want to cry. It is an emotional roller coaster: one of the best books to come out of the south.

This book started out throwing me completely off track, and seemed to be about NOTHING that was stated on the cover. The meanings are far deeper than the action, especially the symbolism which creeps under your skin when you're least expecting it. I was surprised a lot by this book. I wrote lots of notes in the margins and read more than one story at the same time. Very deep.

I found this book to be very powerful and emotional. There is so much humanity here. The writing is excellent, the images evocative. Even though I knew (and so will you) early on that things won't turn out all right, I was strongly drawn to the characters, especially the ones who were 'centered' in the midst of the horror. Read this gem and then pass it on to someone else who appreciates truly good writing and important issues.

Lewis Nordan does a wonderful job of creating a trashy, ghetto world without stereotyping any race. A short, nice read. You will find yourself laughing out loud in places where he brilliantly uses dialect. He paints vivid pictures and puts you in the swamps of the town. Definitely worth your time.

So I heard about this book from the author himself. I was in New Orleans and I went to see a panel with Doris Betts (fantastic author and mentor to about half the writers worth mentioning in current southern lit), John Berendt - the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil guy, and Lewis Nordan. What became immediately clear was that I had to pick up Wolf Whistle. Just personality wise, Nordan was magnetic, wise, hilarious, and tragic, sometimes in the same sentence.

Wolf Whistle is that as well, but with the luxury of orchestration that time provides that conversation doesn't. Nordan is a master. Faulkner obviously is a huge influence, but a challenge to him as well. Faulkner raised the bar on the novel in a hundred ways, but most obvious is the requirement to populate a work with multiple, distinct, and realistic voices outside the knowledge of the author. For a relatively simple example, Faulkner's black characters were some of the first to be considered realistic from a white author. For a more exotic one, consider the stream of consciousness romance between the mentally challenged Snopes and a cow, done from both points of view.

In any case, Wolf Whistle marshals a cast worthy of Faulkner and brings much of the same philosophical weight, sometimes more (hey, it's later in the day; there's been some advance in thinking on race since WF). Nordan also has that quality, better developed in this generation of writers, of keeper of curiosities. You know he's read everything and has pulled out tens of thousands of "that would be great in a novel" items. Here we get to see the top 100, and it's amazing. I read this 14 or 15 years ago, and my multiple copies have been loaned out so many times that I am currently without, so forgive the indirect quoting, but an example from the opening includes the fact that vultures live 150 years so that the vultures who fed on confederate dead are overlooking the scene.

And the style, the style is not Faulkner. It's only Nordan that does anything like this. It's like reading jazz. Everything sounds just right but always experimental. There's rhythm flowing through sentences and paragraphs unique to each character, and when they come in together, they harmonize. You really have to read it to believe it. There are elements that are closer to poetry, but with the further attraction of plot (masterful) and character (see above). I'll hang my hat on this. It's the best book you haven't heard of. Sadly, this is all I can do to change that fact.

Down-home magic realism, a book that sings, treats with stuff that is tough and hard but never turns bitter ... teacher Alice with her troupe of fourth graders, spnning them into her own perceptions of the world, taking them to abbatoirs and murder trials, is a classic ... it's a long while since I've discovered so fresh a masterpiece ... loved it!

I'm not quite sure how to review this. I'm a 30 year old guy originially from New York City and now in California. I know nothing about the south, or about the morays of life in a small town, or about the civil rights struggles. This book does a fabulous job of making me feel like I lived in a small southern town, despite that background. I felt that I understood the tensions between classes, between races, and the long-standing relationships that permeate small town life. In that way, the book was ingenious. I felt that I knew the characters intimately, and could understand what they were thinking and saying. That's quite a feat, to make a NYC guy feel at home in a small town in Mississippi. Kudos to the author for that.

But. BUT. Mixed in with the wonderful language and snapshots of southern life were these - I think - over the top and ineffective attempts at surreal, "out there" moments. Talking vultures. Visions of the future in a raindrop sitting on someone's coat. Talking, thinking parrots who play an active role in the town's life. It was just too much for me - it felt like a gifted writer was trying very hard to be creative, and inventive, and "on the edge" - but in my view it just took away from the effectiveness and strength of the book's other features. Don't have a talking vulture speak to me - have one of the wonderful characters do so. I just can't take this surreal stuff seriously.

This book, in general, tells the story of a small town in the heart of Mississippi which is visited by a black kid from Chicago. Probably because he doesn't understand what his role was supposed to be in a small Miss. town at that time, he whistles at a white woman and is as a result brutally murdered. This horrible, real event is the anchor - but not the main focus - of this book. If you ask me, the real focus was on the lives of the people who live in the town.

My favorite part of the book - and one I urge you to savor - is the interaction between auntie and uncle, and the scene with uncle at the trial. These were the two "real" people in the book who really geot to me. Real, every day love and fear and triumph and adversity.

Honestly, unless you like weird stuff - like your plot being told to you by a flying, talking vulture - try something else. If you want surreal done well, try some of Louis de Bernieres earlier books. If you want southern lit done well, try Faulkner.

right product, same as other versions page for page, just different design, not very fast shipping though