Review by Booklist Review
Dealing with reality in all its complexity and pain is the focus of two quite different novels by writers gazing back on southern childhoods.Wolf Whistle describes in slightly fantastical fashion what happens in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, in the 1950s when a visiting black teenager from Chicago makes the wrong remark to rich, "modern" Lady Sally Montberclair. Nordan, a University of Pittsburgh creative writing professor whose Music of the Swamp (1991) was an ALA Notable Book, transforms a grim episode of racial crime and refusal to punish he observed as a teenager into a remarkable tale of fire and water, jealousy and madness, a mute parrot who expresses his opinion eloquently at critical junctures, and ordinary "white-trash" Southerners forced by circumstance to examine quite seriously their consciences and their lives. With the hum of Delta blues in the background, Wolf Whistle captures the look and smell and taste and feel of a time and place where, for some good ol' boys and girls at least, the unquestioned verities of the past demand review.What comes under review in Ruin Creek is May Tilley and Jimmy Madden's marriage. When they eloped in 1954, the popular daughter of the owner of a bustling tobacco warehouse in Kildeer, North Carolina, and the basketball-star son of the high school principal were certainly in love. But May was pregnant, and marriage and the first of their two sons ended both Jimmy's dutiful plans for medical school and his English-major dreams of acting or writing. A dozen years later, May and Jimmy chime in with memories as 11-year-old Joey puzzles out his family's past and future and allocates credit and blame for its impending collapse. Ultimately, Ruin Creek is Joey's story: surrounded by family, queasy about the rumbles of change he senses, convinced he's caused--or should be able to cure--his parents' problems, Joey finds strength in Pa Tilley, who "fit inside himself like . . . some old favorite broke-down pair of shoes," while Jimmy has "two or three different people all mixed up inside him." Payne tells an all-too-familiar, achingly painful story of family dissolution with compassion and honesty. ~--Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Payne's acclaimed novel tells of a troubled Southern family in North Carolina in the 1950s. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Payne here introduces us to characters we care about: Jimmy, the star high school athlete who dreams about becoming a writer; May, the lovely young daughter of a prosperous family whose mother keeps telling her to ``remember who you are''; and Joey, now 12, their unplanned son, conceived in the passion of teenage love. With honesty and compassion, these three narrate from their own perspectives the story of a failing marriage. May's parents are supportive; Jimmy's father kind but bowed by his jealous, sharp-tongued shrike of a wife. Payne ( Early from the Dance , LJ 9/1/89) beautifully portrays the 1950s beaches of North Carolina, and his description of this family, so full of love with all their faults, makes the reader ache for them. Highly recommended.-- Marion Hanscom, SUNY-Binghamton Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A probing and powerful but relentlessly blow-by-blow study of a North Carolina family in crisis during the 1950's, as a man's dreams fail to reconcile themselves with his fatherly duties--in a third novel from Payne (Early From the Dance, 1989; Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, 1984). Told from three points of view--father Jimmy's, mother May's, and son Joey's--the Madden family saga unfolds from the moment of separation, when Jimmy fails to join the others at their Outer Banks cottage in the summer of Joey's 12th year. The roots of this event are in the time when Joey was conceived--a love child of two teenagers with bright plans for their future. Marriage and the infant disrupt Jimmy's vision of life as a doctor/writer, forcing him instead to work for May's father in the tobacco wholesaling business. Resentment builds on both sides over the years, as he seems to lose all desire to better himself while May grows ever more enamored of her heritage; Jimmy's path leads him to philandering and booze, and finally to a fatal night when he drops $10,000 at cards. Banished from his home, he loses what little self-respect remains--until his father-in-law steps in with choice words upon learning that Jimmy plans to kill himself. Reconciliation follows, but the seeds of dissolution have been too well sown; even saving Joey from drowning on his first deep-sea fishing trip can't transform Jimmy into the reliable father everyone wants him to be. No heartstring is left unplucked in this emotional feast, but the melodramatic excess is accompanied by moments of profound psychological insight and strikingly visual prose, making the story at once painful to endure and difficult to put down.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
