Claire Fullerton's Blog: A Writing Life, page 3

February 28, 2020

Book Review: Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith

Author Michael Farris Smith is one of those rare writers who uses language as setting. He opens his fifth novel, Blackwood, in the year 1975 with “The “foulrunning Cadillac arrived chugging into the town limits of Red Bluff, the car having struggled out of the Delta flatlands and into the Mississippi hill country, the ups and downs of the landscape pushing the roughriding vehicle beyond what was left of its capabilities.” Off the bat, the reader knows the stage is set for bad luck and hard times for the drifters come to town. Farris Smith doesn’t snow us with a glimmer of hope, he hands us the premise as a matter of fact. Then the story deepens. Blackwood is a story of loners and outsiders thrown together seemingly by chance. They’d like to connect but lack the fundamental knowledge of how, as each manages their individual vortex trying not to drown in their common sphere.
Red Bluff, Mississippi is lackluster to the point where the town gives away abandoned, downtown storefronts to anyone willing to maintain one. Colburn, haunted by his past, calls himself an industrial sculptor. He returns to the seat of his loveless childhood in his flatbed, looking for scrap metal and such to fashion into art in one of Main Street’s cast-offs. He is looking for something. He wants to confront the demons of his past, and in his search, reunites with a will-o-the-wisp bar owner named Celia, in an attraction so conflicted, it exhumes his childhood pain.
Myer wears his pantlegs tucked in his boots and walks with a limp. He is Red Bluff’s weary law enforcement who gives too little too late to the town’s drifters, who take to the kudzu tangled woods on the edge of town where something sinister lurks.
Rich in tenor, setting, metaphor, and dark imagery, Blackwood is an intricately woven, gritty story of disconnected lives unwittingly affecting each other in repercussive ways, written is language so bleakly mood-setting, reading its pages becomes a state of mind.
Many a luminous author has called Oxford, Mississippi’s Michael Farris Smith one of the best writers of his generation. And he is. And Blackwood proves it.
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Published on February 28, 2020 10:00 Tags: michael-farris-smith, mississippi, southern, southern-ficiton

February 14, 2020

Sisters of the Undertow by Johnnie Bernhard

Sisters of the Undertow is the third book by Johnnie Bernhard I’ve read, and I loved every line of it for the same reason I’ve loved Bernhard’s other books ( A Good Girl, and How We Came to Be): she’s a master of deep motivational subtext.
In Sisters of the Undertow, author Johnnie Bernhard takes the complicated underpinnings of sibling rivalry, gives it breath, and sets it to wings through the power of a seemingly ordinary story. What makes it extraordinary is that narrator Kimberly Ann has emotional baggage against her younger sister and knows it. She is cynical, jaded, and resentful to such an edge that the story is fueled by her bone marrow.
Kathy Renee is oblivious to her elder sister’s resentment. She was born to this world prematurely and shoulders the burden of life-long special needs. And yet she is disarmingly cheery, resilient, and God fearing, giving Kimberly Ann one more reason to rail against their relationship—on top of her put-upon, self-appointed victimhood, she is simultaneously riddled with guilt.
Narrator Kimberly Ann explains it as this: “We were born sixteen months apart, of the same mother and father, yet our lives would become as different as two planets orbiting around the sun, never to fully understand each other, despite our years of circling.”
It’s one’s attitude that seals the deal of how one’s life will be experienced, and author Johnnie Bernhard depicts this principle by giving us sisters from middle-class, Houston, Texas with differing realities, in a deeply introspective story that builds in three, well-crafted parts. It takes a gifted author with the use of a subtle hand to suggest we create our own reality. We may see parts of ourselves in both sisters. We may deny it, rail against it, or see it as a vehicle to self-examination that just might encourage change.
I read Sisters of the Undertow twice, which should tell you something. There’s so much to glean from the intelligent story, told in one of the more refreshingly real, first-person voices I’ve ever read. I read it twice because—dare I say it—this fathoms-deep tour de force of riveting upmarket fiction has the double blessing of a page-turning story and the repercussion of an undertow that won’t quit.
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Published on February 14, 2020 14:11 Tags: sibling-rivalry, sisters, texas

February 12, 2020

A Girl Like You by Michelle Cox

It is 1935 Chicago, after the big crash, and desperate times lead to desperate measures. Young, beautiful, and seductively innocent Henrietta Von Harmon fends for her fatherless siblings and withdrawn, bitter mother by taking her good intentions to support her family, only to be led to disreputable places with unforeseen double-dealings. With verve and resourcefulness, Henrietta soon becomes involved in shady doings on the wrong side of town, and when she meets the enigmatic Inspector Clive Howard, wheels are unwittingly set in motion for navigating a Chicago crime syndicate.
A Girl Like You, (Book 1 in the Henrietta and Inspector Howard Mystery Series by Michelle Cox) is one of those rare gems so chock-full of charm and personality; so captivating and delightful in its vivid narration that readers feel intimately tied to the characters and invested in the action-packed story. A Girl Like You has it all: mystery, intrigue, conflict, unpredictability, unique setting, believable motivations from fabulous characters, secrets, hidden agendas, and the lure of budding romance.
Author Michelle Cox begins her wildly popular mystery series in A Girl Like You with such page-turning, off-kilter charm, you won’t be able to resist reading the whole series. The memorable Henrietta and Inspector Howard are likable, fully realized characters from disparate backgrounds who balance each other with perfect pitch in the midst of an edge-of-your-seat joyride.
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Published on February 12, 2020 10:07 Tags: chicago, mystery, mystery-series, series

February 4, 2020

Trouble the Water

Trouble the Water is warmhearted, even-tempered, biographical fiction told with such delicacy that the reader drifts from its true-to-life scaffolding. In this captivating novel, Author Rebecca Dwight Bruff fearlessly takes on an era in American history a lesser writer wouldn’t touch, and she does so with admirable confidence while reaching the heart of what is essentially a human-interest story.
Trouble the Water is a soulful story populated with racially divided, interdependent characters in the midst of the South’s changing times. It is pre-Civil War in Beaufort, South Carolina, a hotbed of beneath-the-surface discontent set against the facade of waterfront civility. It is the historically significant, Robert Small’s, first-person story: he was born into slavery when there was nothing to be done about it, not yet. In an equanimous voice that makes us care from the onset, the story carries the reader through vividly drawn Low Country settings that are part and parcel to the flow of the chronicle. With a steady hand, Rebecca Dwight Bruff presents a ringside seat through the personal stages of Robert Small’s hard-won achievements. He is Horatio Alger guided by spirit on a hero’s journey, a dauntless man with a mission whose triumphant act becomes a turning point in the Civil War and impacts the ages.
I recommend Trouble the Water to those who love well-rooted historical fiction, biographical fiction, and a beautifully told story with a satisfying sense of redemption. All praise for author Rebecca Dwight Bruff. I understand she moved from Texas to South Carolina to research and write this gorgeous novel. In this humble reader’s opinion, the move was worth it.
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Published on February 04, 2020 15:20

February 2, 2020

Falling Up in the City of Angels

Connor Garrett’s Falling Up in The City of Angels sings like a manifesto of youth seen through the eyes of one who misses nothing. It’s a travelogue through the spinning vortex of LA, written from the edge of innocence by an author whose voice is so personal, you want to reach out and hold his hand.
Fresh from college graduation, in a time when the sky is the limit, narrator Tony leaves his Georgia home with little to recommend him than his dream of being a writer. Thinking magic can happen with little in his pocket in a town where anything goes, blind optimism leads Tony from one eye-opening episode to the next as he hits all the highpoints in the City of Angels. The reader visits the Venice Canals, meets posers, and actors, and spiritual seekers; commiserates with Tony through the laws of romantic attraction, pauses at his insights on the back end.
Like a fledgling meeting chance in an odyssey of discovery, Tony’s beginner’s luck navigates west LA without a filter. He is young, resourceful, adventurous, and optimistic. He is resilient, insightful, surefooted, and not a quitter.
Falling up in the City of Angels is a fresh take on an age-old experience. It reads like a roadmap of a young man’s coming into being while avoiding the campy pitfalls of a fish-out-of-water story. With language both accessible and profoundly sophisticated, author Connor Garrett depicts the blossoming of youth in all its first-impression, awestruck wonder.
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Published on February 02, 2020 21:37 Tags: review-la-california-bookreview

November 26, 2019

Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy

Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy is a gift from the heart. Popular author, Cassandra King Conroy must have intuited that legions of her husband’s devotees wanted his wife to speak. Many of us had incorporated Pat Conroy into our lives. We were on an intimate level with the author who bared his soul through story, so when he died, we were blindsided. We hadn’t been given enough time to wrap our minds around a Conroyless world and were totally unprepared. So, Cassandra King Conroy stepped up. In the age- old tradition of a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, she put her own grief aside and did for others in the only way Southerners know of: she told the entire story with endless detail and heartfelt panache. She gave us exactly what we wanted.
What strikes me about this memoir is its similarity in spirit to all things Pat Conroy wrote. Many of us heard Conroy explain the magic behind his writing by saying he wanted to explain his life to himself in hopes that readers would understand theirs. He unfurled his life on the pages in an artfully veiled manner, and it worked. In Tell Me a Story, Cassandra King Conroy removed the veil completely. With an honesty that can only be described as sheer bravery, she gave us the unvarnished truth, revealing the humanness of not only Pat, but of herself and those lucky enough to be a part of his orbit. The memoir is spellbinding, engaging, heart-tugging, and hilarious. Parts of it read like a madcap ride through a comedy of errors, for how best to describe a union forged later in life, replete with two cause and effect, complicated backstories seeking a semblance of harmony. And yet harmony was achieved, and that bird of a different feather soared. Cassandra King Conroy’s memoir is the construction of a life cobbled together by two world-class authors. It is deeply confessional and told in a voice you’ll never want to quit.
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Published on November 26, 2019 09:37

October 25, 2019

The River By Starlight

Every well-wrought sentence in The River by Starlight is as beautiful as the Henry David Thoreau inspired title. Author Ellen Notbohm has penned a breathlessly epic, masterful story set in early 1900’s Montana in language so lyrically elevated you’ll want to commit much of it to memory but will have to get back to it later—you’ll be too busy turning the pages.
The River by Starlight is a starkly humanistic story. It’s an historical novel intimately and engagingly written in present tense concerning the sweeping life story of dark-haired and diminutive Annie Rushton, whose young marriage is permanently marred by what might be the time’s inchoate perceptions of post-partum depression. There are repercussions to Annie’s malady that propel her to leave everything behind in her home state of Iowa and hop a train to join her bachelor brother in the wilds of homesteading Montana, where she risks starting a new life. Shouldering her heartbreak, Annie applies her headstrong, fierce independence to helping her brother prosper, so when charismatic businessman Adam Fielding, a colleague of her brother’s, enters her life, theirs is a relationship forged on mutual ambition, but as the years wear on, they become two desperate souls unwittingly tossed by the unpredictable storms of life.
Life’s choices come into play, in The River by Starlight. Though Annie and Adam begin with hope and the best intentions, there is only so much one can weather in hope’s defeat by repetitious wounds that won’t heal. Through the years, communication errors and individual judgement calls are made that usher in divergent aims, and all the while is the roiling concern of Annie’s mercurial sanity.
Resiliency, perseverance, love of one’s children, and where to appropriately place one’s pledge are threads that weave the tapestry of this thoroughly realized story, whose themes, I believe, are timeless and universal.
The River by Starlight is a book for the ages. In my mind, it stands with the classics. The novel’s voice and three-part pacing are seamlessly crafted; its tone and mood are deep and oftentimes heart wrenching, so much so that the reader can’t help but be lured by emotional investment in characters so viscerally drawn they come to life on the pages.
The River by Starlight is for those discerning readers who demand excellence in language, craft, and story. It is a plausible, finely researched, resonant book ultimately about the taming of the spirit, set in tumultuous, untamed times.
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Published on October 25, 2019 17:14

August 15, 2019

Confessions of a Christian Mystic by River Jordan

Bold, daring, and yes, confessional, River Jordan’s collection of personal essays warns you going into it that you’re in for something unique. After all, what is the art of writing, if not a venue to compare notes on this business of life? Only a master can make this plain through the power of fifty delightful stories. This is a writer who asks the big questions for us; who owns a steady faith base yet thinks outside the box. Confessions of a Christian Mystic is devout and dauntless. It is sonorous, beautiful, soul-deep, and fearless. And it is sardonically funny in its skirt-lifted vulnerability. The chapter titled, “Sometimes Good Girls Get Naked” is a case in point. With a deft hold on sentiment without being overly sentimental, I won’t cheapen this important book by suggesting it’s a page-turner—it is better. Confessions of a Christian Mystic is something to savor. You’ll want to pause and ponder at the end of each chapter.
I applaud every essay in this gorgeous gift of a book. River Jordan has woven vignettes of her personal narrative at such an engaging, introspective pitch that I defy every reader not to see themselves in its pages
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Published on August 15, 2019 11:34 Tags: book-review, essays, inspirational

August 4, 2019

Crescendo

When a book weaves a journey that is more than the sum of its parts, it achieves the full potential of depicting art as life and simultaneously, life as art.
Crescendo is a book with a heartbeat. That it is captivatingly written in novel form gives it a magical, alluring feeling. It involves the reader by depicting the real-life story of a supernaturally gifted musician named Fred Allen, who comes from a desperate, impoverished family in an insignificant town in South Georgia. The book transcends a rags-to-riches story by thematically infusing it with a search for meaning. The seeming unfairness of a uniquely gifted soul being born to such an appalling station gives the reader someone to champion, as musical prodigy Fred Allen makes his way against all odds from the rural South to the heights of celebration in New York City. Divinity itself seems to have a hand in this story. It shows its face along Fred Allen’s ascension with uncanny opportunity and fortuitous timing that suggests elements of the preordained for the purposes of the common good.
Crescendo is an enthralling human-interest story set to music. As Fred Allen persists in cultivating his extraordinary musical career, he meets his life-long collaborator, Winnie, and it shows us that love can save us.
Allen Cheney and Julie Cantrell have created a blockbuster in Crescendo. There is no better way to craft the inspiring story of one humble man who rises to greatness then turns around and gives back to a community. There is hope in this book’s role-model message. Through the power of story, Crescendo tells us that with commitment and perseverance, the spirit can triumph over circumstances to ultimately benefit others.
I recommend this wonderful book wholeheartedly. It is the kind of inspiring, triumphant story you’ll want to share with others to remind them of the goodness in this world. If you’re musically inclined in any way, Crescendo will play the very keys of your soul like a Steinway Grand piano.
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Published on August 04, 2019 12:33 Tags: inspirational, musical, piano, review

June 1, 2019

Review: Clover Blue by Eldonna Edwards

A perfectly paced, thoroughly realized, refreshingly unique story that takes the concept of world-building to expert proportions. Author Eldonna Edwards sets her standout novel in a 1970s, Northern Califonia commune's bucolic setting and regals the reader with an unusual story from the perspective of the eponymous narrator, Clover Blue, who has a personal history, unlike all others. In a coming of age story, Edwards layers her art with the subtle fine-tuning of what it also means to come into awareness. The Saffron Freedom Community's earthy setting is tangible, it's free-spirited, well-intentioned residents so finely drawn as to elicit the reader's acceptance of a lifestyle so beautifully and minutely depicted, one can't help but become emotionally invested. At the heart of this story is the adolescent Clover Blue's search for identity within the confines of his deep-rooted sense of place. Once the reader is hooked by Clover Blue's story, a mystery creeps in to suggest all is not as it seems, in this idyllic world apart from the world, spearheaded by a mesmeric leader whose past is so covert, it's no wonder his counsel is centered on nonjudgement and living in the present. Clover Blue is a story that rolls, unfurls, and deepens in seemingly simple complexity. It is a resonating, engaging story true to the spirit of its times and satisfying in its unpredictable end.
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Published on June 01, 2019 17:29 Tags: california-fiction, recommend, review

A Writing Life

Claire Fullerton
A blog dedicated to what's on my mind. ...more
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