Bearings and Distances

by Glenn Arbery

Bearings and Distances by Glenn Arbery, is a novel of comic ironies and tragic recurrences set in the “post-racial” moment of the American experiment. In the summer after Barack Obama’s election, Hermia Watson, a scholar of black history, lures the famous (and famously irresponsible) Professor Braxton Forrest back to his hometown in Georgia, using his two daughters as unwitting hostages. Returning alone while his pious wife continues touring Italy, Forrest arrives to the tremblings of his abandoned past and a confrontation with the Furies he thought modernity had left behind. In the course of a few days, Hermia realizes what violent revelations she has begun to unleash about her former lover, her mother, and her own identity—but it is too late to stop what is coming to light. Arbery revisits the obsessions of the 20th century Southern renaissance in a work that satirizes misconceptions and shallow pieties but takes seriously the wisdom of the Southern literary tradition—and its classical antecedents.

Genres: Fiction, Catholic

346 pages, Paperback

Published June 11, 2015

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only picked this out after browsing the Wiseblood Press' conservative, often Catholic, agrarian and Southern-friendly backlist. I'd heard of the writer, but erroneously thought he's related to playwright Will Arberry. For the squeamish among the buttoned-down (and up) audience who may number those who cringe at any sexualized scenes, fair warning. I'd add such content suits the novel, as it explores the drives of a 58-year-old Type A (even if a professor of English, common fare in this publishing niche) womanizer whose deeds over four decades compel him into unwise actions and frequent fights.

It's as if brawling (he never struck me as brainy, despite his prescient "gameme" concept, taking place after Obama's election in 2009), buff, over-educated, hard-boozing, badly parenting protagonist out of Bellow-Roth-Updike blends with a Georgia-bred, complicated sinner whose life's unraveling as his past catches up. Compressed into a brief period, it reminds me of those thrillers where the lead never sleeps, runs from hotel to airport, yells a lot, steals, comes to blows as if randomly, seduces, dines, and flees the long arm of a fumbling law. It's exhausting over many extended manic stretches.

Thus the sheer amount of plot twists, endless revelations and possibly true confessions, Patricia not Tricia who goes by Vanela, incest, child abuse, illegitimate children, mortal yellowjackets, surveying (rather interesting in a 1969 flashback), racism, the dame holed up in a Gothic manse, small-town gossip, Italy, and too many folks emerging from humid woodwork with spilled truths and knotty lies...well, it didn't need to be as long. Not for the first time from Wiseblood, editorial control wasn't imposed as tightly as needed. It's inventive to excess, not that funny as blurbed, and unlikable folks who get weighed down by heft and drift among sad-sack main man's hallucinations and concussions.

[Gretchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A successful middle aged man returns to the little town where he grew up only to uncover mysteries and secrets that come to play havoc on him and his hometown. The author must be a true southerner himself! His use of dialect and vivid descriptions of characters and places bring everything to life. He has a true southern understanding of the complexities of life during the racial changes that took place in the '60s and '70s in the deep south. The book is written with beautiful language and imagery, depth of characters, twists and turns in the plot. I am giving myself a few months and then reading it again to find what I missed the first go round.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept on waiting for Atticus to show up and clear this cesspool out. Incest, moral depravity overshadows true love (was it ever true or was it all an ego trip). Innocence lost but what good was found other than the truth that 'man' is an accumulation of secrets and closets chock full of skeletons. Redemption here is found solely in physical world....nothing inspirational here just lies upon lies. Good story to read during Lent though.