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This Time Next Year: A Novel
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July 24, 2023
Atmospherically, Anne Stallworth’s excellent novel, This Time Next Year, is somewhat redolent of Harper Lee’s world-famous and enduring To Kill a Mockingbird. For example, both stories are set in Alabama and occur in the Depression Era of the 1930s, and the rural towns of Maycomb and Gray’s Chapel could easily be mistaken for one another. Additionally, both protagonists and first-person narrators are outspoken girls. However, while Lee’s Scout Finch has an innocent, forgivable charm in her say-it-as-you-see-it candor befitting a girl who ages from six to nine years, Stallworth’s Florrie Birdsong is fifteen-going-on-sixteen, and many of her plainspoken opinions arise from teenage pressures, budding maturity, and dislikeable members of her network of extended family, friends, and teachers.
The Birdsong family comprises Florrie and her parents, Julia and Toliver. With marriage, Julia appears to have surrendered too much too soon. Now in her late thirties, she dreams of—and surreptitiously works hard towards—entering into modern urban life, which includes perquisites such as shopping for clothes rather than home-stitching them, purchasing food to eat rather than growing it, and moving around with ease rather than waiting for a twice-daily bus to journey to the nearest town. Toliver, however, is a man of the soil, and is content to toil long hours ploughing and harvesting, yet still remain at the mercy of uncontrollable weather and other crop hazards. To cap it all, the Birdsongs are merely tenant farmers on land owned by Aunt Mira, Julia’s older sister, a religious zealot who is more likely to sprinkle you with holy water than shake your hand in greeting!
The fairly plotless novel covers one year of life seen through Florrie’s eyes. She witnesses the growing tension and distance between her parents, in particular, their different visions and aspirations for the future. Along with lifelong friend Dink, Florrie thrillingly discovers a moonshine distillery in the nearby woods, owned by an older cousin. An ongoing dispute with her mother focuses on when Florrie will finally break down and start wearing a brassiere. It might be Florrie simply resisting the physical and biological transition from girlhood to womanhood, but her mother’s argument is that Florrie’s bra-less wardrobe attests visibly—and now embarrassingly—that she has long-since crossed that threshold.
Florrie is also a romantic. She reads the Brönte novels repeatedly, Jane Eyre, in particular, and pines for a Rochester to materialize into her uneventful life. The nearest she gets to a Rochester in reality is the dashing Billy Paul who, apparently, only has eyes for Elaine Parrish. The one close encounter she has with him that promised romantic intimacy ends badly with Billy Paul sustaining a scratched face for his advances.
Ms. Stallworth’s seductively simple prose makes This Time Next Year a fast and pleasant read. She captures small-town, impoverished living perfectly as Julia counts not nickels and dimes, but pennies, in order to make ends meet and to save for elusive and seemingly impossible home ownership. The desperate, future-less aspects of Florrie’s life seem endless, changeable only by sudden good fortune or tragedy. Which option the author chooses as her novel concludes will not disappoint readers.
And whereas To Kill a Mockingbird was (essentially) a one-hit wonder, I learn with interest that Anne Stallworth has other novels to her credit.
The Birdsong family comprises Florrie and her parents, Julia and Toliver. With marriage, Julia appears to have surrendered too much too soon. Now in her late thirties, she dreams of—and surreptitiously works hard towards—entering into modern urban life, which includes perquisites such as shopping for clothes rather than home-stitching them, purchasing food to eat rather than growing it, and moving around with ease rather than waiting for a twice-daily bus to journey to the nearest town. Toliver, however, is a man of the soil, and is content to toil long hours ploughing and harvesting, yet still remain at the mercy of uncontrollable weather and other crop hazards. To cap it all, the Birdsongs are merely tenant farmers on land owned by Aunt Mira, Julia’s older sister, a religious zealot who is more likely to sprinkle you with holy water than shake your hand in greeting!
The fairly plotless novel covers one year of life seen through Florrie’s eyes. She witnesses the growing tension and distance between her parents, in particular, their different visions and aspirations for the future. Along with lifelong friend Dink, Florrie thrillingly discovers a moonshine distillery in the nearby woods, owned by an older cousin. An ongoing dispute with her mother focuses on when Florrie will finally break down and start wearing a brassiere. It might be Florrie simply resisting the physical and biological transition from girlhood to womanhood, but her mother’s argument is that Florrie’s bra-less wardrobe attests visibly—and now embarrassingly—that she has long-since crossed that threshold.
Florrie is also a romantic. She reads the Brönte novels repeatedly, Jane Eyre, in particular, and pines for a Rochester to materialize into her uneventful life. The nearest she gets to a Rochester in reality is the dashing Billy Paul who, apparently, only has eyes for Elaine Parrish. The one close encounter she has with him that promised romantic intimacy ends badly with Billy Paul sustaining a scratched face for his advances.
Ms. Stallworth’s seductively simple prose makes This Time Next Year a fast and pleasant read. She captures small-town, impoverished living perfectly as Julia counts not nickels and dimes, but pennies, in order to make ends meet and to save for elusive and seemingly impossible home ownership. The desperate, future-less aspects of Florrie’s life seem endless, changeable only by sudden good fortune or tragedy. Which option the author chooses as her novel concludes will not disappoint readers.
And whereas To Kill a Mockingbird was (essentially) a one-hit wonder, I learn with interest that Anne Stallworth has other novels to her credit.
Displaying 1 of 1 review