What do you think?
Silk Hope, N. C.;A Harvest Book
The old farmhouse in Silk Hope was never meant to be sold but to be inherited by the daughters of the line "no matter what occurs between them and the men in their lives." When their mother dies, Frannie and Natalie must decide what the house means to them as independent modern women. Sensible Natalie and her uptight banker boyfriend, Jake, propose selling the property. The sisters can't afford to keep up the farmhouse, Jake contends. Women don't need safe havens anymore, Natalie claims. But wild, impulsive Frannie refuses to sell their sanctuary and resolves to honor the legacy in her own inimitable way--with a little help from a pig and the patient one-armed foreman at the local underwear-packaging mill. "How it all ends must be experienced by every reader." (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Poignant, funny, and altogether compelling, Lawrence Naumoff's fourth novel is a moving parable in which two good women find, among the neglected virtues of the past, a sustenance to carry them into the future. Silk Hope, NC is "the finest work yet by a wise and gifted author" (Winston-Salem Journal).
Poignant, funny, and altogether compelling, Lawrence Naumoff's fourth novel is a moving parable in which two good women find, among the neglected virtues of the past, a sustenance to carry them into the future. Silk Hope, NC is "the finest work yet by a wise and gifted author" (Winston-Salem Journal).
- GenresFiction
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 28, 2023
written July 1994
I like this book, and now I am trying to figure out how much of the attraction has come from having heard the author last Sunday (7-10-1994) at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh reading from three chapters of it. He has created some interesting characters -- the straight sister Natalie and the wild and crazy sister Frannie and their respective men -- and some interesting adventures for them. It reads a bit too much like all the other North Carolina local color fiction of Edgerton and Gibbons and Smith et al for me to get really excited about it -- I guess I want my fiction to be a little more artsy or literary, or to have deep themes like Doris Betts' Souls Raised from the Dead.
But every once in a while Naumoff does something that gets my attention and makes me stop and ponder. For example, he has a couple of paragraphs that just do colors -- blue on page 75, yellow on page 122 -- that are clearly working to do something different than advance the story. After Natalie says Frannie is in a blue mood, Naumoff jumps in:
Blue was a color from the past. Modern colors were blended and blurred and they all had new names that never existed before. The new colors seemed to be in motion, while the color blue was still and deep.
He does it again after Frannie checks on her pigs in the "comforting . . . weak yellow light" of her flashlight:
Yellow is often meant to be the color of fear within, of being afraid. It is also the color of warmth, of fire, of the tips of flames as well as the color of wheat, the color of work and of thoughtfulness and of good sense played out in the pattern of the field, in the color of the grass, in the color of the grain in the bin. That yellow that had resembled the color of virtuous labor was not the new yellow we saw today, the fluorescent yellows of slick excitement. The absence now of that true color was compelling and unavoidable in much the way the swollen belly of an unmarried woman with child would have been in the time of Frannie's ancestors.
I hope you can see from these examples how Naumoff writes differently than that North Carolina local color crowd. I'm not sure what he is up to exactly, or why he chooses this way to do it, but to me it clearly invites pondering. Hear the self-assurance in the voice as he tells us what colors mean, and what they don't, and what they are wrongly thought to mean? It's clear he is talking about change, and mourning it, at least some kinds of change. But do you also hear how his impersonal style -- his careful avoidance of "I" in a paragraph that has a loudly implicit "I think" woven all through it, before that sudden move into "we saw today" -- works to control a response and establish a very carefully modulated relationship between narrator and reader? In the middle of the penultimate sentence I am suddenly set to wondering just who "we" is, and when in the world "today" is -- and whose "today" are we talking about? Naumoff's and mine? Natalie's and Frannie's and mine? His and theirs?
I think this kind of style, of slipping into and out of preaching in the midst of reminiscing in the midst of storytelling, would probably annoy me if I hadn't met the man and begun to get used to it by hearing it from his own lips. Now I feel a bit like those 1950s UVa grad students that Joe Blotner sicced on Faulkner when trying to write his massive biography and the famous novelist was trying not to analyze his own books -- the author was smart and famous enough to discourage questions but polite and genial enough to invite them; and there was all that New Critical stuff in the background just inviting everybody to admit that it is not really appropriate to ask the author to explain his work anyway.
I know that Naumoff writes about male-female conflicts in an interesting and thoughtful way -- certainly not with the kind of surface sensitivity that some folks (including maybe him) would call being politically correct, but as perhaps only a bright, well read, late 20th century Southern man could. Suddenly it occurs to me that it's less easy to write that way about that topic than it would be to be a writer of some other minority or on some other topic. So maybe the key question was the one that Naumoff got on Sunday: What do you think would have happened if your books had been advertised as having been written by a woman? Would Reuben look too good then? Would Eljert be deemed a caricature? Would the flip-flop in the Natalie-Frannie stories at the end seem so sudden?
What I am sure of is that Naumoff can plot. He did plant clues along the way to what would happen to Nat and Jake's relationship when they got money. He did prepare us for Frannie's discovery of a way out of her lawsuit and her homelessness and her near rape. The pigs and the warehouse boxes and the island are key players long before the plot requires them -- because Naumoff is also very good with places, and each of those key places (barn, warehouse, island) seems to matter to the plot because they all matter to the reader and to Frannie first.
Naumoff also knows how to have fun with words. One of my favorite sentences (and his too, apparently) is his one-note musing in the voice of the A#1 jerk Eljert: "It'd be nice to find a nice one and have a nice time with her and treat her real nice and show her how nice a nice man could be to a nice woman" (292). And his scene with Frannie and the pigs is worthy of Edgerton at his best, like the opening of Walking Across Egypt with Mattie Rigsby stuck in the chair. But most of the time Naumoff is more wry and moody than that, more careful and controlled, at least until he jumps into the narration to say that much of what we have heard is hogwash:
-- "It is said by learned people in the glossy confident educated world that it's best to face your problems and mistakes, that it's best to confront them, to deal with them, as is said, to empower yourself with the strength to confront. This is certainly not true." (55)
-- "'I love you. I will leave my husband for you. I will leave my child for you.' These words are still being said today. It is usually a mistake when you say these words." (24)
-- "A cow or a steer, in its entire life, never had as much fun as any pig had in any randomly chosen hour of its life. It was best not to think about these kinds of things while you were eating. It was best, often, not to think at all." (76)
Maybe Naumoff thinks so, but he protest so much he reminds me of Frannie: a deep person cautiously pretending to be shallow.
I like this book, and now I am trying to figure out how much of the attraction has come from having heard the author last Sunday (7-10-1994) at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh reading from three chapters of it. He has created some interesting characters -- the straight sister Natalie and the wild and crazy sister Frannie and their respective men -- and some interesting adventures for them. It reads a bit too much like all the other North Carolina local color fiction of Edgerton and Gibbons and Smith et al for me to get really excited about it -- I guess I want my fiction to be a little more artsy or literary, or to have deep themes like Doris Betts' Souls Raised from the Dead.
But every once in a while Naumoff does something that gets my attention and makes me stop and ponder. For example, he has a couple of paragraphs that just do colors -- blue on page 75, yellow on page 122 -- that are clearly working to do something different than advance the story. After Natalie says Frannie is in a blue mood, Naumoff jumps in:
Blue was a color from the past. Modern colors were blended and blurred and they all had new names that never existed before. The new colors seemed to be in motion, while the color blue was still and deep.
He does it again after Frannie checks on her pigs in the "comforting . . . weak yellow light" of her flashlight:
Yellow is often meant to be the color of fear within, of being afraid. It is also the color of warmth, of fire, of the tips of flames as well as the color of wheat, the color of work and of thoughtfulness and of good sense played out in the pattern of the field, in the color of the grass, in the color of the grain in the bin. That yellow that had resembled the color of virtuous labor was not the new yellow we saw today, the fluorescent yellows of slick excitement. The absence now of that true color was compelling and unavoidable in much the way the swollen belly of an unmarried woman with child would have been in the time of Frannie's ancestors.
I hope you can see from these examples how Naumoff writes differently than that North Carolina local color crowd. I'm not sure what he is up to exactly, or why he chooses this way to do it, but to me it clearly invites pondering. Hear the self-assurance in the voice as he tells us what colors mean, and what they don't, and what they are wrongly thought to mean? It's clear he is talking about change, and mourning it, at least some kinds of change. But do you also hear how his impersonal style -- his careful avoidance of "I" in a paragraph that has a loudly implicit "I think" woven all through it, before that sudden move into "we saw today" -- works to control a response and establish a very carefully modulated relationship between narrator and reader? In the middle of the penultimate sentence I am suddenly set to wondering just who "we" is, and when in the world "today" is -- and whose "today" are we talking about? Naumoff's and mine? Natalie's and Frannie's and mine? His and theirs?
I think this kind of style, of slipping into and out of preaching in the midst of reminiscing in the midst of storytelling, would probably annoy me if I hadn't met the man and begun to get used to it by hearing it from his own lips. Now I feel a bit like those 1950s UVa grad students that Joe Blotner sicced on Faulkner when trying to write his massive biography and the famous novelist was trying not to analyze his own books -- the author was smart and famous enough to discourage questions but polite and genial enough to invite them; and there was all that New Critical stuff in the background just inviting everybody to admit that it is not really appropriate to ask the author to explain his work anyway.
I know that Naumoff writes about male-female conflicts in an interesting and thoughtful way -- certainly not with the kind of surface sensitivity that some folks (including maybe him) would call being politically correct, but as perhaps only a bright, well read, late 20th century Southern man could. Suddenly it occurs to me that it's less easy to write that way about that topic than it would be to be a writer of some other minority or on some other topic. So maybe the key question was the one that Naumoff got on Sunday: What do you think would have happened if your books had been advertised as having been written by a woman? Would Reuben look too good then? Would Eljert be deemed a caricature? Would the flip-flop in the Natalie-Frannie stories at the end seem so sudden?
What I am sure of is that Naumoff can plot. He did plant clues along the way to what would happen to Nat and Jake's relationship when they got money. He did prepare us for Frannie's discovery of a way out of her lawsuit and her homelessness and her near rape. The pigs and the warehouse boxes and the island are key players long before the plot requires them -- because Naumoff is also very good with places, and each of those key places (barn, warehouse, island) seems to matter to the plot because they all matter to the reader and to Frannie first.
Naumoff also knows how to have fun with words. One of my favorite sentences (and his too, apparently) is his one-note musing in the voice of the A#1 jerk Eljert: "It'd be nice to find a nice one and have a nice time with her and treat her real nice and show her how nice a nice man could be to a nice woman" (292). And his scene with Frannie and the pigs is worthy of Edgerton at his best, like the opening of Walking Across Egypt with Mattie Rigsby stuck in the chair. But most of the time Naumoff is more wry and moody than that, more careful and controlled, at least until he jumps into the narration to say that much of what we have heard is hogwash:
-- "It is said by learned people in the glossy confident educated world that it's best to face your problems and mistakes, that it's best to confront them, to deal with them, as is said, to empower yourself with the strength to confront. This is certainly not true." (55)
-- "'I love you. I will leave my husband for you. I will leave my child for you.' These words are still being said today. It is usually a mistake when you say these words." (24)
-- "A cow or a steer, in its entire life, never had as much fun as any pig had in any randomly chosen hour of its life. It was best not to think about these kinds of things while you were eating. It was best, often, not to think at all." (76)
Maybe Naumoff thinks so, but he protest so much he reminds me of Frannie: a deep person cautiously pretending to be shallow.
June 20, 2018
I enjoyed the plot, the flow of the story was extremely slow, but the characters were well fleshed out and very real. But the slowness almost lost me a couple of times. But still it was okay. Frannie, I was with you about the farm and your antics were hilarious especially where you put the pigs you wanted to raise----funny! I almost hated your sister and her man. Nice story but incredibly slow...maybe that's the Southern way take it way slow.
November 9, 2022
I really liked this book. At times laugh-out-loud hilarious, at times poignant and heartbreaking, the story of sisters Frannie and Natalie rings true to me. I will remember these characters for a long time.
The only reason I didn't give the book 5 stars is that I didn't like the ending. But it didn't spoil the whole book, just seemed "tacked on."
Highly recommended!
The only reason I didn't give the book 5 stars is that I didn't like the ending. But it didn't spoil the whole book, just seemed "tacked on."
Highly recommended!
August 25, 2021
The characters in this book were just weird. Perhaps if the author would have delved into Frannie’s childhood more, it would have explained a lot. I thought the book was as going to be more light-hearted and comical.
January 26, 2018
Why have I never come across this author before? I loved the characters, the plot, and the beautiful descriptions of the natural world. Naumoff goes on my list of authors to to!low.
February 11, 2023
Too much angst and not enough action for me.
August 26, 2023
The story was interesting and the characters unique, but I am not a fan of the (speaking thru a woman’s distracted thoughts) writing style. A few times I just wanted it to be finished.
June 16, 2022
I chanced upon this forgotten novel published in the 90s at a used bookstore. Lawrence Naumoff is a North Carolina writer I’d never heard of, until now. His offbeat characters are kooky and the dialogue shines here, in spite of the somewhat creaky plot. If playwright Beth Henley rewrote Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, and reset it in a dying Piedmont textile town, this just might be the result.
September 28, 2014
Read this many years ago. Loved it at the time. Thought it should be made into a movie. It could have been so funny. Very disappointed when it did appear as a TV movie. Farrah Fawcett did not make a good Frannie. I actually could not watch it. Still like the book and I'm looking for another copy since mine was lent out and never came back.
April 7, 2013
Two and a half stars. Southern lit.
June 8, 2013
Too too much rambling on and on and on!
November 7, 2013
Great read, loved learning about these characters! a follow up would be good as well.
March 2, 2014
Just ok; another dysfunctional family.
July 6, 2014
Pretty poorly written-- had to abandon
December 14, 2015
Liked this book less and less as I read on.mby the end' I was ready to be finished with it.
October 5, 2016
This story of two sisters was slow-moving through the majority of the text. It, ultimately, became more engaging towards the end but fell-short of similar fiction. 2.5 Stars.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews