Charles Dodd White
Autor von Lambs of Men
Werke von Charles Dodd White
Appalachia Now: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia (Appalachian Fiction Series) (2015) 13 Exemplare
How Fire Runs 5 Exemplare
Zugehörige Werke
Unbroken Circle: Stories of Cultural Diversity in the South (Appalachian Writing Series) (2017) — Mitwirkender — 3 Exemplare
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Wissenswertes
- Rechtmäßiger Name
- White, Charles Dodd
- Geburtstag
- 1976
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- USA
- Geburtsort
- Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
Auszeichnungen
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Statistikseite
- Werke
- 9
- Auch von
- 2
- Mitglieder
- 91
- Beliebtheit
- #204,136
- Bewertung
- 4.2
- Rezensionen
- 3
- ISBNs
- 15
Lavada Laws is a good woman, who has chained her life to a bad man, we immediately assume so, because Mason Laws is in prison and she has been left with the full care of his father, Sam, who is suffering from dementia. One of the sweetest scenes, and perhaps one of the scariest for me, was one in which Sam wanders out into the frigid night and is retrieved by Lavada. He calls her “daughter” and the relationship between them is poignant.
One of the things White gets right is Sam and his state of mind and Lavada’s reaction to it. There is nothing simple about a person succumbing to dementia, and there is nothing consistent about it either.
There were always bumps, but this seemed different somehow. As if he inhabited a twin of himself in some approximate place, not absent so much as simply attentive elsewhere, obedient to a duality unknown to her. She supposed it frightened her, though that might not have been the right word. Confused, maybe.
Without giving away any spoilers, Mason is released from prison and returns to Lavada’s world, and the repercussions are neither what Lavada expects nor what the reader expects. In fact, there is little predictable in this novel, but everything we read is frighteningly believable.
There is total unrest in each of White’s characters. No one here is settled, contented or happy. There is too much uncertainty in this environment, and the beauty of the mountains that surround them is tempered with the knowledge of the dangers they can hold. No one is leading an easy life in this place, for both nature and the people of the community are as hard as stone, and peace is something only wished for.
He wanted to be blessed with an animal brain. Oh, to be silent for a moment in the gaze of the blank sky.
Even Lavada's dreams of her grandmother are stark and sad and lack comfort. In fact, like a mirror of the daily life she leads, in her dreams she finds nothing substantial to hold onto.
It was a counterfeit of a face really, a strange wronging of features, the paralyzed remnants after the second stroke. Lavada wanted to take her hands and pass them across the tangled muscles, iron the sickness away. When she reached for her, the old woman slackened, her inner form giving way so that the skin left behind was as light and drawn as a wish.
If you enjoy Southern Gothic literature, Charles Dodd White’s voice is one you will not want to miss. He will transport you to Appalachia and show you the bones of a life that demands more strength than courage, more perseverance than hope, and he will make you wish justice were not such a fickle commodity.
… (mehr)