Fastest I've read a book in awhile. Harington tells a fascinating yarn and creates characters that are easy to get invested in. ( )

What a strange and entrancing read this was. If Truman Capote and William Faulkner had come back from the dead to contemplate what a real love story might look like, and then written something together in the last ten years or so as a result of that drunken and zombie-ish conversation, I'm betting it would look something like this. Harington's depiction of a small town and a long, strange friendship (romance?!?) is weirdly innocent, and sort of wonderfully fresh at the same time. His humor brings every page to life, and yet, the frantic nature of the narrative is never lost because of his careful weaving back and forth from past to present, calm to craze.

No doubt, some of you may read this review, and then read the book, and be a bit horrified that I called it--even in passsing--a love story. And admittedly, I didn't think about it in just those terms until I began thinking about what to say in reaction to this book. The unpolitical, uncomfortable truth is, though, that not all love stories look the same, or look innocent, or even look like love. Some just look like life, oddly lived, and that's what Harington has delivered here. So, don't pick this up because I called it a love story. Pick it up because you love strange southern lit., good books, or books where the plots twist in so many little ways that you can't stop reading, and where the characters pull each moment of its place and turn it around for their own pleasure. ( )

Set in Harington's fictional, beloved representation of a town of Stay More, we learn about the mysterious, beautiful postmistress, Latha Bourne. I'm glad I was directed to read The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks first, because I have a frame of reference for the characters and events...anyway. Harington is terrific and I wish I'd been told about him long ago.

I'm finding that I have difficulty liking a book if I can't somehow imagine how the character feels, if I can't imagine myself being that character. If I tried to tally the books that I've really loved, they'd probably weigh heavily on the side of female protagonists. Not that I'm much like Latha Bourne, but the way she was limited, the agony of bad choices, not being permitted to decide, I can sort of identify with it.

This is a long-delayed love story, set during one very eventful day with flashbacks that show what happened and why things turned out the way they did. There's quite a bit of yearning and loins, hah, and a little boy narrator that I wasn't able to figure out what happened to him.

Wonderful. ( )

Donald Harington was a national treasure. Why hasn't everyone read his novels? This is the first Stay More novel I read. It's funny, poignant, suspenseful, and sexy -- not necessarily in that order. Harington went deaf at a young age, and I wonder if that contributed to his ability to write in such a wonderful rural voice.

Latha. She's at the heart of Harington's Stay More and this is her story. It's crazy good. ( )