by Charles Frazier Publisher: Random House (September 27, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 140006709X
ISBN-13: 978-1400067091
Literature & Fiction
Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
A Letter from Author Charles Frazier
Lost in the woods. A dangerous
phrase, but also with a resonance of folktale. Hansel and Gretel with
their bread crumbs. Jack alone, roaming the lovely, dark, and deep
southern mountains. So, young people and old people being lost in the
woods has always been interesting to me for those reasons. And also
because it happens all the time still.
Back when I was a kid, eight or ten, my friends and I lived with a mountain in our backyards. We stayed off it in summer. Too hot and snaky. But in the cool seasons, we roamed freely. We carried bb guns in the fall and rode our sleds down old logging roads in winter. We often got lost. But we knew that downhill was the way out, the way home. When I grew up and went into bigger mountains, you couldn’t always be so sure. I remember being lost in Bolivia. Or let’s say that I grew increasingly uncertain whether I was still on the trail or not. That’s the point where you ought to sit down and drink some water and consult your maps and compass very carefully and calmly. I kept walking. At some point, it became a matter of rigging ropes to swing a heavy pack over a scary white watercourse. I ended up at a dropoff. Down far below, upper reaches of the Amazon basin stretched hazy green into the distance. Downhill did not at all seem like the way home.
You’ll just have to trust me that this has something to do with my new novel, but to go into it much would risk spoilers. I’ll just say that early on in the writing of Nightwoods, Luce and the children were meant to be fairly minor characters, but I kept finding myself coming back to them, wanting to know more about them until they became the heart of the story. Some of my wanting to focus on them was surely influenced by several cases of kids lost in the woods in areas where I’m typically jogging and mountain biking alone at least a hundred days a year. It’s part of my writing process, though I hardly ever think about work while I’m in the woods. But I do keep obsessive count of how many miles a day I go and how many words I write, lots of numbers on 3x5 notecards. All those days watching the micro changes of seasons can’t help but become part of the texture of what I write, and those lost kids, too.
Back when I was a kid, eight or ten, my friends and I lived with a mountain in our backyards. We stayed off it in summer. Too hot and snaky. But in the cool seasons, we roamed freely. We carried bb guns in the fall and rode our sleds down old logging roads in winter. We often got lost. But we knew that downhill was the way out, the way home. When I grew up and went into bigger mountains, you couldn’t always be so sure. I remember being lost in Bolivia. Or let’s say that I grew increasingly uncertain whether I was still on the trail or not. That’s the point where you ought to sit down and drink some water and consult your maps and compass very carefully and calmly. I kept walking. At some point, it became a matter of rigging ropes to swing a heavy pack over a scary white watercourse. I ended up at a dropoff. Down far below, upper reaches of the Amazon basin stretched hazy green into the distance. Downhill did not at all seem like the way home.
You’ll just have to trust me that this has something to do with my new novel, but to go into it much would risk spoilers. I’ll just say that early on in the writing of Nightwoods, Luce and the children were meant to be fairly minor characters, but I kept finding myself coming back to them, wanting to know more about them until they became the heart of the story. Some of my wanting to focus on them was surely influenced by several cases of kids lost in the woods in areas where I’m typically jogging and mountain biking alone at least a hundred days a year. It’s part of my writing process, though I hardly ever think about work while I’m in the woods. But I do keep obsessive count of how many miles a day I go and how many words I write, lots of numbers on 3x5 notecards. All those days watching the micro changes of seasons can’t help but become part of the texture of what I write, and those lost kids, too.
PRAISE:
"...[A] taut narrative of love and suspense, told against a gritty background of bootlegging and violence. The characters are rich and unforgettable, and the prose almost lyrical. This is Charles Frazier at his best. ...Just mention a new novel by the Cold Mountain author, and a line will start forming." —Booklist
"...[T]hink Thunder Road meets Night of the Hunter meets old murder ballads. This is a suspenseful noir nightmare, complete with bootleggers and switchblades." —The Daily Beast
"...[T]hink Thunder Road meets Night of the Hunter meets old murder ballads. This is a suspenseful noir nightmare, complete with bootleggers and switchblades." —The Daily Beast
"A boisterous, confident novel that draws from the epic tradition: It tips its hat to Don Quixote as well as Twain and Melville, and it boldly sets out to capture a broad swatch of America’s story in the mid-nineteenth century." —The Boston Globe on Thirteen Moons
REVIEW
A Most Memorable Novel of Mid 20th Century Appalachia from Charles Frazier
By John Kwok (New York, NY USA)
In his latest novel "Nightwoods", Charles Frazier returns to the same bleak, quiet Appalachian landscape that he introduced readers to in "Cold Mountain". However, unlike his celebrated earlier work of fiction, there is an almost timeless quality in "Nightwoods", a story that could have taken place as easily during the midst of the Civil War or sometime late in the Twentieth Century. Instead Frazier drops subtle hints (e. g. a reference to the film "The Defiant Ones") that it is set in the late 1950s, in a rural Appalachia that is virtually indistinguishable from the one described in "Cold Mountain", rendered vividly in a sparse, often lyrical, prose that will remind readers of Cormac McCarthy's recent work, especially "The Road"; a comparison that is most apt since "Nightwoods" is almost as bleak as McCarthy's rural near future dystopian novel. Frazier offers his readers a most captivating, often poignant, and quite brilliant, portrayal of Luce, the young woman who unexpectedly inherits her sister's troublesome, emotionally scarred, son and daughter. Hers is an epic battle of wits with her sister's husband, Bud - whom she suspects is her sister Lola's killer - as she seeks to protect Lola's young children from their alcoholic, violence-prone father. Her only ally in this quest is the unassuming Stubblefield, who becomes both friend and guardian angel to Luce, her niece and her nephew. Frazier has once again combined his excellent storytelling talent with his superb prose into a winning combination destined to be celebrated by critics and fans alike; without question, one of the finest, and most compelling, works of fiction published this year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment