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La Benévola (2013)

by Laird Hunt(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Blackie Books

review 1: Laird Hunt has shown a fondness for fictional experiment & he has something of an expat’s background — lots of time abroad & fluency in French — but for his breakthrough as a novelist he’s come to rock-ribbed Americana. Indeed, he’s gone back in time, reimagining the Civil War as a deeply dysfunctional, mixed-race Border State household. That War & its core challenge, to recreate the nation without slavery, looms over the masterful KIND ONE, yet you’ll find no armies, no battlefield. Battles here take place in the bedroom, the kitchen, & especially in head & heart. Sentences go for marvelous off-kilter physicality, distracting us with details that wink or smear, distracting in the best sense, until out of some unexpected corner we get, say, the “gristle” o... moref a knife plunging into flesh & bone. I dare any reader to take a careless drink of water after reading the prologue, the story of an accident at a well. Following that trauma, the primary narrator Ginny comes first as welcome relief; a teenager through much of the drama, her opening reminiscences glimmer w/ wit & joy. But then there’s Ginny’s Svengali, her seducer & husband Linus Lancaster. The catalysts of the novel’s mounting shocks, though, may be the slave girls Cleome & Zinnia, working Lancaster’s false “paradise” of a pig farm. On this Kentucky farm the developing tensions have a terrible familiarity. We know all too well Ginny’s breakdown, rooted in disappointment & intimidation, & recognize too how she festers to the point of taking out her pain on those less powerful: on the slaves. Cleome & Zinnia work as personalities, too, though; they’re not mere punching bags. The later, most intense turns of the plot hinge on whether either of these girls — former slaves all of a sudden, & by means of a mystery that hangs over most of the rest of the book — whether either will prove the “kind one.” As for Linus, by comparison, he can come off as oversimple, either browbeating someone or, with whip in hand, delivering the actual thing. The master has his troubles, though, his failures; we can whiff the same curdled hopes in him as in Ginny. Besides, what’s wrong with a larger-than-life villain? What’s wrong with an unforgettable scene of whipping an innocent young man to death? The victim in that case is farm’s lone male slave, a soft-smiling type whose perverse turns on Uncle Remus stories offer respite to the women & the reader alike. So too, this stunning reinvention of the historical novel can work like a balm on all the suffering it shows. One of the final narrators is a black freedman named Prosper, & after the war he comes back down to what used to be Dixie & so achieves a moving connection across the lost & the dead, maybe enough to begin the repairs on this house torn asunder.
review 2: It takes a while to get used to the style of the narrative, but I enjoyed the unfolding stories of each character. I found myself wishing for more backstory for some, for happier endings for others. I don't try to guess at twists or outcomes, so I was pleasantly surprised by some of the reveals in the story, even the unpleasant ones. Great visuals. The internal dialogue was almost more compelling and enjoyable than the external action. less

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