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Summary: I Love to read Devoto!
Review: After being captivated by My Last Days As Roy Rogers and passing it along to a chain of avid readers hungry for good fiction, I was thrilled to see another offering by Pat Cunningham Devoto. When I find an author who knows how to weave narrative and dialogue expertly so that I am swept into the story, I clamor for more. I devoured this book within 2 days and sent it on it's way down the reader chain of freinds.
Treat yourself and escape into Out of the Night That Covers Me.
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Summary: A "Southern" novel that is universal
Review: An extraordinary exploration of racial attitudes, bravery, universal truths, and a boy's emotional journey. I know that sounds like pretty heavy stuff but that is just the point, this is a book about nothing less than the formation and developement of a young boy's moral character. However, the story is told in such a mesmerizing and atmospheric way you don't feel weighed down as if you are reading a morality play. This book is like all great stories, you enjoy the read so much that you don't realize all the lessons you have learned for several days afterwards. Only then do all the ideas and ironies and contradictions and affirmations and joys and sadness and failures and victories come bubbling forth into your consciousness. This book is transforming for the characters within the book and the reader without.
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Summary: Fascinating characters, emotional history
Review: Characters that I care about and insight into people and into a period of history. That is how I judge a good novel and this book rates very high on all counts. Beginning with the boy John who grabs our hearts on the first page, we then get to know a world of conflicted very human adults of both races who must deal with life in the highly restrictive 1950's Alabama Black Belt. If you cannot imagine what life in a small Alabama town would have been like or what life in a black community in the south Alabama swamps was, here is your chance in a highly readable, personal story. Readers of the author's first book, My Last Days as Roy Rogers, will find the author has grown into even more clear character development and strong story line in her second novel. You will be sorry to turn the last page.
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Summary: Poetic Justice
Review: How fitting that the title for Devoto's book was lifted from "Invictus". The poem's testament to self determination is riterated here by characters John and Tuway as each struggles to overcome circumstances that threaten to hurl their worlds out of control. It is a read that is simulaneously entertaining, inspiring, and evocative of the particular sights and sounds of the region in the 1950's- a time just before political and cultural turmoil changed the South and a nation forever. Highly recommended for middle and secondary schools' reading lists.
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Summary: I adored this book!
Review: I could not put this one down. I loved watching the main character, John, evolve into something that he would never have become but for the events beautifully detailed in this story. This book stayed with me for days after I completed it. I am recommending "Out of the Night" as an excellent read for young and old because it teaches us that our trials often open the door to incredible journeys which lead us to wonderful places we would never dream possible.
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Summary: Why Wasn't This Book A National Best Sellor?
Review: I have read many best selling and award winning novels and found them wanting. One wonders sometimes - "Why did this book get an award." My question about OUT OF THE NIGHT.... is "Why didn't it get an award?" As a student of the South, this book gives an interesting look at the South of the 1950's and the changing social norms. Change is a major theme in the book and it would be interesting to discuss with a book club or with students the examples of change. The characters are well developed, although I thought some of the black characters were not as well developed. It would be interesting to do a comparison of Aunt Nelda and Mrs. Vance. Although they appear much different, they have much in common. And likewise between John and Little Luther. The book is magical and a wonderful read and would be excellent for a book club. It could give rise to great discussions and the edition I have has questions included. Don't start it unless you have time to read the whole thing. For those who liked TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD it's a must read.
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Summary: Why Wasn't This Book A National Best Sellor?
Review: I have read many best selling and award winning novels and found them wanting. One wonders sometimes - "Why did this book get an award." My question about OUT OF THE NIGHT.... is "Why didn't it get an award?" As a student of the South, this book gives an interesting look at the South of the 1950's and the changing social norms. Change is a major theme in the book and it would be interesting to discuss with a book club or with students the examples of change. The characters are well developed, although I thought some of the black characters were not as well developed. It would be interesting to do a comparison of Aunt Nelda and Mrs. Vance. Although they appear much different, they have much in common. And likewise between John and Little Luther. The book is magical and a wonderful read and would be excellent for a book club. It could give rise to great discussions and the edition I have has questions included. Don't start it unless you have time to read the whole thing. For those who liked TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD it's a must read.
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Summary: Another wonderful read by Pat Cunningham Devoto
Review: I rarely write a review, though I read many. The review that takes the book almost page by page is not a helpful review to me. I would rather see that the reader was totally captivated by the book, the words, the story. "Out of the Night That Covers Me" is such a book. Ms Devoto's first book "My Last Days as Roy Rogers" was the same. A delicious read.
The name put me off and I still do not understand the title in relationship to the book and titles are important. But when I saw it was the same author I knew I wanted it.
Stories of the south are interesting because of the different lifestyles that southern's seem to have had (or so it seems to me) It is a thought provoker. I personally like a book that has substance that stays with me, one that makes me think not only of the past but of the future.
When I have a book that I don't want to end, I know I have read a book that I would recommend. This one is that and then some!
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Summary: A poignant drama
Review: In 1950s Bainbridge, Alabama, eight-year-old John McMillan suffers the devastating loss of his beloved mother when she suddenly dies. Some might have considered John a mama's boy because of how close he was to her, especially since his father was already dead. John's Aunt Nelda brings him to her home in Lower Peach Tree in Alabama's Black Belt. However, John is shocked by the living conditions where there is no indoor plumbing or electricity. Even worse is the treatment John receives from Uncle Luther, who makes him slave outdoors all day, sells his last connections to his mom, and simply beats him at any moment. John meets Judge Vance, president of the Planters and Merchants Bank Lower Peach Tree, who makes reasonable loans to the local "colored" community. His actions leave white landowners outraged. While working assorted jobs for the Judge, John discovers that "the coloreds" are moving in large numbers to the northern cities, especially Chicago. John wonders how the dirt poor colored are paying their way, but believes somehow that Tuway, the Judge's right-hand man, is accomplishing the impossible feat. OUT OF THE NIGHT COVERS ME is an insightful, well-written coming of age novel that brings to life 1950s rural Alabama just before the Civil Rights push. John is an interesting character who struggles along. The support cast provide a vivid look at a bygone era, though Pat Cunningham Devoto overkills the historical elements. Still this tale and its predecessor (MY LAST DAYS AS ROY ROGERS) will provide much enjoyment to those readers who relish Southern tales like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Harriet Klausner
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Summary: powerful, moving harbinger of civil rights movement
Review: In her stirring debut novel, "My Last Days as Roy Rogers," Pat Cunningham Devoto gave evidence that she was on the verge of giving voice to an extremely compelling period in our national history, the decade immediately following the end of World War II. Devoto's focus on the onset of the civil rights movement, as witnessed through the lives of poor, rural Southerners, Black and white, described the turmoil of racial injustice, class friction and personal autonomy in a compelling narrative voice. Her second novel, "Out of the Night that Covers Me" is an exceptional work, one written with rare compassion, special insight into the eternal struggle for personal integrity, and convincing accuracy about the impact of racism on the lives of members of an isolated rural Southern community. The novel has been favorably compared to "To Kill a Mockingbird" and deserves that praise. Spindly John McMillan, whose secure, urbane life with his widowed mohter abruptly ends with her premature death, emerges as one of the most beloved youthful protagonists of Southern literature. Suffused with a quiet suffering, he comes to live with his repressed and avaricious Aunt Nelda and her brutally vicious husband, Luther. Devoto spares little detail as she describes John's descent into the hellishly collapsed environment of his new sharecropping home. Ignorant, bound by poverty and tradition, and hopeless, the Spraig family is the antithesis of what he has envisioned for his life. That sudden reversal of fortune, the agonizing realization that brutality and stunted aspirations will be his lot in life create an enormous empathy for the protagnoist. Although brilliant characterizations abound in "Out of the Night," the novel gains its power from a narrative that grabs the reader and refuses to relinquish its grasp until the inexorable and terrifying conclusion permits the reader to understand the path John will lead in his adult life. John's quest for understanding -- his life, his new family, his relationship with African-Americans -- and his absolute strength in confronting pain, humiliation and injustice receive comprehensive scrutiny. Readers will also be impressed by the author's subtle use of symbolism. Each of the most admirable characters in "Out of the Night" are physically or emotionally flawed; yet it is the very disfiguration which presentes each character with unique beauty and dignity. The Judge, a solitary compassionate white man whose vision of racial degradation forces him to treat African-Americans with financial dignity in his role as a bank chairman, is blind. Tuway, an African-American whose unique skin coloration has led to his ability to bridge disparate worlds, overcomes ostracism to emerge as a genuine leader. John, whose skin literally falls off his body after his grisly initiation into the life of a sharecropper, toughens his body but opens his soul to the possibility (and only a possibility) of racial amity. The reputation of Pat Cunningham Devoto will grow as she crafts more novels which treat the crucial issues of racial justice and personal self-determination. "Out of the Night that Covers Me" should become one of our national literary staples, a book which, when read by families or shared in classrooms, will become one of those shared experiences which illuminate and educate.
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