Prince Edward : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: coming to terms with the past:: a footnote to shame
Review: Dennis McFarland's Prince Edward takes us back to a time and place where race pervades almost every move, every sound out of every mouth, every thought. 1959 in Prince Edward County, Virginia is a time when freedom is a word, but a forced choice is what surrounds every abstraction.
It is the form of the forced choice that is not a choice (for example the robber's "your money or your life" is not really a choice although it has the form of a choice), which structures the characters' lives--all African-Americans, the boys on the edge of adolescence, women stuck in distressed or not existent marriages. McFarland recreates from fact and imagination a world in which we see souls having to come to terms--having to name--the loss of choice. At the same time, the major characters choose not to name Names, choose to keep knowledge unforgiven, hidden, unsaid, but never undone.
Until, literally, now. It is the story of Benjamin Rome. He tells it, lives it, and sees it. He tells us what could never be said in 1959 during massive resistance, during the days of hatred simply based on race. The tale is a footnote of shame; each member of the Rome family burns in some way while the town of Farmville disintegrates (in all senses of the word). And there are all kinds of shame running throughout the book. And all kinds of ways the truth is subverted, glossed over, or left out.
This bildungsroman is not so much a tale of a pilgrim's progress as it is an education into the ways society educates its young (and, for the African Americans, the way society chooses not to give them a right to be educated).
But I've left the best for last. I've made it seem that the book is a kind of allegory and there's perhaps a bit of that. What is truly great though, are the characters who don't give a damn about the abstract. The beauty of the prose and the details of character make us want to get closer, to sneak a peek at these lives. And reading is a form of spying, and observation is central to this book, the scenes in which we see others seeing several forms of primal scene. We have to think of Lynch's Blue Velvet to understand how many horrors underlie the American Landscape. The more important predecessor to this book is, of course, To Kill A Mockingbird. Lee's masterpiece cannot be outdone but its stark contrasts could stand a bit more humanity. McFarland has done what no one has dared do. He's taken some of the themes of that work and made it more complex, more nuanced, and more real. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in character, story, and the true history of our heritage. I hope schools, especially here in Virginia, will take this book to class. I celebrate the author's courage, talent, and humanity. You will too.

Rating:
Summary: coming to terms with the past:: a footnote to shame
Review: Dennis McFarland's Prince Edward takes us back to a time and place where race pervades almost every move, every sound out of every mouth, every thought. 1959 in Prince Edward County, Virginia is a time when freedom is a word, but a forced choice is what surrounds every abstraction.
It is the form of the forced choice that is not a choice (for example the robber's "your money or your life" is not really a choice although it has the form of a choice), which structures the characters' lives--all African-Americans, the boys on the edge of adolescence, women stuck in distressed or not existent marriages. McFarland recreates from fact and imagination a world in which we see souls having to come to terms--having to name--the loss of choice. At the same time, the major characters choose not to name Names, choose to keep knowledge unforgiven, hidden, unsaid, but never undone.
Until, literally, now. It is the story of Benjamin Rome. He tells it, lives it, and sees it. He tells us what could never be said in 1959 during massive resistance, during the days of hatred simply based on race. The tale is a footnote of shame; each member of the Rome family burns in some way while the town of Farmville disintegrates (in all senses of the word). And there are all kinds of shame running throughout the book. And all kinds of ways the truth is subverted, glossed over, or left out.
This bildungsroman is not so much a tale of a pilgrim's progress as it is an education into the ways society educates its young (and, for the African Americans, the way society chooses not to give them a right to be educated).
But I've left the best for last. I've made it seem that the book is a kind of allegory and there's perhaps a bit of that. What is truly great though, are the characters who don't give a damn about the abstract. The beauty of the prose and the details of character make us want to get closer, to sneak a peek at these lives. And reading is a form of spying, and observation is central to this book, the scenes in which we see others seeing several forms of primal scene. We have to think of Lynch's Blue Velvet to understand how many horrors underlie the American Landscape. The more important predecessor to this book is, of course, To Kill A Mockingbird. Lee's masterpiece cannot be outdone but its stark contrasts could stand a bit more humanity. McFarland has done what no one has dared do. He's taken some of the themes of that work and made it more complex, more nuanced, and more real. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in character, story, and the true history of our heritage. I hope schools, especially here in Virginia, will take this book to class. I celebrate the author's courage, talent, and humanity. You will too.

Rating:
Summary: Why was this book written?
Review: I am an avid reader and certainly appreciate good fiction. Having received my undergraduate degree from Longwood College (now Longwood University) in 1958 and having extended family members who were, or are now,natives of Prince Edward County, I feel somewhat knowledgable about the situation involving the school closings etc in that area. I did my student teaching at Farmville High School in the spring of '58 and the schools closed shortly thereafter. I bought this book with the idea of having a concise record of the activities of that time and at the same time having a good read about living in Prince Edward Co. It seems that Mr. McFarland could not decide whether to write about integration, chicken farming, a mean old man, a black grandma talking in the woods, or any number of other loosely hung ideas. The only saving grace was the friendship between the two 10-year old boys. There is no continuity between chapters or ideas--just a hodge-podge of interactions between the members of a slightly dysfunctional white family and the few black people with whom they come in contanct.

Rating:
Summary: Step back to 1959 in rural Virginia
Review: I picked this book from the library's new fiction shelf on a whim, and was very pleasantly surprised. McFarland does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the story - I felt like I had stepped back to 1959 and was experiencing the racial tensions of that time.

The characterization is strong, although I finished the book wanting to understand more about the father and the grandfather and all the dynamics in this troubled family. In fact, a sequel with these characters would be a treat - McFarland has by no means plumbed their depths.

I had never heard of the shameful school system closings that went on in the early '60s, as described here. The author's afterward explaining that those events and the instigators he used in the book were actual people added punch to an already powerful story.

Rating:
Summary: likable, fast-paced, good voice, sharp detail
Review: Price Edward enters into familiar territory with the coming-of-age in the racist South novel, set in this case in Prince Edward county after they have decided to close their public schools and open private ones rather than integrate. Here the narrator is 10-yr-old Benjamin Rome, whose family include (take a breath): a pregnant, married-to-absent-husband-and-not-in-love older sister; a thieving, rakishly charming, on-the-surface-racist-but-somewhat-more-complex-underneath older brother; a distant, harsh segregationist father and more-softly distant sorrowful mother (neither of whom is happy in marriage); and finally, Big Daddy Cary-his grandfather, the sternly crazy or crazily stern patriarch of the family who also happens to be a child molester. Not family but deeply in the mix as well are the Black family who live in the Cary's tenant house: Ben's childhood friend Burghardt who faces the prospect of no school, Burghardt's dad Julian who works for Ben's father, and Burghardt's grandmother, sorrow and dignity personified.
McFarland is working within a well-known genre here, which causes some difficulties, a genre which unfortunately for others has a true classic within it (To Kill a Mockingbird). This is not as moving or as deeply felt as Mockingbird, but of course that could be said about 99 percent of the books out there. And Prince Edward has its major differences with Lee's book. In Mockingbird, Scout's family fights the good fight whereas Ben is surrounded by a family who is all over the map: his father and grandfather are segregationists, actively so. His brother seems to be on the surface, but, without giving details, is shown to be a much more complex read than that. His mother seems just out of it, happily oblivious, while his older sister rages in frustration, declaring at one point that their racist actions (or tolerance of such) literally is making her physically sick. On the other side, Burghardt is just coming of an age to understand how raw the feelings of most whites toward him are (one of the more moving scenes is when he finally understands this), Julian is of the "take what you have and don't complain to make things worse" mode, and Granny is a model of dignity and fortitude and intelligence. Within that mix, Benjamin finds it hard to find his moorings, and in fact, one of the nice touches of the novel is that he never fully does, at least not at that age, to the dismay of his older narrating self.
The characters are mostly sharply drawn as one would expect from McFarland, descriptions are all vividly detailed with wonderful small touches, and people act as people act, rather than act to serve the purpose of plot or theme. A problem is that working in such a familiar genre means some of the characters are just that, a bit too familiar: the persistently dignified older Black woman, the fawning Black man, the crazy old patriarch, etc. I'm not sure McFarland completely solves this problem.
The subplot with Big Daddy Cary, Ben's grandfather, makes for a nice parallel story to the larger issues, but at times seems a bit too pat for that purpose. It feels both utterly believable and natural and also a bit contrived. His sister's story with regard to her husband and her pregnancy on the other hand seems to work better, though some may find it overkill.
The book is well-paced, a quick read, with some moving scenes, a nice complexity of character and situation, and an ending that is, if not fully resolved or happy, more true to life. And the voice is consistently spot on throughout. If McFarland doesn't transcend the genre, he does make good use of it, turning it to his own purposes for the most part. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: a fast paced novel
Review: This novel kept me wondering what was going to happen next. Was mean Daddy Cary going to get what was coming to him? Was Lainie going to continue dreaming of getting away? I loved Granny Mays, I loved her talk in the woods.
this is an excellent book, partially based on fact.