Good Baby, A

Rating:
Summary: Read the back of a shampoo bottle instead.
Review: I'll admit that this was the first Leon Rooke novel I've read...and it will be the last. The only thing that kept me from chucking it into the nearest trash receptacle after the first few chapters was my tenacity and my quixotic belief that it just HAD to get better the more I read. Sadly, I was wrong. Upon finishing the last page, I stared into space, aghast that this book had actually been published. On a final note, I bought this novel at a used book store for $1. I was swindled.

Rating:
Summary: Language barrier
Review: It begins with Truman, driving off with his pregnant girl friend whom he evidently intends to murder. Then we meet Toker, who has been a hermit since his mother murdered his sister. He finds the murdered girl's newborn baby and wanders around looking for a home for it. He meets up with Sarah, whose father murdered her brother, and they are both stalked by Truman, who is plagued by memories of his awful childhood, by religious visions, and by toothache, which he copes with by pulling out his own teeth. It seems to be set in hill country in the American south but the location and date are vague.
At first I was put off by the language. It's written in some kind of dialect that is phonetically spelt but also contains many high falutin' words so that you have sentences like "If she's mine then that freshface won't a dog-lap away from my leavins" and words like "theodicy" and "fuliginous." After a while I got the hang of the language and then it was a compelling and moving story.
The least convincing character was the baby. Rooke has this newborn child laughing, gurgling, and lifting its head and crawling around.The jacket copy says Rooke has a son, but maybe he's forgotten a few things about new babies.
I bought this after having read the author's marvellous short story (called "How to Write a Short Story") in the Antioch Review. That was written in plain English. I'll try to get more of his short fiction. Everything looks out of print according to Amazon.