And here I was getting excited about Tear Down The Mountain: An Appalachian Love Story, when I read this:
She'd dislodged more than teeth; Sid's determination drained away when the crockery landed in his pie hole. Or maybe he sensed the difference in these tears and those that fell at Janet's time of the month or when her lotto ticket struck out, and felt sorry for her. Whatever the reason, he comforted her, though he blotted his lips in her hair while he massaged her spine, but she couldn't really hold that against him. His long fingers touched each vertebra as though he were tuning her, high notes to low, except for where the missing finger should have hit. As reckless with a chopsaw as he was with words.When he ran out of keys he picked her up by the cheeks and snugged her into him and carried her to the bedroom. Her heel hit the dryer's doorhandle as he wedged her back the narrow hall, and it thunked onto the swelled particleboard floor like someone had dropped a tangerine, and she wished she had a tangerine. The dryer was broke too, along with her last flowerpot and Sid's straight pretty teeth, and she'd have to go to the laundromat. She didn't have a thing fit to carry clothes in, and she wasn't going to walk along the road carrying Sid's undershorts.
Then they made love. Sweet love, where she nibbled the ruptured lips and felt the broken tooth stubs with her tongue and sampled his blood as if he were a honeysuckle and she a bee, and fun love, where the trailer rocked until she heard Sidemore's chain rattle out from underneath the bedroom. He'd sit outside slumped and dejected until they settled down, then he'd rattle back in.
Maybe they shouldn't post excerpts.
Posted by Ben Brumfield at February 8, 2007 12:49 PMOMG... you just can't do this. Following the link, I read reviews like this one:
"Roger Alan Skipper...peels away the stereotypes about Appalachia so we can see the real struggles of people fighting [for the land, but really, just people fighting]" I don't know who reviewer Erik Reece is, but I'll never read his Lost Mountain.
And in case you think Ben's excerpt is special... "Janet lammed Sid in the mouth with a flowerpot, and then she bawled hard little tears that sprinkled her bare feet like it was raining BBs. " Ugh.
I'm wondering if this is some wierd violent literature cousin of snuff films or S&M writing?
Posted by: Sara Brumfield at February 8, 2007 01:42 PMYep -- no stereotypes here:
"Set up," he said. "You can't be beating on me. It's got to halt." She obeyed, and he hit her in the side of the head, careful as always that his fist landed above the hairline where it wouldn't screw up the week with paperwork if some busybody happened to notice. Her cheeks flapped and a harl of snot strung from her nose, unraveling from inside her head, and then it slipped loose and was gone, and she wondered if she'd made loops and fancy twirls like the bulls on Professional Bull Riding did, and knew that she'd forgot to try. That's what fascinated her, that snot, back when they had a TV. Not whether the bullrider was laying on the spurs with his outside leg, or if his free hand touched, or if the eight-second clock run out before he plowed into the manure and got to throw a fifty-dollar hat away if the bull hadn't stepped on it until it wouldn't fly, and after you seen his bare head maybe the hat would fit better if the bull did step on it. Janet watched those shiny ropes of snot that curlicued from the bull, and she imagined the bull watching them too, crosseyed and artistic, moving his head loose and casual but just so, and the man on his back was there to encourage him and give him cause to do his best. Bodacious had been her favorite. He'd jump higher than a man's head standing up, and then write longhand in snot all the way down. Like Chinese, top to bottom instead of left to right. But Bodacious was hard on the help, and they laid him off.
I confess that I like the phrase "harl of snot". But I think I lost part of my soul when the author has Janet riff in word-of-the-day vocabulary. Or on Jane Goodall.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at February 8, 2007 01:59 PM