Salvage the Bones
Ratings52
Average rating3.8
Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.
As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family--motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce--pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.
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3 primary books4 released books#2 in Bois Sauvage
Bois Sauvage is a 4-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2006 with contributions by Jesmyn Ward.
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The plot is actually pretty slight–a motherless family with a variety of challenges (girl with boy problems, boy raising fighting pit bull with puppies, boy trying to win a scholarship to basketball camp, etc.) hunkers down in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, which then arrives. The hurricane scene is brilliant–I would have happily read more of that.
There are also echoes–made quite evident because the girl is reading mythology–of Medea's story. But it isn't really clear to me what the point of that might be. Is the girl planning to kill her child in revenge for the boy's betrayal?
Difficult reading, and I mean that along many dimensions. The story itself is painful, a train wreck from first to last page: feral children, poor decision-making skills, compounded by terrible luck, tied together by a fierce protective love... all they have is each other. There is suffering and cruelty, also compassion and tenderness, and it isn't always obvious which is which.
Difficult—and I dislike myself for saying this—stylistically too. The writing has a choppiness to it that didn't work for me, similar to the way Cormac McCarthy's writing grates on me. The fault is entirely mine but it saddens me: I had been hoping to enjoy this book much more, but am not the kind of person who can.
Difficult, finally, because the story is so real; because I feel so powerless against this kind of suffering.
I think this is just the kind of thing where I can appreciate abstractly the quality of writing while acknowledging that it's not really my cup of tea.
