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Jill McCroskey Coupe

Teoksen True Stories at the Smoky View: A Novel tekijä

2 teosta 16 jäsentä 2 arvostelua

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Friendship is a curious thing. It can last a season or a lifetime or any stretch of time in between. It can be buffeted by winds that the friends don't even notice or it can be caught up in a storm that they can hardly ignore. Perhaps this is no more true than inside an interracial friendship during the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Some friendships can survive outside forces while others will not. Jill McCroskey Coupe has written a beautiful paean to a lifelong friendship that starts in innocence, suffers, and is refound again despite the forces that try so hard to break it in her novel, Beginning with Cannonballs.

It's the 1950s and babies Gail and Hanna share a crib, the closest of friends from the beginning. Hanna's mother Sophie is Gail's family's maid. Gail is white and Hanna is black. As young girls, they don't see any complication in this fact, only questioning the world on rare occasions, but their mothers certainly foresee problems, especially as the girls grow older. They remain devoted friends despite the pressures beyond them until Hanna moves to Philadelphia with her mother and the girls lose touch thanks to the interference of Gail's mother Bessie. But Gail never forgets her first and best friend, reaching out and trying to rekindle their once close relationship without understanding all of the forces at work in and against Hanna. Their differences magnified, and their lives so very different, these two women come back together tentatively, testing the power and forgiveness of friendship.

Coupe takes that most precious friendship of a childhood, that touchstone, and complicates it with race and distance and family disapproval. She delicately describes a friendship that has no choice but to be impacted by the outside world, a friendship that would once have been quietly let go forever but that is too much a friendship of the heart, too valuable and important, to let fade away. There are short jumps in time between the chapters, allowing Gail and Hanna to grow and change, to be molded both by national and personal events in the intervening time, and the story itself spans from the 50s to the 90s. Coupe has done a great job capturing the innocence of the young girls, the dawning of understanding and push back in the young women, and the acceptance and forthrightness (with a touch of rebellion) in the middle-aged women. The writing is accessible and warm and the characters are fully fleshed out and real. This book is a kaleidoscope of snapshots in a specific time of a real and beautiful friendship with all of the attendant ups and downs, hurts and joys, of any long standing relationship between two people still adapting and growing and learning, in all of their flawed, human glory.
… (lisätietoja)
½
 
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whitreidtan | Oct 6, 2020 |
I have to admit that in reading True Stories at the Smoky View I found a story I was not expecting from the synopsis. I still am not quite sure how I feel about the book. It most assuredly kept me reading but it was more from a desire to understand rather than an overwhelming need to get to the end. Now I am the first person to admit that I tend to be a very literal reader and while this is not the most literary of novels it is also not completely straightforward.

So, where am I? Was it a good book? Yes. Do I think that I might need a second read – maybe. Will I have time to read it again – no way. I’ll keep it and perhaps some time in the future when I’m no longer reviewing books. So on with my review…

Vrai heads to her childhood home for the funeral of a man she considered a friend even though he thought that she had betrayed him. She wanted to bring his belongings and his dog to his mother for some sort of closure. While there she encounters old friends and old lovers and ends up with the child of her best friend. A friend who had been murdered a long time ago. This young man, Jonathan is living with another friend but he is not exactly comfortable or totally welcome in the home and he wants to be somewhere else. Somewhere where he can talk about his parents.

The two of them come together in an unlikely way to forge a very unusual relationship. It also leads Vrai on a journey to a life she didn’t know she could have. But it’s not going to be an easy or straight road to the end point.

I do like a book that makes me think and this book certainly did that. The characters are all distinct and very well drawn. The story is unique and that too, was welcome as I continue along this year reading books outside of my comfort zone.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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BooksCooksLooks | Apr 15, 2016 |

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Tilastot

Teokset
2
Jäseniä
16
Suosituimmuussija
#679,947
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.7
Kirja-arvosteluja
2
ISBN:t
4