"In The Fall": the games generations play!
Written: Apr 01 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: A well written lengthy family history.
Good complex story construction.
Cons: Has opportunity to provide more comment on the effects of racism on lives.
The Bottom Line:
A hearty diverse novel of a family developing through three generations.
Well written and stimulating, In The Fall makes an impressive debut from author, Jeffrey Lent.
|
|
|
| cr01's Full Review: Jeffrey Lent - In the Fall |
"In The Fall" is one of those books with so much promise. It is a well written and intellegent history of a family - stretching from the era of the American Civil War to the edge of the Great Depression - three almost separate tales of three generations of an American family, but with each generation never quite managing to shake off the ghosts of their forebears or their youthful, thoughless actions.
If you like epic saga's of love and sucess, hate, revenge and bitter failure then this really could be the book for you. I did find "In The Fall", to be engaging, daring, and suprising, but in parts the book also contains some depressingly predictable twists and lost opportunities.
ACT ONE - LOVE ME TENDER!
The basic premise of the first part of the story is encouraging from the start. Northern country boy, Norman Pelham leaves his rustic farming existence, and reclusive and private parents, to fight in the American Civil War.
Towards the end of the war, Norman is injured, discovered and tended by a young, tall, mysterious and well... rather sexy young woman, Leah.
Leah, as well as being a pretty good administrator of first aid, is a runaway black slave. Shortly after their meeting, the Civil War ends, and Norman and Leah marry, and return to his family farm, and (by now) widowed mother.
This story line provides excellent oportunity for author Jeffrey Lent, to explore the issues that a mixed race marrage may have stirred in nineteenth century rural America, but apart from a few muted grumblings from Norman's mother, who decamps to the local town in a huff (in an episode which speaks more for the inequality of male supremacy and inheritance, than for the issues of inter-racial relationships), the newly-wed Pelhams opt for a life of near seclusion.
Leah experiences mild suspicion from the townfolk, but their respect for her as the wife of a comparatively wealthy land owner, outweighs this, during her rare forays into external human contact.
Although this approach is somewhat disapointing, it could be a typical reaction to the situation by the shy and retiring couple. Lent redeemes himself with the style of his writing - his Norman and Leah are described in a strong silent and proud prose - they even make love, miscarry, and have babies in an unassuming but silent and proud manner, which really give the reader a strong sense of the couple's personality.
Of course, Leah has some skeletons in her past as a runaway slave, and eventually travels back to her roots in Carolina, where her discoveries are of no comfort...
ACT TWO - LOVE ME TWO TIMES, GIRL!
Son Jamie, is as Chalk to Cheese to his old ma and pa. Age nineteen in the early twentieth century, Jamie leaves his home in the hills behind, for the cities bright lights in search of wine, women and song.
Jeffrey Lent artfully changes the style of his writing to reflect the character of the next generation of Pelhams. Jamie's lovemaking is far more fraught and earthy, his methods for earning an income far more brutal and base.
A symbol of the cutting thrusting life Jamie leads is through his preferred choice of transport - Jamie loves the nostelgic smell of horses, but zips about in the latest motorised vehicle, as impractable as they may be on the boggy, wet, muddy northern roads.
He soon meets up with a love to consume him - a nightclub singer cum hussler named Joey. Joey is an insecure woman, having been brought up by a prostitute mother, and Jamies lifestyle doesn't instill faith into their relationship.
After an awkward event, which results in the couple fleeing for their lives, they settle in a new town, and life eventually moves to something resembling routine - unorthodox perhaps, but definately routine.
This section of the book contains far more vibrancy, energy and life than the first section of the book, which makes you realise the skill of the author in creating these diverse personalities - Jamie would be stiffled in the straight laced home of his traditional father.
Perhaps the most telling part of the book is where Jamie suddenly realises that for all his modern hussling, he has become part of an outmoded and redundent older generation - his business rivals have taken a new leaner approach which Jamie neither understands or approves of.
ACT THREE: LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG!
Jamie's son, Foster is sixteen, when he sets off to his grandfathers family farm, with his two beloved dogs.
Jamie always claimed his family were dead, so when Foster discovered he had two living aunts, and a recently deceased grandfather, he simply had to discover his roots. This journey was always going to be a suprise, but he was unprepared to discover his two aunts were black.
As they put it, "Jamie could always pass (for white)". The two black spinster sisters remained on the farm, families all around were white. Jamie was ashamed of his black family, and tried to carve a new life for himself out of the locality.
Foster is a mature young man, and takes this news in his stride. However, when he discovers his grandmother, Leah's slave roots, he is fasinated, and resolves to discover what happened during her own "voyage of discovery", in Carolina 35 years earlier.
While in Carolina, he finds some disturbing answers, and also discovers that the relationships between slaves and white owners, were not simply business, but were as complex and interwined as any human relations can be. Lent focuses very well on the attitudes of black and white people who lived through the civil war, and the social upheavel that succeeded it.
TO CLOSE
"In The Fall", is a fasinating study of symmetry repeating through the generations, as relentlessly as the cycle of seasons.
Each generation finds love in adversity, makes a discovery about the past which alters their perception of the world, and each in their own way tries to escape from their heritage.
"In The Fall" is intellegent and stimulating, covering a lot of ground in its closely typeset 565 pages. It induces thought provoking images of historic struggles and every day lives. Perhaps its flaw lies in the symmetry of the tales from each of the generations which lends a depressing inevitability to the proceedings. Perhaps it simply charts life a little too well...
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
cr01
|
 in Hotels & Travel |
 in Books |
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Chris
Location: Yorkshire, England
Reviews written: 414
Trusted by: 366 members
About Me:
In Venice until Monday :o)
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.