The Runaway (Nova Audio Books)

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Summary: Terry Kay's bag of tricks
Review: 50 years after the period during which they are portrayed to have occurred, Terry Kay has produced a wholly entertaining novel concerning the lives and times of peoples in the "deep South", those who had participated in WWII and how this apparently affected the way they considered their black neighbours afterwards.

I would have considered "The Runaway" to be just like countless other novels, a way of excusing past acts which today would be considered inexcusable and reprehensible. Except that it started my mind wondering about what people today still have problems getting to terms with. Tolerance, or the lack of, still affects the way most people consider their fellows. Today, the differences tend to be mainly represented by religious beliefs or sexual preferences. We haven't yet learned to "Live And Let Live" as far as this is possible.

So if you read "The Runaway" which I whole-heartedly recommend, just spare a thought for all those others whose lives may be unbearable today because of "intolerance".

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Summary: This book is written beautifully.
Review: I have only read half the book, but the writing style and the author's description of the characters and the land are absolutely wonderful. I can conjure up every situation in the story and the humor with which this story is written is very subtle, but very satisfying. This book is exactly what I love reading. I hope I can find many more books by Terry Kay!

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Summary: A great read - couldn't put it down!
Review: I loved this book - it has it all: great story, mystery, atmosphere, well developed characters. I felt I was "there" as I was reading it. Terry Kay is a master at evoking feeling and imagery without being wordy. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: ABSOLUTE PERFECTION
Review: Oh, how I adore good Southern writing, and oh, how "The Runaway," meets all my critera for achieving that accolade. Set in rural Georgia in the 1940's, the tale is rich with eccentric characters who "guaren-damn-tee" to provoke empassioned feelings. The dialogue is sharp. The plot trenchant. Humor, racial tension, and suspense drive this story along like a raft on a ever-winding river. Each twist and turn swirls the story into unexpected surprises, and rafts the reader over waterfalls of human frailities and outlandish behaviors.

Terry Kay style is a blend of Mark Twain and William Faulkner; his writing is that clever, that diverse, that colorful. I applaud his masterful abilities, and encourage all lovers of southern fiction to pick up this vivid, delightful, insightful page turning tale. This is most definitely a MUST READ!!

Rating:
Summary: ABSOLUTE PERFECTION
Review: Oh, how I adore good Southern writing, and oh, how "The Runaway," meets all my critera for achieving that accolade. Set in rural Georgia in the 1940's, the tale is rich with eccentric characters who "guaren-damn-tee" to provoke empassioned feelings. The dialogue is sharp. The plot trenchant. Humor, racial tension, and suspense drive this story along like a raft on a ever-winding river. Each twist and turn swirls the story into unexpected surprises, and rafts the reader over waterfalls of human frailities and outlandish behaviors.

Terry Kay style is a blend of Mark Twain and William Faulkner; his writing is that clever, that diverse, that colorful. I applaud his masterful abilities, and encourage all lovers of southern fiction to pick up this vivid, delightful, insightful page turning tale. This is most definitely a MUST READ!!

Rating:
Summary: A compelling story, beautifully penned by a Master of Words.
Review: Rarely have I enjoyed a book as much! The characters call you to read "one more page." I grew up with so many of these people, individuals who have runaway and those who have never left. Some of us are struggling somewhere in between a great love of place and a repulsion of what we have done to our children and ourselves. I would love to buy the movie rights to this book before someone changes a single scene!

Rating:
Summary: Terry Kay's bag of tricks
Review: Terry Kay has had a successful career as a purveyor of popular "Southern" fiction. But those of you who love his novels, please, there are better writers out there. Try some of them. Lee Smith, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Doris Betts....and so on. The author of this book uses his self-described "bag of tricks" to manipulate the reader. Go elsewhere for your reading pleasure.

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Summary: Evokes a difficult time and place
Review: To really appreciate Terry Kay's "The Runaway" you need to have lived in that time and place -- Georgia, 1949. I did, and I know that Kay has painted it perfectly. I knew those people, remember them well. Before reading the book, I'd read a generally positive review in an Atlanta newspaper, but one that said the book was "overpopulated with stereotypes." What I found was a true portrait of people and place. Like all Southern towns of that period, conformity was enforced at least by social code, if not by law; it would be hard to write a truthful story and not have characters who seem stereotyped. It was a stereotypical period when change required daring, and the soldiers returning from war came home to fill the bill. They'd taken on a sense of purpose: defending human liberty and dignity. Terry Kay tells us that these are the forgotten heroes, the Southern ex-soldiers who stood up and said to their neighbors, straighten up and play right. They faced as much danger, if not more, than when they'd faced the German Nazis, just by saying, "Why don't you leave him alone? What did he do to you?" I said that to three white men one night, when they were picking on a young black man, and I barely escaped with my life. Of course, that was in 1963, and it was a far more dangerous thing to do in 1949, Kay's scenario in The Runaway. It was men like Sheriff Frank Rucker who led the way, who showed us how to speak up for another man's dignity, even when it wasn't safe. Kay's people may be fictional, but they had counterparts in real life. Stereotypes? Hardly.

Of course, Terry Kay's writing is moving, nearly ethereal in places, as usual. I was also impressed with how many phrases he was able to use from the dialect of the time: "naked as a jaybird," "a fart in a windstorm." He's a master. So we can forgive him the line on page 381: "Getting out of his car, Hugh walked over to Fuller." Even the greats are allowed one of those now and then.