Ruby River

Rating:
Summary: A little slice of Alabama truck-stop life
Review: Imagine what would happen if Fannie Flagg (the author of ``Fried Green Tomatoes'') had written one of Faulkner's novels, and you'll get a fair idea of the tone of Lynn Pruett's first novel.

The book crackles with fresh imagery, imaginative dialogue, and characters developed far beyond the usual small-town southern stereotypes.

This is a strongly feminist novel, without a word of visible femonist rhetoric. It's about women grabbing hold and taking control of their lives, even if some of the choices they make do not necessarily take them to good ends.

Pruett's male characters are awkward, shambling, but each bears a shred of redemptive grace, even the fire-and-brimestone preacher who gets caught--quite literally--with his pants undone.

Pruett is not afraid to leave loose ends at the end of the book. There is no neat denouement or resolution of some characters' core conflicts. It is as if a second volume ot stories about these same folks is waiting in the wings.

I read this book in a single sitting, and caution future readers that they will be compelled to do likewise, no matter what more compelling tasks lurk. All in all, a great read.

Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable Characters, Sparkling Prose
Review: Wonderful! This is being presented as a "debut novel," but it is supremely accomplished, in both content and style. I read slowly, and put aside as many novels as I finish, maybe more, because sooner or later the author starts slacking off, delivering flat predictable scenes or long stretches of humdrum prose. That never happens here. Lynn Pruett is unfailing good company for 276 pages, and as you make your way through her numerous short chapters, each one offers its own distinct thrill of discovery and insight. The prose is the same way: always graceful, apt, and basically easy, it always has more to offer when you want to pause and savor the full import or the exact tone of what is being said.

Story-wise, what first captures you is the humor of the early chapters, the wonderfully strange mixture of horniness and holiness: that, and of course the human interest of Hattie's quest, as she basically takes on the world in defense of her truck stop and her four girls. Part of what the girls need to be protected from, though, is their own uncontrollable sensuality, with its disastrous tendency to involve them with men twice their age. I don't want to give away too much, but there are enough off-center, ill-advised, oh-no sexual entanglements here to supply a dozen episodes of ER. But whenever you start thinking you have met these people before, on The Jerry Springer Show, you notice again how completely Pruett's writing captures what the tube never can: their humanity, the inner dignity that even the most mistaken and sinning of chracters have in this world.

There are plenty of laughs here, but in the end the story shapes up as a serious quest for redemption, taking us down into the worst places of family hurt and betrayal, then back up again, beautifully, just when we think it can't happen, to forgiveness and reconciliation. Reading for laughs, you end up with much more: a kinder take on the species, and some solid advice on how to turn your life around, should you happen to BE one of those people on The Jerry Springer Show.