Sap Rising - Hardcover

Lincoln, Christine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375421408 ISBN 13: 9780375421402

Publisher: Pantheon, 2001

Synopsis

In this spare and mesmerizing debut work of fiction, Christine Lincoln takes us inside the hearts and minds of African Americans whose lives unfold against a vividly evoked Southern rural landscape. As they navigate between the old and the new, between youth and adulthood, they find themselves choosing between the comforts of what they trust unquestioningly and the fearsome excitements of what they might come to know.

An abandoned seven-year-old girl living inside a fantasy of invisibility . . . a young woman weighing the life she’s expected to want against the freedom that will transport her to the unexpected . . . a boy whose world is both expanded and contracted by stories he hears from a beautiful stranger—the characters who inhabit this
profoundly moving collection are brought to life with a remarkably light touch and an extraordinary depth
of insight and emotion.

Christine Lincoln possesses a gift of great originality. In Sap Rising, she proves herself one of those rare writers whose work transcends its own rich particularity to speak with stunning clarity to the most fundamental elements of the human experience.

About this title

Review:

In her debut collection, Sap Rising, Christine Lincoln gives us 12 linked stories of life among the black folk of Grandville, a small town in the rural South. Her characters are drawn to the city, but once there, they want to return to the country. Likewise, her prose pulls back and forth: a stark minimalism of form plays against a lush lyricism that reads at times like Southern-fried magical realism. In the opening story, "Bug Juice," young Sonny sneaks out of his bed and glimpses a wider world when his uncle brings a magnificent enchantress to visit from the city. The boy and the woman sit outside on the porch in the dark together, and Sonny comes to a strange new understanding of his own blackness. The whole town, it seems, dreams of escape--from the country, from poverty, from racism, from life itself and all its failures. --Claire Dederer

From the Inside Flap:

In this spare and mesmerizing debut, Christine Lincoln takes us inside the hearts and minds of African Americans whose lives unfold against a vividly evoked rural community. As they navigate between old and new, between youth and responsibility, they find themselves choosing between the comforts of what they trust without question and the fearsome excitements of what they might come to know.
One young man's world is both expanded and contracted by stories he hears from a beautiful stranger. Another stumbles across his mother having an affair with his uncle. An intense friendship forms between one woman afraid she will turn out like everyone else and one afraid she won't." Lincoln's down-to-earth voice, saturated with the manner and details of the South, brings her characters to life with a remarkably light touch and an extraordinary depth of emotion. In "Sap Rising, she proves herself one of those writers whose work transcends its own rich particularity to speak with clarity to the most fundamental elements of the human experience.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375421408
• ISBN 13: 9780375421402
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176