Eden - Hardcover

Vernon, Olympia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802117287 ISBN 13: 9780802117281

Publisher: Grove Pr, 2002

Synopsis

Scandalizing her rural Mississippi town when she draws a naked woman in the bible during Sunday School, precocious fourteen-year-old Maddy is made to spend the weekends caring for her terminally ill aunt, a relationship that results in her confrontations with disturbing secrets that overshadow their community. A first novel. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

A young girl is sent to nurse her dying aunt in this arresting, uncompromising debut. Fourteen-year-old Maddy Dangerfield lives with her parents in rural Mississippi: her mother, Faye, obese and devoutly religious, is "a maid for damn near every white man in Pyke County"; her alcoholic, illiterate father, Chevrolet, works in a scrap yard and spends the family's money on whores and gambling. One of his sexual conquests was Faye's sister, Pip, who is estranged from the family as a result. To teach Maddy about mortality (and to assuage her own conscience), Faye sends Maddy to Pip's home on weekends to help care for her as she succumbs to breast cancer. What makes the book stand out is not its relatively simple plot, but Vernon's idiosyncratic prose style ("he laughed and folded his arms as if he controlled my vocabulary") and Maddy's stark, often surreal perception of the world. Her burgeoning sexuality is illustrated less by her crush on young laborer Landy Collins than by the way she describes the tangled mess of smells and sensations that define the people around her, who are "all, in some way, falling apart." The tone is relentlessly grim, infused with religious superstition, racism and death; macabre events-Chevrolet's mutilation at the hands of his mother-in-law, the death of a troubled orphan, the slaughtering of a hog-are scattered like land mines throughout. But what Vernon's story lacks in optimism, it more than makes up for with raw power and insight.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Fourteen-year-old Maddy Dangerfield is called upon to help her cancer-afflicted aunt Pip live out her last days. Maddy's mother, Faye, can't forgive her sister's betrayal of her with her own husband. Maddy is caught in the vortex of unresolved conflicts among the adults: a stoic, overworked mother who can't make peace with a dying sister; an alcoholic husband addicted to gambling; and a fiery aunt who has lived her life on her own terms. The small black community of Pyke County, Mississippi, is also saturated with unresolved conflicts, seething resentments, and violence. Pip's breast cancer and pariah status within the community inform Maddy at a time when she is wrestling with her own notions about sensuality, womanhood, religion, and family obligations. From Pip and a widowed neighbor, Maddy learns about life and disappointments and the consequences of choices. Vernon's writing is lyrical and emotionally powerful as she captures the tensions between the races and sexes in a small community of blacks eking out whatever living and dignity they can manage. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0802117287
• ISBN 13: 9780802117281
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208