- Ava's Man
Author: Rick Bragg
Publisher: Vintage Books, Division of Random House
ISBN: 0-375-72444-3
Price: $13.95, Publication Date: 2001, Page Count: 260
Reviewer: Marilyn Coffey, marilyncoffey@cox.net
I've never much cottoned to white, male Southern writers, not even to Mr. Faulkner. They too often seem swollen, full of machismo, overly conscious of their Great Literary Tradition. But not Rick Bragg. Bragg is a real story teller without all the Southern Writer baggage.
Take his Ava's Man. That man is Bragg's grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, dead before Bragg was born but still living inside people who knew him. Using their memories, Bragg rebuilds his grandfather's life and the life of the woman who loved him, Ava.
I cherish Bragg's book for four reasons:
1) It's well-paced, written in short chapters that often left me with a swift intake of breath.
2) It has marvelous characters, vividly drawn. My favorite minor character is Hootie. Bragg writes, "He had a face like a pickax. His nose was long and hooked, and pointy on the end, like he had bought it at the Dollar Store and tied it on his face with a string, and it curved all the way down past his lips."
3) Bragg has a instinct for apt comparisons, often as striking as these:
- of Bragg's great-granddaddy: "[He] moved like a shadow through the forest, his hobnailed boots soft as velvet slippers in the dry leaves."
- of his ancestors: "they grew in [that culture] the way a weed grows in a crack."
- and my favorite, of Ava: "there were spiders and broken glass in her voice."
4) To top it off, Bragg writes with clarity and compassion about his grandparents and their world. This book features Brundum, Ava's man, but it also paints a glowing picture of Ava who is just about as feisty as they come.
Read Ava's Man. You'll like it. | | | |
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