White boys and river girls : stories

The Southern Review and LSU Short Fiction Award, 1995. Here are barmaids and black musicians, single mothers and burnt-out businessmen, all struggling a little too close to the edge in lives where a lot is at risk. These nine stories draw on Paula Gover's own experience--as an army wife living in a trailer in Georgia and as an often unemployed single mother back in her Michigan hometown. A daring new writer who brings richness and depth to her fiction, Gover slices into ordinary American lives and exposes what it is that makes each one extraordinary.

Rezensionen (4)

Publisher's Weekly-Rezension

In these nine sharply affecting stories, Gover reviews the hard life lessons learned by memorable, persevering characters in small towns and suburbs of Michigan and Georgia. The utterly convincing title story is narrated by Donnie, a 34-year-old construction worker from Tyler, Ga., a former hometown football hero and veteran womanizer who becomes hooked on Yolanda, an artist quite unlike his ``regular type.'' Gover dazzles as Yolanda, who ``wore color on her lips what never rubbed off... dusty-like and dark as old blood, and real different from them shiny fruit-tasting colors,'' introduces Donnie to issues of race, gender and love that he'd never considered before. With a keen ear for dialect and uncompromising candor, Gover writes with respectful affection of broken families, bereaved children, troubled lovers and stalwart individuals-especially independent women-as they choose, among the concrete details of daily life, between hope and despair. ``Chances with Johnson'' ends the collection as Elizabeth, whose ex-husband has disappeared with the older of their two sons, gambles one last time on loving another man, one who will reward her faith far beyond her expectations. While the strongest, most immediate stories are the first-person narratives, there are no weak entries in this impressive debut collection. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus-Rezension

Gritty and believable, the characters in this fine debut collection may often have the odds stacked against them, but they refuse to give up on happiness. A number of the nine stories here are set in the small Georgia town of Tyler, and Gover expertly sketches the subtle distinctions of race and class that affect everyday interactions. In the excellent title piece, a black girl from the river (who passes for white) tries to make her white boyfriend see the town's hypocritical attitude toward the river girls, who are scorned by day but seduced by its sons at night: ``So, white boys like you come prowling down by the river on Friday nights, and you find girls with dark eyes...and you don't even remember their names the next day.'' Another Tyler story recounts the rise of a black singer and his realization that his voice attracts white girls. His efforts to explain this attraction to a black woman singer explore the nexus of race and gender; but, at the end of their tense exchange, they have still failed to understand each other. In this story, as in others, Gover is adept at portraying the intricacies of relations between men and women. The mistress in ``Mistress of Cats'' is a fiercely independent woman who works at a perfume counter in town and keeps her many married lovers on a schedule of assignations. A surprise encounter with her now-married high-school boyfriend and his family in the supermarket impels her to have a baby. After the birth, she accepts gifts from her lovers for the newborn but feels that the child is her creation alone. The heroine in ``Necessary Distance'' is afraid to let her boyfriend fully in to her heart. But she slowly learns to trust her gentle lover and to sense that ``if I jumped, maybe he'd follow.'' Gover's characters radiate humanity and integrity in every situation to which her spare, assured writing subjects them. An impressive first collection.

Booklist-Rezension

Things do not go smoothly in the lives of Gover's characters, but this is a marvelous collection of stories. Each sentence is wielded with deadly clarity, and 15 pages can be an emotional journey of immense proportions. It is an emotional rather than geographic landscape that sets these stories in a true, solid place. In the title story, a white boy from a southern town recalls his romance with a river girl. Her voodoo superstitions and hidden past prevented them from staying together; but she exposed his prejudices with a devastating honesty, and he forever feels under her spell. In "Bastard Child," a son sees in his wife a reflection of his mother, who was betrayed by the men who disappeared from her life but who retained power over her sexuality to the end. "Naked Beauty" is a touching story about a mother facing her adolescent daughter's struggle to break away, and a mother's eternal love for the child within the blossoming girl. Gover quietly overturns lives, creeping through window sashes, walking through half-opened doors. The effect is like a cool spring breeze, clear-sighted and straightforward. These are moments and emotions we'd gladly walk out of the room to ignore. But faced obliquely or head-on, they enrich us just the same. --Deanna Larson

Library Journal-Rezension

This debut collection of searing, vernacular tales magnifies dailiness and small epiphanies in the lives of mostly poor, ordinary, yet ironically exotic people in Michigan and deep Georgia. In one story, the shocking, hilarious response of a mixed-race son defuses his mother's rage and anxiety after the two experience a racist outburst. Another quite charming story reveals a mother's fear that she is losing her daughter to the glamour and shallowness of beauty pageant culture and the delicious surprise of filial love and moxie on pageant day. The excellent title story limns impossible love and voodoo from a fascinating, appalling viewpoint. Gover knows her characters well, showing how they are broken and hardened by love and often redeemed by second chances. A fine addition for public libraries.-Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

White Boys and River Girls	p. 1
My Naked Beauty	p. 35
Bastard Child	p. 67
A Woman Like Me	p. 85
Necessary Distance	p. 101
Black Boy in a White Girl's World	p. 135
The Kid's Been Called Nigger Before	p. 153
Mistress of Cats	p. 169
Chances with Johnson	p. 199

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