Blackwood: A Novel by Michael Farris Smith

Blackwood: A Novel – Michael Farris Smith – 9780316529815 – Little Brown – Hardcover – 256 pages – March 3, 2020 – $27.00 – ebook versions for sale at lower prices

This is pretty much a stunningly written book. I discovered the writing of Michael Farris Smith serendipitously through the southern culture magazine, Garden & Gun. I read a short piece they published called “How a Steadfast Pup Helped an Author Find His Voice,” which is just a fantastic work of personal memoir. That one essay prompted me to learn about Smith and to get a copy of his latest book. Yes, this is how literary discovery works today. There are so many good writers in the world, and we are blessed with a plethora of books to read. But at the same time, how do we find out about them? I had not heard of Michael Farris Smith before. Blackwood is his fifth book, and his work has been well reviewed and praised by writers whose opinions I respect. I was surprised I had never run across his work before, and pleased I did.

I started reading Blackwood without knowing very much about this writer or his past work, or the kinds of stories he tells. There is no doubt that Blackwood can be pretty dark at times – funnily, it reminded me of the great Netflix series, Stranger Things – though much more powerful in the way that only fiction can convey mystery. It can be scary at times, and there are characters in this book who are just terrible, dangerous figures. I don’t think you have to be a southerner or to have lived in the south at all to appreciate this book, or the kinds of people who inhabit the fictional Red Bluff, Mississippi, but it helps, I am sure, as the landscape and the mysteries Smith explores are very much “of the South” and the pain and suffering that resides in its countryside. That suffering is an integral element of the history of the people and the land that is palpable in this novel. The collection of characters is interestingly diverse, combining a bit of Faulkner with a touch of Stephen King, it seems.

I tend to think of this book as a novel of magical realism that taps into a mysterious darkness that inhabits the land itself. It is chthonic – almost literally. There is a part of this novel that is mythic, subliminal, deeply psychic in a wounded way, and the people who live in this strange place have become part of the mystery and part of the land as well. I wondered at times if Smith is telling a story that even he may not fully understand, almost like a Druid priest channeling voices from another reality. The book is very powerful, and that power makes it difficult sometimes to get your bearings, as a reader, you can feel outside the realm of your own experience enough that you must allow Smith’s language to transport you to this other place, and dream alongside and almost within the author’s psyche.

Some of the words used by reviewers come to mind – “brutal,” “supernatural,” “startling,”. All are accurate. I felt the pain of this novel deeply. And yes, it is a southern novel, but that should not ever be considered a limitation. This is just a great novel that happens to be set in the south.

I am really pleased that I discovered Blackwood and the work of this compelling writer, Michael Farris Smith. I’d like to especially thank the magazine Garden & Gun for doing what they do so well — exploring and expounding on modern southern culture. And thanks to Michael Farris Smith for taking the risk to write this difficult book, and for talking to me about it. We had a great conversation together.

“Lurking over Blackwood is a family of itinerant grifters—a version of Faulkner’s Snopes clan, forces of chaos, human kudzu except for the youngest of them, a mysterious boy in whom Colburn sees his young self. As in the best noir, A soul-strangling inevitability hangs over Red Bluff, yet somehow Smith gives his doomed characters a dignity in the face of forces well beyond their control.” Booklist (starred review)

Michael Farris Smith website.

Buy the book at RJ Julia Booksellers.

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Nicole Helget: The Turtle Catcher

978-0547248004 – Mariner Books – paperback – $13.95 (also available as an e-book)

I found this book, written by an author I had never heard of before, by doing something very old fashioned: browsing in a bookstore.  There are many forms of discovery, but finding a book you want to read in a store is still a great pleasure.  And when you take it home and start reading it, and find out you made a lucky choice to read an exceptionally fine novel, that is a true and deeply rewarding experience.

I was surprised to learn that The Turtle Catcher is Nicole Helget’s first novel – she doesn’t write like a first novelist at all.  The opening of this novel is absolutely perfect, and is beautifully written, setting the tone for a complicated, very often painful, but also engrossing story.  Helget’s novel is mystical and magical, but these moments of “magical realism” where she enters another plane counterpoint brilliantly with the almost plainspoken story she has to tell about immigrant families in a German-American community in rural Minnesota in the early 20th century.  The book is set in the now little discussed period just before, during and after World War I, a time that was very complicated for communities of recently arrived immigrants from the old country, with Germany now the enemy of their new homeland.  The tensions within the town provide a taut backdrop for Helget’s for the focus of her story.

The author weaves together the lives of two families living on adjoining farms in the small town of New Germany, Minnesota.  Liesel Richter and Lester Sutter are at the core of the book, along with their fathers and deeply suffering mothers, and what happens to Lester, told brilliantly and painfully in the opening scene of the book is the capstone to a long, rich story of families and communities, hidden wounds and deep suffering transformed into a kind of stoic transcendence Helget’s characters embrace, almost because it is all they are capable of doing in the face of such pain.

In The Turtle Catcher, Nicole Helget has created a multi-layered family story whose characters inhabit (and illustrate for readers) a specific place and time, but as with all great novels, through their story, they are transformed into something deeply moving and powerful.  I really loved this novel, and will read it again, I am sure.

I wanted to talk to Nicole about the emotional content of the book, how she came to create this novel (it started with a short story), and discuss some of the complexities of her really wonderfully drawn characters.  I think we succeeded in exploring this writer’s work in a really interesting conversation I hope will encourage readers to seek this novel out and read it for themselves.  I do think Nicole Helget is a terrific writer, someone whose work I am deeply gratified to have discovered.

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Ivy Pochoda: The Art of Disappearing

978-0312385859 – Hardcover – St. Martin’s Press  -$24.99

The Art of Disappearing is simply a wonderful novel.  And it’s the author, Ivy Pochoda’s first too.  It’s beautifully written, flows naturally, and as with all great novels, it’s layered and complex.  A story that transforms the reader’s experience can be considered a true work of art, and this is one of those.

This is a description from Ivy’s own website:

Toby Warring seems too young and too attractive to be sending drinks to strange women in a small-town Nevada saloon, but that is exactly how he meets Mel Snow, a textile designer who is selling her wares throughout the country.  In a brief but strangely familiar conversation, Toby shows Mel that he is a rare “real” magician—actually creating the wine he places in front of her—and explains that all he has ever wanted is to perform in Las Vegas.  They marry the next day.

You can read excerpts from the book here to get a feel for her writing, which is luminous.  Magic is at the heart of the book, but it’s not about parlor tricks.  In my interview with Ivy Pochoda, we talked about how she came to write this story, how it incorporates much of her own experience of place, and how she created the magical realism that imbues the book.  Ivy grew up in Brooklyn in a very literary family, fell in love with writing and books early, went to Harvard (where she was a champion squash player, and lived in Amsterdam for several years.  While living there,  she started work on the novel and it is where much of The Art of Disappearing is set, though Las Vegas and the American west are also important locales for the book and its characters.

I love this novel and will be looking forward to the author’s next book.

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