Borden Deal (1922–1985)

Blimey. I'm not sure I've ever read anything like this before. It's like William Faulkner re-writing Shakespeare set in the Deep South, replete with a Greek chorus and a chapter narrated by a pig. The story and the writing are astonishing, Borden Deal is just top drawer.

Rating: 3.25* of five

Not quite a half-star above three...a bit on the mannered side for my taste.

Borden Deal was one of those "famous if you know who they are" figures that literature specializes in producing (eg, David Foster Wallace, JT LeRoy). He was a humidly Southern kind of storyteller, making a lot of psychosexual hay while the sun of Public Disapproval still shone; his career was a lot slower, and a lot heavier on "erotica," after the Swingin' Sixties got started.

This is his last show more novel before hard drinkin' and smokin' killed him at 62, in 1985. It's probably good that he died before he heard what folks were saying. Teeny-weeny New Horizon Press of Far Hills, New Jersey, brought it out...that should say something to you, since the 1950s and 1960s saw his books under Doubleday and Scribner colophons. His moment had passed; the Broadway play based on his novel The Insolent Breed and the film based on Dunbar's Cove were decades past by then. There was no way this little Gothic novel about narrator-Borden, poor sharecropper's son, coming of bisexual age in the Great Depression, would've made the grade at Doubleday!

It's not a bad book. It's got the kind of heightened language that was out of fashion in the 1980s, putting Deep Thoughts in Countrified expressions in the mouth of a 13-year-old. Much about the story would've made it a bestseller in 1965, what with narrator-Borden developing a serious crush on Charles, while all-but ignoring Frances the living breathing girl on his doorstep. The faux-country "ain't"s and so on would've gone down a treat then, as well. But in 1985 that was not the first stare of regionalism and, mid-AIDS crisis, narrator-Borden's nascent bisexuality wasn't enough to épater les bourgeois anymore.

The Gothic image of the house turned inwards, the dark and spooky doings inside, the mighty-are-fallen family that Charles comes from...standard. Michael McDowell does it better in his atmospheric horror novels of roughly the same vintage (eg, The Flood; Cold Moon Over Babylon). The ending, which I will not spoil, involves a purification rite that's not in the least bit overused. /irony

The novel's short and the read's quick. My county's library system lost its only copy of this marvy, but entirely on their own recognizance sourced a copy for me to read via ILL from Mississippi! Of course, I imagine a native son's books are thick on the ground there, so it's not like it was a hardship for the lenders, but still...!! I'm always amazed and delighted when people go out of their way to fulfill patrons' idle whims in reading material as part of the service, unheralded, unasked, and I'm sure largely unnoticed and unappreciated.

I noticed. I'm most appreciative. I wish the read had been more exciting. show less

This a great book. Big thanks to Howard and Diane from The Trail for championing Borden Deal. He's largely out of print and The Tobacco Men was the only book I could find that I didn't have to remortgage my house for. The copy I managed to get was printed a year after I was born and had the yellowest pages of any book I've ever read. I loved it. Ostensibly it's a story of good vs evil but it's so much more than that. Borden Deal is a superb story teller and the research is hugely impressive. show more I learnt so much about tobacco production and Tennassse walking horses. The language and the pacing are spot on and the story itself contains a few surprises. Highly recommended. show less

This kind of reminds me of the Boxcar Children. The plot is similar: three kids, alone in the world, trying to make it on their own. Ashley (a girl), Brett (a boy), and Shane (a girl), age 10, 8 and 6 respectively, are on vacation when their parents leave the hotel one day and never come back. Fearful of being turned in to the "juvenile authorities," the children quietly slip away and begin the 600-mile trek home. On the way they face various challenges including injury and lack of food, show more pick up a trio of animal companions and encounter various adults who either help or hinder them.

Although it's pretty long compared to most children's books, I think kids age 10 or so would love this. All kids fantasize about being on their own without all those meddling grownups around, and the children's self-reliance is a great thing that even adults would admire. And of course there's the suspense factor: what's going to happen next on the road, and more to the point, where are their parents and what happened to them?

A definite win. show less