Wilton Barnhardt

If you think that this book is going to be the typical genre southern novel with lovable eccentric characters and infused with the fragrance of honeysuckle in the breeze, you will be very disappointed and probably more than a little angry. However, if you're in the mood for a darkly funny satirical look at the New South's modern society, this character driven novel of the decline and fall of an old Charlotte, North Carolina family

At teh heart of the story is the steel magnolia family show more matriarch, Jerene Jarvis johnston, who rules her family as well as a large part of Charlotte society through her family's collection of art at the Mint Museum, with a whim of steel. Her husband, Joseph "Duke" Johnston is a rather feckless Southern gentleman who was once a star at the University of North Carolina, the youngest partner in his law firm and a promising local politician. Now however, he mostly obsesses over his ancestors, primarily Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and his annual reenactment of "The Skirmish at the Trestle." Charlotte's only known Civil War military action.

Jerene's brother, Gaston, was once a promising writer lionized in New York and Paris. Now, however, he mostly grinds out mediocre Civil War historical fiction featuring a heroine with the unfortunate name of Cordelia Florabloom. Her sister has retreated into gentile poverty trying to escape a ruinous marriage and the fact that her son died of a methamphetamine overdose.

The four Johnston children are also disappointments: Jerilyn a empty-headed college girl more interested in pledging a sorority and getting her M.R.S. than in getting an education, Joshua who is gay and primarily attracted to black men, Bo a mediocre Presbyterian minister who is constantly at odds with his congregation and Annie, who is the smartest one of the bunch and the family rebel, but whose self destructive tendencies drive her from failure to failure.

Every myth of Southern "grace and charm" is exposed as the family secrets as revealed and the family spirals down from the perch on which they've lived for 100 years. I couldn't put this one down. show less

I have an ARC; I'm pretty much beside myself with antici- (say it) -pation.

***

It may not be The, but it is certainly A Great American Novel. Barnhardt has a marvelous way of capturing the absurdities of an era, as he showed in [b:Emma Who Saved My Life: A Novel|92484|Emma Who Saved My Life A Novel|Wilton Barnhardt|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367749777s/92484.jpg|89190]. More importantly, where the wise author sees the folly of his characters, he doesn't mock them for their show more earnest embrace of the mores of their times. Like Dickens and Austen, he is sympathetic to the situations people find themselves in, to the hazards they create for themselves.

Background: the novel is set primarily in Charlotte, NC during the first decade of the 21st century. Conversations and flashbacks take us back in the lives of the Jarvis-Johnston family as far as the Civil War. For these people the past isn't over. There's Gaston making a fortune writing historical novels, and his sister Jerene's work maintaining the family art collection at the museum, and her husband Duke's devotion to re-enacting with maximum authenticity, and preserving a battle site. The past is ongoing, too, in the efforts of the next generation, where Annie finds a way to help previously discriminated-against families purchase their first home in integrated neighborhoods, and Bo and his wife Kate struggle to do God's work in a contentious suburban church, and Joshua tries to keep his sexual escapades on the down-low using his best friend Dorrie as a beard.

All of these characters, and many more, are trying to find some way to accommodate a weight of history that both protects them and holds them back. They are all struggling against the expectations of Society (such as it is down here) and against sexism and racism and classism, even as they enjoy some privileges from the system. Book One introduces the family and runs through their gamut of first-world problems, and I was afraid, I admit it, that maybe Barnhardt was going to give in to Tom Wolfe-like railing against everyone and everything.

Then there's Book Two, which lifts the book above mere witty sniping, into something sympathetic, and understanding, and revealing. There is no bogus Hollywood ending, but the good receive some reward, and the wicked receive some punishment, and the result is the best one could hope for, given the characters and modern history.

Barnhardt is a writer with scope and the best sort of human charity. His novels are infrequent, but the rewards are earned.

***

Publisher's ARC provided for review show less

Duke and Jerene Johnston are pillars of Charlotte, North Carolina’s high society, holding up the façade of their family’s rich Confederate heritage while attempting to bury secrets both past and present. Rather than helping the Johnston’s hold their spot on the social ladder, Duke and Jerene’s four children seem bound to knock the family down as their lives grow increasingly scandalous. Even Jerene’s siblings have a difficult time conforming to the high Southern standards her show more family was raised to follow. Though she understands that society is changing around her, Jerene is determined to hold on to her family’s legacy – at any cost.

I've mentioned before that I've only lived below the Mason-Dixon for five years, so I'm still adjusting to all the intricacies of Southern culture (like when I had to give my students a flier for cotillion, though I had no clue what it was), but there is no denying the truth behind the characters in Lookaway, Lookaway. While they are no doubt extreme and satirized, it's hard not to find a familiar face in the Johnston clan, regardless of your background. Among them a drunk, slurring brother who penned a series of bestselling Civil War novels, leaving him piles of cash. A daughter who gives up her preppy outfits and perfect GPA to join the wildest sorority in college, only to find herself being taken advantage of, while her sister fights to swim against everything the Johnston family stands for. But Lookaway, Lookaway's most unforgettable character is the family matriarch, Jerene Jarvis Johnston. The polarity between Jerene's strict Southern manners and brutally uncompromising tactics when protecting those around her is both shocking and endlessly entertaining.

Each member of the family is given a point of view chapter, which allows the plotlines to be told from different perspectives - a perfect device when dealing with family secrets. Over the course of several years we are welcomed into the Johnston family, through tales both humorous and heartbreaking, and watch as it slowly falls apart. After nearly fifteen years, Wilton Barnhardt has returned with an insightful, irresistibly fun novel that is already on my favorites list.

Blog: www.rivercityreading.com show less

Gospel is a novel about a lost gospel of Matthias, the thirteenth disciple who replaced Judas. A sardonic burn-out professor named Patrick O'Hanrahan and a shrinking violet grad student named Lucy set off around the world to trace the manuscript and learn what was so dangerous about it, that until this point all copies had been presumed burned in the third century for heresy.

One of the most charming elements of the book was that God had some wonderful asides. God, in parenthetical comments, show more answered characters' doubts and questions, encouraged them, scolded them when they needed scolding. Adorable, I thought, and interesting in that both scholarship and fundamentalism talk about God and around God in a third person sort of way. Lucy's adventures and exposure to new expressions of faith broaden her religion to something more enlightened than her previous "Irish Catholic vs. Protestants" pettiness; and O'Hanrahan has no shortage of religious demons of his own. So as they travel, God is a persistent force beside them, enduring and good. It's endearing and fun to see them grow in their negotiation of their new faiths.

The recurring conflict over this gospel was its possession and reception: whose care should it be in, the dispassionate and careful scholars or the passionate but biased religious fundamentalists? Such a conflict is par for the course whenever the challenge of the historicity of religion comes into play. Careful historians should have an unbiased approach, of course, but perhaps they also ought to be aware that destroying people's faith is a weighty decision.

So among the vested interests that characters express for the possession or suppression of this gospel is the concern that it will undermine all of Christianity. Which, maybe, but what would Christianity be without a truth to it? Many of the actors pursuing the gospel are only self-interested swindlers - whether to suppress a document that would completely reshape the canon and history of Christianity, or to become famous by publishing the gospel specifically in order to discredit Christianity. Yet in all of the historical locations that Lucy and O'Hanrahan visit, the plurality of religious expressions prove that faith has never been grounded in historical documents or dead words, but rather in a living and experiential approach to finding how God fits into the world. show less