Salvage the Bones

How can someone write this well? I had heard raves about this book and her new one, Sing, Unburied Sing which I will undoubtedly read very soon. The story takes place in a poor coastal Mississippi community leading up to and through Katrina. The author takes you right there with her vivid descriptions and context for all that follows. I feel that anything I write about this book could not possibly do it justice. Ward’s writing is raw, gripping and moving. The characters she created are so well developed I want to read an entire book about each one. She pulls you into the story and catapults you to the height of the action before gently setting you down in the aftermath, looking towards the future. I want more! The theme that most show more engaged me is that of siblings caring for each other in the absence of parental guidance. Not an easy read because the subject matter is very rough. Trigger for dog fighting. show less

A stunner of a novel. Rich imagery with an urgency that bears down along with the hurricane. Ward's ability to create an authentic character who so fully shares her internal world is impressive. I was so taken into Esch's world that after reading before bed one evening, I was awakened by some minor noise during the night and jumped up fully expecting to see a storm out my window.

(A caution to dog folks that there is a particularly vivid scene of dog fighting.)

Phenomenal must-read. This savagely beautiful book has left indelible marks on my heart. Years on I can still recall the impact it had on me. Raw, lyrical, and convincing. Even Greek tragedy is filtered through the lens of Esch and her worldview, our 14-year-old impoverished, pregnant, and unrequited narrator. Though an occasional turn-of-phrase is mismatched, the overall effect is compelling and authentic characters, especially Skeetah and Randall. The description of Katrina is breathtaking, and I could not peel my eyes from the pages as the storm raged. An important novel that lives up to its National Book Award. I can't wait to revisit Salvage the Bones again.

I have no problem recommending this National Book Award winner to anyone. It takes place in a small Mississippi Gulf Coast town over the 10 or so days as Hurricane Katrina is building in the coast. The characters are real and endearing. Esch, the 14 year old narrator, is the surrogate mother for her three brothers (Their mother died giving birth to the youngest brother; the two other brothers are older than Esch). She is grappling with the fact that she may be pregnant. Her oldest brother Randall is a high school basketball star who lacks the means to go to an important basketball camp. Skeetah has a pitbull named China, who has just given birth to a litter of puppies. Despite his clearly conveyed deep love for his dog, Skeetah show more endangers her in brutal pitbull dog fights. He hopes to win the funds to allow Randall to attend the basketball camp. The youngest child, Junior, just wants to make sure that he doesn't miss out on anything.

The hurricane remains in the background for much of the book. The children are vaguely aware that it is out there, but are not at all apprehensive. Ward, however, skillfully builds the tension each day, to the point that I began to wonder how she was ever going to pull off the drama of the storm itself. Needless to say, she did. show less

This book I would describe as a raw, savage story, at times harrowing to read. The story is narrated by Esch, 15 years old, motherless and pregnant growing up in an unruly, male-dominated household. Her alcoholic father is trying to prepare the family property in Mississipi for the onset of Hurricane Katrina. The increasing heat and pressure as the storm approaches is almost palpable. Esch has three brothers, Randall who dreams of winning a place in college through his basketball skills, Skeetah whose pit bull has just given birth to her first litter and Junior who has never known a mother's love as she died giving birth to him.
Events in the story shock and jar, yet we witness the strong bonds of familial love and loyalty that can show more exist even in these grim circumstances.
This is not a book for the feint-hearted but it is brutally honest and gritty and I couldn't put it down. show less

I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes. – from Salvage the Bones -

Esch is fourteen and show more pregnant, living with her brothers and her father on a hardscrabble piece of land they call “The Pit” in the small, coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Left motherless when their mother died giving birth to Junior, who is now seven years old, the siblings are fiercely loyal to each other. Skeetah, devoted to his fighting dog, China, is determined to stand up to their father – a man who has been mostly absent and drunk, and can become volatile and abusive.

He reaches to grab Skeetah’s arm, to pull him to standing and then shove him, probably. This is what he does when he wants to manhandle, humiliate; he pulls one of us toward him, shakes, and then shoves us hard backward so that we fall in the dirt. So that we sprawl like toddlers learning to walk: dirt on our faces and our hands, faces wet with crying or mucus, ashamed. – from Salvage the Bones -

Randall, the eldest boy, longs to find his way out of The Pit through his skill as a basketball player. Junior, too young to fully understand the family dynamics, clings to Randall. Junior’s innocence, his childish body and desperate longing for attention, are heartbreaking.

Sometimes I wonder if Junior remembers anything, or if his head is like a colander, and the memories of who bottle-fed him, who licked his tears, who mothered him, squeeze through the metal like water to run down the drain, and only leave the present day, his sand holes, his shirtless bird chest, Randall yelling at him: his present washed clean of memory like vegetables washed clean of the dirt they grow in. – from Salvage the Bones -

Salvage the Bones is narrated in the observant voice of Esch in the ten days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, culminating in the storm and its aftermath. The novel opens with the birth of China’s puppies – creatures which represent money and prestige to Skeetah. As with all the characters in the book, the puppies are born into a world which challenges their very survival…and China, muscular and bred to fight, is far from a competent mother.

What China is doing is fighting, like she was born to do. Fight our shoes, fight other dogs, fight these puppies that are reaching for the outside, blind and wet. – from Salvage the Bones -

Jesmyn Ward’s writing is breathtaking, raw and completely honest. She portrays a family who is somehow surviving against all odds – ragtag, poor, and with only each other to depend upon. China takes center stage in a novel about determination and fighting for one’s life. She is sleek, muscular and focused. China’s heart belongs only to Skeetah, a young boy who has mastered a brutish beast with a penchant for killing. China’s presence is both a representation of loyalty and love, and a sinister threat – the siblings constantly admonish Junior to stay away from her, she is not allowed in the house, and Randall (a fit and toned athlete) is frightened of her. Against the backdrop of China is the myth of Medea. Esch is reading Medea’s story and the themes of betrayal, suffering, and injured love are strong in the novel. In the Greek play, Medea seeks vengeance against the father of her children when he betrays her love. Medea’s jealously is violent and murderous – and her story weaves in and out of Salvage the Bone, giving the novel a dark and foreboding feel.

Salvage the Bones is like nothing I have ever read before. I found it hard to tear myself away from these characters whose lives were so fragile and yet were defined by an inner strength which was both admirable and grim. Ward’s ability to draw the reader into a world which is sad, brutal and nearly hopeless, speaks volumes about her talent. Because, despite the bleakness, the novel allows for a glimmer of something which could be called hope. There is something remarkable about Esch, Skeetah, Randall and Junior – their fierce protection of each other, the love that surfaces through the dirt and despair of their lives, and the determination to find the light in the darkness.

Salvage the Bones is stunning, beautiful, tragic, heartbreaking, and wholly absorbing. Readers should be warned – Ward includes scenes of dog fights, and it is difficult to read – but, it is not gratuitous. China’s story is as much a part of the novel as the stories of Esch, Randall, Skeetah and Junior…in fact, China’s story provides the structure from which all of the other stories spool out.

Salvage the Bones is an original, beautifully wrought piece of literary fiction.

Highly recommended. show less

A great book, but not one I'm not likely to read again soon. "Salvage the Bones" is, from its very beginning, an almost unbearably intense reading experience. Forget the hurricane, which finally makes its appearance in the book's final third. From the very moment we meet Esch, her life is defined by generational poverty, geographic and isolation, bad luck and, thankfully, intense love for attachment to her family. "Too much, too soon" is a cliché, but I've seldom seen it expressed in prose better -- or more poignantly -- than Ward expresses it here. In her mid-teens, we see Esch balance the roles of sister, substitute mother, provider and student. I suppose it isn't particularly surprising, then, that things fall apart by the end of show more the novel, though the weather event that will not be named here makes things more dramatic than they otherwise might have been.

Ward's writing fits this material almost too well, treading the line between exhilarating and exhausting. It'd be difficult to argue that Esch's teenage experience is typical, at least by the standards of widely read American literature. But the author's style deftly recalls a time in which even the most insignificant events can have enormous, both emotional and otherwise. Esch's life -- and the life of all her family -- is constantly teetering on the edge, and the book's prose, which is suffused with deep feeling, sensuality, desire, fear, and memory, reflects that well. Not that this makes "Salvage the Bones" an easy read. From a certain, perhaps shallow perspective, Esch's life seems so exhausting that it's difficult for even the reader to get through its particulars. The world that "Salvage the Bones" describes often gives the impression of being disordered and borderless: everything -- nature and late capitalism, brutality and affection, hard-fought life and luckless death -- comes together in ways that are sometimes surprising and other times sadly fated. The book itself seems set in a place between past and present that's difficult to pin down: its characters live in a verdant, swampy forest that seems as old as time itself, but car speakers are discussed and Outkast earns a mention. There's sex, but not a lot of love. There are opportunities to make money and dreams of glory about, but nothing set and stone, and lots of it heartbreakingly contingent. This isn't a book to read casually. It demands your attention and fairly overwhelms your senses. I had to force myself to get through it, and I wouldn't be surprised if lots of readers simply don't make it to the last page.

Still, there were some things about "Salvage the Bones" that pleasantly surprised me. Refreshingly, Ward does not seem to be interested in having a conversation with William Faulkner, as Toni Morrison often did. This novel's main preoccupation is often the natural word, something else that Katrina also had a hand in damaging. Esch is at home in the forest, and is comfortable around many of its animal and vegetable inhabitants, and not in the way that MFA-earning poets are. There were times I felt that I was back in "As I Lay Dying" getting stuck in the Mississippi mud on yet another unbearably hot day, but this feeling proved to be fleeting. I loved Ward's descriptions of Big Henry, one of the few teenage characters here -- besides Esch -- who seems older and calmer than his years. And the family's love for Junior, their youngest son, and the care they take of him, is genuinely touching.

Ward also introduces some material from some unexpected sources: While Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" and the story of Medea is frequently mentioned, I couldn't help hearing Edenic overtones throughout "Salvage the Bones" as well. That Hamilton's retelling of Medea's experience might strike some readers as both improbable and a touch precious. There don't seem to be any other books in Esch's house. But I think that the sheer emotional force that "Salvage the Bones" imparts -- and its essentially tragic structure -- more than justifies it. But, in a sense, that represents one of this novel's problems, too. You could -- and many will -- read "Salvage the Bones" as a tragedy in the truest cosmic sense. You can't escape the notion that Esch and her relations are doomed from the very first page, and this doesn't make for a joyful reading experience. Many will call it too dark, too sad, and just too much, and they might not be wrong. It doesn't help, I suppose, that dogfighting is one of this book's major plot points. I'm hardly a dog person under the best of conditions, but I found having to read about the birth, training, and fighting of truly fierce pitbulls to be almost more than I could take. Like many other elements in "Salvage the Bones", they are fierce, bloody, undeniably strong, and, however improbably, the object of one of this novel's characters boundless affections. Uf, it's too much. It's antipodean summertime right now, and I'm off to read something a little lighter. I'll get to "Sing, Unburied, Sing" eventually. Whatever problems I may have had with it, "Salvage the Bones" is so good that Ward's work can't just be written off as Southern misery porn. She's a real-deal writer. show less