#BookReview: The Storycatcher by Ann Hite

I heard tell there was a colored woman's ghost who walked the Ridge.  She was what the old-timers called a storycatcher.  Her job was to set life stories straight, 'cause the Lord only knew how many were all twisted in a knot.  Her story was the big question.  No one knew where she came from.

There is a whole lot going on in Ann Hite's The Storycatcher.  Set during the Great Depression, it covers the Sapelo Island area of Georgia to the Black Mountain range of North Carolina.  A brief period of time is also spent in Louisiana.

The story in North Carolina focuses on Faith Dobbins and Shelly Parker.  Faith is the daughter of the local minister, quite possibly the most evil being on the mountain.  Shelly, a maid in the Dobbins house, is also a seer.  Given the gift of sight, she sees and communicates with the dead.  She alone knows that Faith's body has been taken over by someone on the mountain that recently departed and is determined to have her revenge.

Much of the book focuses on North Carolina, but for me, the stories in Sapelo are much more interesting. Ada Lee is a Saltwater Geechee, working in Darien during the week and crossing the marshes on Fridays to spend the weekend on her beloved Sapelo Island.  She would rather be making sweetgrass baskets like her mother and grandmother before her.  Instead, she spends her days cleaning and cooking for white folks on the mainland.  Ada Lee is a seer also and has long been aware of the ghost of Emmaline.  Her Aunt Hattie has warned her to stay away from the haint, but Emmaline has come to set a story straight and there's no denying her.

While this was overall an okay read, the story lines were difficult to keep straight.  Part of this is due to the overwhelming number of characters, which includes quite a few ghosts and haints; the other part is due to the flashing back and forth in time and place.  For the longest time, the stories being told in Georgia and in North Carolina seem to having nothing to do with another, and it's not until the last few chapters that they're tied together and begin to make sense.  Unfortunately, most will lose interest before getting to that point.

352pp
Published: September 2013
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.

#BookReview: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

I'm really not sure where to begin with this book.  It's been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, so I don't know what it means that I didn't like it when so many others thought so highly of it.  The writing felt disjointed, as did the timeline.  I've seen some people refer to it as a book of short stories and, perhaps, that's where the disjointed feel comes from. I went into it thinking it was just a novel.

We Need New Names opens with Darling and her friends venturing to a nicer part of town to steal guavas.  Once the children of parents that lived in nice houses with food on the table, they've been reduced to being vagabonds.  These are children that have seen more than they really should have at such a young age.  While the others seem to be hopeless, Darling has an aunt in America that she looks forward to visiting.  In her mind, America is the promised land and by going there, she'll once again have decent food and shelter.

Darling's time in Zimbabwe is much more colorful and interesting than her time in America.  It's hard to tell if her sullen moods are because she dislikes the world she found or because she's a typical teenager.  At any rate, America is not the promised land that she thought it was, and she seems to be stuck in limbo, romanticizing her life in Zimbabwe and wishing that she could return to it.

I have no way of knowing if Bulawayo wrote We Need New Names with the idea that people around the world would read it.  It could be that she thought anyone picking up the book would be familiar with the history of Zimbabwe.  And though I was familiar enough to know why Darling and her friend's families had lost their homes and jobs, it would have been helpful for the author to go into just a little detail about it.  The average reader may not have known why that was the case.

304pp
Published: May 2013