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tonythep's review against another edition
4.0
To be honest, this isn't the kind of subject matter I'm normally drawn to. Southern town torn apart by brutal lynching in the early 20th century. But for some reason I picked it up. And I was hooked. Durban tells the story by switching back and forth among a handful of main characters, as well as between 1926 when the lynching occurred and 1943 when one of the characters is on his death bed. She writes beautiful spare prose that succeeds in humanizing each character without ever making excuses for them. This is especially impressive considering that the story is based on actual events involving her own family.
clairebearrich's review against another edition
3.0
This is another book I read for my Southern Women Writers course, with the added bonus that I got to hear the author speak when she came to my class to discuss the book. I always feel a little bit of guilt when I say negative things about authors I’ve actually met or talked with, but I guess I’ll go to bed with a guilty conscious tonight.
The novel takes place in 1923, the year of a brutal race related triple lynching in South Carolina and in 1946, when one of the characters apparently involved in the lynching is on his death bed. We get the story through several characters’ eyes and slowly unravel exactly what happened that night, and the effect it had on the two separate communities.
Overall this wasn’t a horrible novel. I actually enjoyed it for the most part. The writing for the most part was actually quite lyrical and flowed very well. The characters were very real to me and I was interested in the story for almost the entire book (almost is the key word here.) My issue was that it was really too long. Unfortunately the book didn’t even get to 200 pages so that seems to me to be a problem.
I actually found out from the author that this novel is based on experience with her family, based on her grandparents, which was extremely intriguing to me. I feel like that aspect of it could have been explored more, but instead Durban simply writes herself into the story as a bystander (in a really self righteous way in my opinion.)
So it’s a meh story. I wouldn’t really urge anyone to read this, but if you have time and you want a fairly interesting story go for it.
3/5 stars
The novel takes place in 1923, the year of a brutal race related triple lynching in South Carolina and in 1946, when one of the characters apparently involved in the lynching is on his death bed. We get the story through several characters’ eyes and slowly unravel exactly what happened that night, and the effect it had on the two separate communities.
Overall this wasn’t a horrible novel. I actually enjoyed it for the most part. The writing for the most part was actually quite lyrical and flowed very well. The characters were very real to me and I was interested in the story for almost the entire book (almost is the key word here.) My issue was that it was really too long. Unfortunately the book didn’t even get to 200 pages so that seems to me to be a problem.
I actually found out from the author that this novel is based on experience with her family, based on her grandparents, which was extremely intriguing to me. I feel like that aspect of it could have been explored more, but instead Durban simply writes herself into the story as a bystander (in a really self righteous way in my opinion.)
So it’s a meh story. I wouldn’t really urge anyone to read this, but if you have time and you want a fairly interesting story go for it.
3/5 stars
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