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optimaggie's review against another edition
5.0
My husband and I listened to the audiobook version of this (it may have been abridged?) read by the author and it is a book that has stuck with us ever since. Rick Bragg is a master story teller. We loved it so much that I just bought a hardcover copy for us.
madtattler's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
shelleygee's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
sad
medium-paced
4.0
When you grab a staff pick off the shelf at the used bookstore and are rewarded with the work of a consummate and lively storyteller. This is an affectionate biography of the author’s maternal grandfather (who died the year before Bragg was born), stories gleaned from the people who loved him. Charlie burned bright & was gone too soon, a manual labourer, a moonshiner, a loving father & grandfather, a mischievous troublemaker not without flaws. It’s also a look at the backwoods of the south & the Appalachian foothills during the depression.
readerbythewater's review against another edition
2.0
This was a gift, so I hate to say I didn't like it, but...well. I loved "All Over But the Shoutin" but found this book difficult to follow. I kept losing track - is this the great-grandfather? Grandfather? Mother or Grandmother?
I may have become oversaturated with Bragg's style since I read "Shoutin." He has a full-page article in the back of every Southern Living issue, and I feel he's a bit too much. People magazine is quoted on the back of the book saying Bragg is "As toothsome as a catfish supper," but to me, he douses the catfish with too much gravy and hot sauce, just for the sake of showing he has so much gravy and hot sauce.
I may have become oversaturated with Bragg's style since I read "Shoutin." He has a full-page article in the back of every Southern Living issue, and I feel he's a bit too much. People magazine is quoted on the back of the book saying Bragg is "As toothsome as a catfish supper," but to me, he douses the catfish with too much gravy and hot sauce, just for the sake of showing he has so much gravy and hot sauce.
myriahalice's review against another edition
5.0
This book was like a little door into this other time and world, the people and places were just brought to life. I could hear and smell and taste every part of it, and I didn't realize how involved I was becoming until things started changing and I felt the loss of it.
This story doesn't include adventure or heroes, just the everyday living of one family over two states, doing what they had to do. But it is never boring, and although at times it may seem almost too wholesome despite the sadness that permeates through, it reads as honest. Honest tellings of a family and the man they loved.
This story doesn't include adventure or heroes, just the everyday living of one family over two states, doing what they had to do. But it is never boring, and although at times it may seem almost too wholesome despite the sadness that permeates through, it reads as honest. Honest tellings of a family and the man they loved.
barfly's review against another edition
5.0
An intimate and moving story about a man's man - father - husband - survivor told by a masterful storyteller Rick Bragg.
sgshettles's review against another edition
4.0
Too much internalized misogyny and toxic masculinity is glorified here, as well as racism and sexism that goes unaddressed when it’s an important part of every southerner’s story. However, it’s a beautifully written history of his family and a great glimpse into past southern life.
bookhound's review against another edition
4.0
Bragg is a remarkable writer and captures a place and time so well and with a great deal of heart. His grandfather comes across as hard and yet gentle with children, risk-taking, yet at important moments wise. There's a lot of drinking and brawling, but my favorite parts are how they survived the Depression.
erinbottger's review
4.0
This family biography follows on from "All Over But the Shoutin'" by Rick Bragg. In "Ava's Man," he tells the story of Charlie, the grandfather he never met, but a character he heard a great deal about. Ava is Bragg's mother's colorful mother and she chose for her husband the larger-than-life figure who swept into her comfortable life and carried her away.
When Bragg began asking his mother and aunts about their dad's funeral. Their response amazed him: "What kind of man was this, I wondered, who is so beloved, so missed, that the mere mention of his death would make them cry forty-two years after he was preached into the sky? A man like that, I thought to myself, probably deserves a book... So, since I never really had a grandfather, I decided to make me one. I asked my mother's people to tell me all the stories they could remember from Charlie Bundrum's life and times. With their help, I built him up from dirt level, using half-forgotten sayings, half-remembered stories and a few yellowed, brittle, black-and-white photographs that, under the watch of my kin, I handled like diamonds."
"A tall, bone-thin man", illiterate, restless, fiercely protective and dedicated to his family, Charlie stands out among men of the Greatest Generation moving his crew from one bare cottage to another, back and forth across the Alabama and Georgia border. He was a skilled carpenter, roofer, fisherman and moonshiner, not to mention a world-class storyteller. He "drank his own product and sang, laughed and buck-danced, under the stars."
Bragg's narrative is homespun:
"Charlie was not an impassive man, but someone whose emotions rode on the bridge of his nose. Happiness, anger, frustration, dismay, disgust and pity-- no one ever remembers seeing fear-- flashed across his face, depending on the circumstances, but today there was nothing but peace, and maybe contentment. When Ava was unhappy, nobody was happy. And likewise, when their daddy was happy, when he laughed, they all felt it, and shared it."
I greatly enjoyed this family saga of the family of 7 children and another one, Emma Mae, 11 months old, who tragically died of dysentary in 1932. Through the Depression and Hard Times, Sheriffs and Revenue Men, "adopting" a gremlin-like, five-foot hermit called "Hootie" who became part of the family, Charlie strode as a giant of a man in the South as a "bridge between those old, wild days of the river and this more civilized time." He died in 1958.
Of course, Ava gets her own story told as well, and she is also her own passionate, church-going person who grew tired trying to make homes in what she called "the jungle" wilds outside of town.
"Ava's Man" is an all-American portrait that captures the colorful and rich characters that built this country and faced challenges we will will never know, while loving and living every day full of value.
When Bragg began asking his mother and aunts about their dad's funeral. Their response amazed him: "What kind of man was this, I wondered, who is so beloved, so missed, that the mere mention of his death would make them cry forty-two years after he was preached into the sky? A man like that, I thought to myself, probably deserves a book... So, since I never really had a grandfather, I decided to make me one. I asked my mother's people to tell me all the stories they could remember from Charlie Bundrum's life and times. With their help, I built him up from dirt level, using half-forgotten sayings, half-remembered stories and a few yellowed, brittle, black-and-white photographs that, under the watch of my kin, I handled like diamonds."
"A tall, bone-thin man", illiterate, restless, fiercely protective and dedicated to his family, Charlie stands out among men of the Greatest Generation moving his crew from one bare cottage to another, back and forth across the Alabama and Georgia border. He was a skilled carpenter, roofer, fisherman and moonshiner, not to mention a world-class storyteller. He "drank his own product and sang, laughed and buck-danced, under the stars."
Bragg's narrative is homespun:
"Charlie was not an impassive man, but someone whose emotions rode on the bridge of his nose. Happiness, anger, frustration, dismay, disgust and pity-- no one ever remembers seeing fear-- flashed across his face, depending on the circumstances, but today there was nothing but peace, and maybe contentment. When Ava was unhappy, nobody was happy. And likewise, when their daddy was happy, when he laughed, they all felt it, and shared it."
I greatly enjoyed this family saga of the family of 7 children and another one, Emma Mae, 11 months old, who tragically died of dysentary in 1932. Through the Depression and Hard Times, Sheriffs and Revenue Men, "adopting" a gremlin-like, five-foot hermit called "Hootie" who became part of the family, Charlie strode as a giant of a man in the South as a "bridge between those old, wild days of the river and this more civilized time." He died in 1958.
Of course, Ava gets her own story told as well, and she is also her own passionate, church-going person who grew tired trying to make homes in what she called "the jungle" wilds outside of town.
"Ava's Man" is an all-American portrait that captures the colorful and rich characters that built this country and faced challenges we will will never know, while loving and living every day full of value.