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sherbertwells's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
The cover for my copy of Kelli Jo Ford’s novel Crooked Hallelujah depicts two women filled in by a burning sky. This is clever advertising on the part of the publishing company—the sweeping, tough and flammable environment of Ford’s debut is its strongest element.
It’s also one of the few things that Crooked Hallelujah’s stories have in common. The novel feels like a literary experiment, since it’s a more-or-less linear arrangement of stories Ford published in the Virginia Quarterly Review and other magazines between 2012 and 2020. While time frames and perspectives frequently shift, the overall narrative follows Justine, a Cherokee woman raised in a conservative evangelical environment, and her family as they move between Oklahoma and Texas in the late 20th-century. The last of the stories, which was the first one Ford published, is a bizarre departure from the rest; it’s as if she wrote a killer finale, realized she could make a whole book about the characters but forgot to outline how they got there. The result is too broad to be YA, not sophisticated enough to be literary fiction, and almost as coherent as a collection of short stories.
The most compelling episodes appear at the beginning and near the end of the book, and deal with conflict between Justine and her deeply-religious mother, Lula. While their relationship is loving, Lula’s devotion to the Holiness Church keeps her from embracing her daughter, who becomes pregnant after an assault, and from seeking treatment for a brain tumor that hovers over the rest of the novel like a black cloud.
“She makes me so mad I could spit, but I can’t begin to imagine the strength it takes to refuse a pill that would give you a whole new life, one without seizures, without the embarrassment of waking up to strangers’ faces and unfamiliar ceilings. Faith that moves mountains” (232).
But as Justine and her daughter Reney head south, away from their community, the narrative action grows more muted. Things happen in the middle part of the book—brushfires, for one—but the shifting narrators become disorienting, not refreshing. Ford’s writing doesn’t help.
“[Justine] couldn’t know how in a few months she’d be flooded with a crippling love for another human being that would wound her for the rest of her days, how her insides would be wiped clean, burdened, and saved by a kid who’d come kicking into this world with Justine’s own blue eyes, a full head of black hair and lips Justine would swear looks just like a rosebud. For now, that little car filled with three—almost four—generations flew” (37),
The prose is hazy and haphazard, perhaps because Crooked Hallelujah is Ford’s debut novel. If writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and Louise Erdrich are like perfume, suggesting emotional heft with precise, restrained writing, Ford is like campfire smoke: brazen and enthusiastic, chasing the wind and often blowing into the eyes of the reader.
But like smoke, and like the landscape her characters traverse, she lingers. A few of the stories in Crooked Hallelujah are fascinating; my personal favorites are “Book of the Generations” and “The Care and Feeding of Goldfish,” but “What Good Is an Ark to a Fish,” the last story, is a good standalone. I’m glad I read the book, even if it wasn’t particularly compelling, and I would not refuse her novels in the future.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Medical content, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Religious bigotry and Police brutality
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