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A review by karieh13
The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips
3.0
…”the right answer could be more than one thing at the same time.”
That’s the last line of “The Well and the Mine”, by Gin Phillips. I begin with that because when thinking about my review of this book, I realized that I had no set answer to the question about how I felt about it.
I’m neither from the South or a small town nor did I grow up in the 1930’s. I am dependent on what I read and hear and watch to get some sense of what that life must have been like. In this book, I get some vivid glimpses of what for me is usually a slow motion, sepia movie. Some smells and sounds and tastes burst forth through Miller’s words.
“With your teeth about gone and your stomach not handling much, I could see how fruit would be on your mind, how a taste of sunshine and breeze might hold you over until you’re wrapped up in blankets, sore from not leaving the bed for so long. When you pass away in the summer, they can bring the summer into you.”
With passages like these, she manages to bring forth the contrast of misery, despair, pain…and the wonderful yet simple gifts that make up our world. More than one thing at the same time…
And the simple things, described in such a way that they shine forth out of the grueling life of the characters that inhabit this book and the small town of Carbon Hill, Alabama, are the strength of this book.
“Leta was a great cook, good as any woman I’ve ever known, but the real mystery was how she knew what should fit together, what mix of foods made the right mouthful. Beans and onion. Squash and tomato. It was the different tastes together, the ones that it didn’t make no sense at all to stick on the same fork, that your tongue really remembered.”
Miller does a good job in detailing very clearly the reality of life in a mine town, population 3000, in the 1930s. Life was a battle fought each and every day. As Fannie Flagg mentions in her introduction to this book – “The Moores have no safety net, no protection against the worst other than Albert Moore’s good health and paycheck.” I felt that throughout the book. The incredibly long hours of backbreaking work, the fear that each and every day, not only the mine but life itself might come tumbling down…but there are those gleaming moments that these characters appreciate and hoard, and that serve as the bright spots in dark times.
“We sank into the mattress, with the weight of two bodies and all the tiredness and the work and the bills to be paid. Usually he’d squeeze my leg and I’d nuzzle his neck and we’d fall into sleep without saying a word. All the words and the moving and all the thinking were used up by dark.”
The voices of the different characters, Tess and Virgie, Jack, Albert and Leta, took a while to build in volume. I kept having to turn back to see who was talking. About midway through, I also started hearing the voices of Scout and Atticus Finch. And while I certainly see that two books written about small towns in Alabama in the 1930s would have some similar themes…this seemed a bit much.
One very jarring note occurs when suddenly the reader is jerked forward into present day. This felt very disruptive to the flow of the book and although I understand the contrast that was being made, I wish these random journeys out of the timeline of the book hadn’t been there.
But I will finish, then, with the first line of the book. “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.” A mystery woman throws a baby in a well. That is the start of the book – but in the end – that mystery plays a minor roll. I kept forgetting about that (which given the importance one would think an event like that would hold, felt odd) and the book would only go back to it every now and again. What starts out seeming to be a story about a shocking event in the life of a small town, ends up being about a small town world where shocking events sometimes get buried under the dirt and sweat and tears of life.
That’s the last line of “The Well and the Mine”, by Gin Phillips. I begin with that because when thinking about my review of this book, I realized that I had no set answer to the question about how I felt about it.
I’m neither from the South or a small town nor did I grow up in the 1930’s. I am dependent on what I read and hear and watch to get some sense of what that life must have been like. In this book, I get some vivid glimpses of what for me is usually a slow motion, sepia movie. Some smells and sounds and tastes burst forth through Miller’s words.
“With your teeth about gone and your stomach not handling much, I could see how fruit would be on your mind, how a taste of sunshine and breeze might hold you over until you’re wrapped up in blankets, sore from not leaving the bed for so long. When you pass away in the summer, they can bring the summer into you.”
With passages like these, she manages to bring forth the contrast of misery, despair, pain…and the wonderful yet simple gifts that make up our world. More than one thing at the same time…
And the simple things, described in such a way that they shine forth out of the grueling life of the characters that inhabit this book and the small town of Carbon Hill, Alabama, are the strength of this book.
“Leta was a great cook, good as any woman I’ve ever known, but the real mystery was how she knew what should fit together, what mix of foods made the right mouthful. Beans and onion. Squash and tomato. It was the different tastes together, the ones that it didn’t make no sense at all to stick on the same fork, that your tongue really remembered.”
Miller does a good job in detailing very clearly the reality of life in a mine town, population 3000, in the 1930s. Life was a battle fought each and every day. As Fannie Flagg mentions in her introduction to this book – “The Moores have no safety net, no protection against the worst other than Albert Moore’s good health and paycheck.” I felt that throughout the book. The incredibly long hours of backbreaking work, the fear that each and every day, not only the mine but life itself might come tumbling down…but there are those gleaming moments that these characters appreciate and hoard, and that serve as the bright spots in dark times.
“We sank into the mattress, with the weight of two bodies and all the tiredness and the work and the bills to be paid. Usually he’d squeeze my leg and I’d nuzzle his neck and we’d fall into sleep without saying a word. All the words and the moving and all the thinking were used up by dark.”
The voices of the different characters, Tess and Virgie, Jack, Albert and Leta, took a while to build in volume. I kept having to turn back to see who was talking. About midway through, I also started hearing the voices of Scout and Atticus Finch. And while I certainly see that two books written about small towns in Alabama in the 1930s would have some similar themes…this seemed a bit much.
One very jarring note occurs when suddenly the reader is jerked forward into present day. This felt very disruptive to the flow of the book and although I understand the contrast that was being made, I wish these random journeys out of the timeline of the book hadn’t been there.
But I will finish, then, with the first line of the book. “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.” A mystery woman throws a baby in a well. That is the start of the book – but in the end – that mystery plays a minor roll. I kept forgetting about that (which given the importance one would think an event like that would hold, felt odd) and the book would only go back to it every now and again. What starts out seeming to be a story about a shocking event in the life of a small town, ends up being about a small town world where shocking events sometimes get buried under the dirt and sweat and tears of life.