2015 books: 43-47

[the_siobhan]

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules and Men and Dust Tracks On a Road by Zora Neale Hurston
One of the books says 1991 inside the front cover.

About 25 years ago Utne Reader created an "alternative classics" list. I clipped it out and stuck it on the cork board by my desk, and if I happened to see a book by one of the authors on that list I picked it up. (It's also how I ended up reading Gabriel García Márquez.) Anyway at some point I saw this trilogy by Hurston so I bought it.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937 and tells the story of a young woman who is married three times. Her first husband is a local farmer, she is married to him at a very young age by her grandmother who wants her to have security. She doesn't love him and she soon runs away with a man with wants to be bigshot in a new all-black town being founded in Florida. After her second husband's death she runs away with the man who becomes her third husband, an itinerant labourer and musician. It creates a scandal in her home town because he is so much younger and poorer than she is.

Hurston's writing style is interesting because her descriptions are so compact that a lot goes on in a very few words. On the other hand, a large percentage of the story is told through speech, and there is nothing compact about the way her characters express themselves. They speak in the coloquial language of the rural black south, and it can be difficult at times to get into the rhythm of it because she spells it all phonetically.

Mules and Men is a compilation of rural black stories and "lies". The stories are fun, but my favourite part is reading about her experiences as she travels around the South collecting them.

Dust Tracks On a Road is her autobiography. I'll be honest, I didn't finish this one. I find her fiction a lot more interesting.




Silk Road and Bronze Mirror by Jeanne Larsen
I think I got Silk Road from the Book of the Month Club.

This is a lovely book. It takes place in Tsang China and for the first two-thirds of the book it's really two stories running in parallel. One is the story of a girl who is kidnapped and sold as a slave who grows up to be a courtesan searching for her family. The second is the events taking place in the abodes of various Gods, spirits and otherworldly beings, all of whom are taking an interest in the life of this girl for their own reasons. As the book progresses the two stories merge into a single narrative.

I spotted Bronze Mirror years later and scooped it up immediately when I realized it was the same author. It has a similar style where the story is divided into parallel narratives; in this case between the members of the Heavenly court who are participating in a story-telling competion, and the mortals who are compelled to live out the events being described.

These are both beautifully written books and the author's love for the people and places shines through every word. Both are highly recommended, although if I had to choose I think I like Silk Road a little more. It's a more complex story with a much larger cast of characters.