Tag: Rural

Snowbound: A Novel of Suspense by A.J. Questenberg

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Snowbound: A Novel of Suspense by A.J. Questenberg

Snowbound is the slow exposure of a long-buried small town mystery. The arrival of a newcomer causes suspicions to rise, old questions are rehashed, and as truths become visible, the lives and community begin to unravel. The story begins with Sam Egar as she moves into a new home and begins to learn its quirks — and the quirks of her new neighbors, some of whom welcome her and others who… well, are a little shady. Soon Sam discovers the shade is far darker than she imagined.

Readers of slow, gothic-style horror will find Snowbound a deeply immersive tale, one which mimics the slow pace of rural life. The novel includes a large cast of characters, the various members of the community past and present, those who vanished and those left behind to sort through the mysteries of the others’ disappearances. (At times this reader found it hard to recall who was who and their place in this tale.)

The novel, compelling as the story is, was less to my personal taste than I had hoped. There were minor issues, which on their own are easily overlooked, however, collectively these errors made the reading less enjoyable for me. There was the occasional — forgivable — typographical or spelling error (“stock” instead of “stalk”, for example), which was jarring, but did not detract from the overall meaning intended (I think). Some parts of the exposition provided unnecessary details and therefore distracted me from the arc of the moment. The most dissonance (for this reader) was caused by structural gaps in characters’ knowledge, which undermined these characters’ development: these were things characters couldn’t know about one another (because they were, after all new to the community), turns of phrase which implied a foreknowledge that wasn’t explained. This is not a literary analysis; and readers, you may find these issues less invasive in your experience of the novel than I.

All this said, on the whole, the prose was well-crafted, if plodding and redundant in parts. The story itself is deeply intriguing, and well-paced to draw out the tension of the mystery. Snowbound is a fitting and fantastic read for those grey wintry months, when one isn’t quite sure what happens behind the closed doors of one’s neighbors…

The River We Remember: A Novel by William Kent Krueger

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The River We Remember: A Novel by William Kent Krueger

As a reader, we all yearn for those novels that truly take us to another moment in time and hold us there until we feel like our own world is strange. We are lost when we return to our reality, feeling a little fuzzy in the head. I felt that way with this novel.

The River We Remember is a historical murder mystery, a story that is almost a cliché: the cowboy-like detective of a small, rural town, embroiled in the politics and corruption that all small towns seem to have and own proudly, must cut through all that to discover the truth. Along the way he has to confront his own loyalties, his own foibles, his own prejudices. He’s a flawed human being. Indeed, that’s part of Krueger’s skill here as a story-teller. His characters are fleshy, flawed beings, each with their own set of ambitions and darkness.

The River We Remember documents the seediness of life in a small town that looks perfect and serene on the exterior. That’s the kind of atmosphere Krueger builds here. Exposure of what lies in the shade. The crime rips away the comfort of that darkness, makes everything come into the glaring light.

The brilliance of the story aside, Krueger’s prose and dialogue, both the internal reflection of its protagonist and what is voiced, creates a lively world. Readers can almost hear the breath of the characters as they brush past the invisible reader in their midst.

The Bandit Queens: A Novel by Parini Shroff

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The Bandit Queens: A Novel
by Parini Shroff

I absolutely loved reading this book. Every twist, every shift of the story was both unpredictable and comfortably familiar. It was gratifying. I won’t give it away, but I found myself saying, “I knew it!” and “Oh, noooooo!” equally as frequently.

The story unfolds in a small rural Indian village (a fact about it I love; too often the novels I’ve read of India focus on the urban experience) and revolves around a woman whose husband has vanished under mysterious circumstances. The villagers suspect nefarious reasons and the woman is ostracized as a witch, though nominally included in a number of village activities, including a micro-financing program run by one of several foreign NGOs.

As the women become empowered through their new wealth and skills, they find themselves unwilling to bow to the patriarchal norms of Indian culture and so they seek out the witch in their midst to help rid themselves of their problems in the way they imagine she did.

Mayhem and hilarity ensue. Vengeance too. And redemption. Really, this novel has it all.

Shroff’s prose is another worthy reason to pick up this novel. Her voice is clear, bell-like and unique; her voice as an author, like the the women she writes is individual. The prose is confident and bold, clear and evocative. In several parts, Shroff touches too close to the reality of being a woman in a patriarchal society. I twinged when I read those words, both out of appreciation at being seen and discomfort, being confronted with the fact that women are universally abused.

I especially appreciated Shroff’s portrayal of rural Indian women. The characters here are fleshy women who disrupt the stereotype of the unworldly, uneducated, unintelligent village woman. This is a work of decolonization, unravelling the orientalist stereotype too many Indian women have — and are — burdened with.

I cannot wait for Shroff’s next book.