This is the 200th book I've read this year. It's a milestone for my lack of having much of a life outside of going to work and going on aifaf on Sundays. So, for my 200th book I thought about what I would read. I decided that I didn't want it to be one of the hard-boiled crime novels I'd been reading recently, and then I almost made it a Parker novel, which seemed sort of fitting since the Richard Stark novels have kind of been a running theme along with MMA for me in my reviews and reading choices this year. And then I happened to be moving a pile of books from one spot of my floor to another when I saw that George and Rue was there. Ah ha! This would be perfect, it's a serious novel and it's something Karen has been trying to get me to read for over a year. Canadian poet / novelist George Elliott Clarke, you shall be the author of the 200th book I will read this year!And I read it, and I really really liked it. I don't know if it's a pure five stars, but it's totally a very strong four, and I like it more most of the books I've been giving out four stars to lately, so I'm going to let this one shine with a five! You know what isn't five stars though? The cover. The cover is a travesty. It looks like it should be a cover for some press-junket arc or something. Whomever came up with this cover should have their fingers broken so they can't operate a computer ever again. The suit who came up with this should be fired for being a fuckwad twit. The cover is awful. It's like a girl who dresses up all slutty to go out, there is no decency, and it's just trying to attract attention. I was going to say it's like a fat ugly girl, like some fourth generation almost toothless at twenty-two year old girl going out dressed all slutty just to get the attention of some drunk sleaze bag for a few hours, but that would be a disservice to the book. The book isn't some disgusting piece of trailer trash, it's a beautiful, dark and awful (in the best possible meaning of the word) book that shouldn't need to have six blurbs, all of which are in bigger font than the author's name and carry almost all of the attention of the cover. A travesty in design!After reading a months worth of crime novels this novel stands out in very sharp contrast. In crime-novels perfect crimes are hatched. Alibi's are created. All possible ties are severed. In this fictionalized account of an actual murder it's like the most imperfect crime ever committed. Two bothers bash in taxi drives head for about 160 dollars and some coins. Before bashing in his head they drive all around the county, stopping in to say hi to friends, attempting to get bootleg hooch from another friend, just making themselves all known to be in the cab with the driver. Afterwards, they drive around with the body in the trunk. One of them goes to a town, he visits people with the car, he pays off debts, he goes to an expensive whore, it doesn't bother him to be seen in the car, throwing around money, even though he's poor as dirt, never known to have money to throw around or a car. This is like the dumbest and most trivial crime ever. One of the brothers was a half suave borderline criminal. The other was a good natured and fairly dumb nice guy. The latter would say this on his first day in court, "Your Honour, sir, I object of answerin any questions on the ground they might be disciminatin on me." He then tries to take the Fifth and has to be informed that he is in Canada and not the United States. Should I mention that he's the brother who drives the car around the county, paying visits and paying off debts with the body in the trunk? The brothers hang for their crime. This book is about the life, sort of what led them to the fairly senseless murder and their subsequent execution. The two brothers are first cousins once removed (whatever that means, I don't have enough family to remove anyone, and most of my family is something like first cousin, adopted or from another marriage) of the author. It's about poor blacks that were brought to Canada by the British after they were 'liberated' from the United States in the War of 1812. It's about ignorance and poverty and cursed people trapped in their own environment. Except for the murder, the story is pretty standard poor trash starting with the mother and father. They meet and everything is great. Asa figured his bestest possession be Cynthy, his wife, and wouldn't it be nice to see such pleasure bear fruit? but at first, after conjunction, she'd crush seeds of Queen Anne's lace, mix the white powder with water, and drink to keep the babies off. Still, how can forever refuse natural consequences of love? And so, Georgie happened along. some time last year, 1925.That's when the sweetness turned ugly...That passage is from about the fifth page of the book, and it's the whole stupid (i'd normally just say white, but this is about blacks) poor trash story. The stupid fucks who have five kids by the time they are twenty four. The people who are grandparents by my age, the general unhappiness and misery that such a life creates and the failure of quick attempts to grasp at temporary solutions ultimately makes everything so much worse. I don't think I'm doing a decent job putting this in to words but maybe I was able to sort of make myself inarticulately clear. This is a really really good novel, and it helps give evidence to my idea that Arcadia, or the East Coast of Canada, or whatever it's called is our gothic Southern world. Take away the bitter cold and ice and this story would have no problem being set anywhere in the deep South during the same time period.
just come - from amazon, nice hardback. Although I am being swept along by the torrent of his prose, I haven't got very far as I keep going back to re-read, and re-read again....stunning book. Vivid, intense, unrelenting, written by a poet about cousins of his who were hung for murder in 1949. The book uses real letters and notes and documents but is a fictionalisation of the titular brothers' lives and takes you through their violent upbringing in grindiong poverty and the inhospitable cold of Nova Scotia: The falling snow hammered a prison into shape around them. Snow belted them like their father's hand.They are products of a loveless marriage: Her marriage was an orchard of rotten fruit and dry, snapped branches, a wormy atmosphere.. The father was no longer crazy for incuntation with her. After a gallon of plonk, he'd go stumbling, jaundice-eyed, tar-faced, cussing, up and down the road, seeking some thoroughbred hussy, with his foul lust sticking out, dripping, his cock looking like dried up muck, a worm of snot dangling from a nostril, and his whole being reeking of pork-scented smoke.The brothers, variously described as two pieces of shit,and just black boys blackened further by Depression, are not the same though: George is not violent (never hit a man), and although a petty criminal has begun to live a 'straight' life with his wife and children (albeit still in terrible poverty) when Rue arrives (out of jail) and entices George back into a life of crime. Eventually they kill - although they only mean to stun him with a hammer - and rob a taxi driver, George's friend. George does not kill, but provides the murder weapon, and is full of guilt and remorse at the end, during and after the trial. Rue, a failed musician with his own style learnt on half a piano, remains defiant and unrepentant to the end. In court when asked why he is there, he answers Because my mama and papa made me - just like you.; and if his brother wore reading glasses: I never seen him reading. Whereas George converts to Christianity and writes for mercy to several dignitaries from his death-cell.There is no redemption in this book, despite George's conversion. Religion is tainted by its practitioners - the local preacher was skilled at the subtle fucking of wives. Yep, he loved hogs, whores, and wine, in no apparent order and runs off with the boy's mother, eventually killing the drunken father by roping him up and nudging the wriggling man off the wharf... He died thinking, "Who's pissin in my face?". This is in Halfax who's raw sewage pipe into the harbour was Halifax's answer to the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Great Wall of China, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Acadia (new word to my ignorant ears), and Canada itself does not come out well: racism and neglect, poverty and indifference are the keynotes here. So not a pleasant read perhaps, but Clarke's poetic use of language drives you through it. Georgie careened through a cliff-slippery, hilly city, dramatically shuddering, crazy toward the Fundy. He saw churches mushroom from solid gravel; teeter-totter houses see-saw up and down steep, cascading hills. Occasionally I did feel his writing got a bit much, with word play on every page it seemed: When Rue saw Silver he saw red; He hated Rue's unfunky jazz: music should doctor, not need one.; Their affair had lust in it - the remains of lustre. All these are fine, but tiring when there are so many. But the book's vivid potrayal of rough and bitter lives amidst a rough and bitter landscape is worth all five stars.Thanks Karen for bringing this to my attention.
What do You think about George And Rue (2015)?
okay - it is time to write a proper review for this book, particularly since i have been recommending it like crazy over the past few days, and since it is out of print, i should at least make the effort to try to explain why you should make the effort, yeah?but damned if i know where to start. cover-blurbs compare it to james baldwin and faulkner. is that a start? i haven't read baldwin, and i haven't liked the one faulkner i did read, so let me dig a little deeper...it is a luminous example of the lyricism of the afro-canadian literary tradition. yeah, that's true, but what a chunkily pompous sentence to describe this whirlwind of a book that sweeps you away with its bluesy prose and brutal and violent episodes. but not gratuitously violent. see what i mean?? i'm all thumbs and redundancies and backtracking when it comes to trying to make you read this. all i can tell you is how he makes me feel. he destroys me. just punches my heart over and over and then rubs it all over with whiskey poetry. if you want examples of his writing, i have "reviewed" about 5 books of his poetry, where i basically just typed out his poems because he is a much better writer than me, and he can sell himself. he just needs to be back in print to do so. read him read him read him.kathy, alan, and bill have written more relevant reviews of this that should be read, and i am so glad they listened to me and took a chance and wrote good reviews about this secret gem of a book, because i am too in love with it to even begin to tell you why.hardly a "proper" review after all, but i am hopelessly inept.
—karen
