I had trouble making up my mind about reviewing these two remarkable novels. I liked them, but didn’t entirely approve of them. But they didn’t offend me either. I guess I’ll just describe them and let you draw your own conclusions.
What Dies in Summer and Blackbird, by Tom Wright are connected novels, with the same main characters, but there’s enough separation to make them very distinct; not quite a series.
The central characters are Jim “Biscuit” Bonham, a teenager in Dallas in What Dies in Summer, and his cousin Lou Ann (“L.A.”), who comes to live with him and his grandmother. The two cousins are children of sisters who are both alcoholic, and are no longer able to live with their parents.
They’re poor, and you might almost describe them as “white trash,” except that their grandmother is a smart and good woman, determined to see that they grow up loved and well educated. They are both unusually intelligent, though Jim doesn’t believe it of himself.
Their story moves out of soap opera territory when, one day, out hunting returnable bottles, Jim and L.A. discover a murder victim – a girl their own age, raped, strangled, and left naked.
Two kids this smart can’t stay out of the investigation, and their inquiries bring them into serious danger from a surprising quarter.
The second book, Blackbird, takes place decades later. Jim is now a homicide detective in Texarkana, separated from his wife and lonely. Cousin L.A. comes to visit him just as he gets involved in the investigation of a bizarre murder – a female psychiatrist has been crucified to a tree in a local park. As Jim works the case, he struggles with the choice his wife has set before him – either leave the police force and be a husband and father, or remain a cop and lose his family.
Author Wright has definite opinions on the supernatural, and he isn’t afraid to tell us about them. Jim has a touch of “the Sight” – he gets dreams and visions of the future, though they’re too vague to be of much help to him. Comments about Christianity are frequent, and not always admiring – Wright suggests, oddly, in Blackbird that we have no good evidence that Jesus was crucified, which strikes me as odd. Jim himself rejects Christianity, but is “spiritual” in some sense. The consensus seems to be that the spiritual world is real, but that Christianity is an inadequate expression of it.
On the other hand, their grandmother, “Gran” is a devout Bible Christian, and she is one of the best people in the books. So there’s no hostility here.
I found the coming of age aspects of What Dies in Summer a little more explicit than I cared for, especially the scene where Jim loses his virginity. Considering the age of the participants, it made me uncomfortable.
But the writing is excellent, and the characterizations are splendid. I had a little trouble following the resolution of What Dies in Summer, but I guess the events aren’t inconceivable. An odd thing is that, while What Dies in Summer is presented as a normal American book, Blackbird has a British publisher. So all the (very American) dialogue is decked out with British orthography – double quotes inside single quotes, and “tyre” for tire, for instance. Somewhat disconcerting, but not enough to spoil my enjoyment of two very well written – but challenging – books.