I’ve just read Robert Morgan’s Gap Creek (of Oprah’s book club fame) and his more recent novel This Rock. I enjoyed both, but I really can’t understand why Oprah picked the former and not the latter, other than GC has a strong female protagonist. GC spans the first year of marriage for Hank and Julie Richards. Through Julie’s first person perspective, the reader glimpses authentic Carolina mountain life before the turn of the century. Morgan’s prose is clean and poetic, a pleasure to read. I’m sure he was influenced heavily by Arnow, but whereas she used phonetic spelling, he practices the current technique of suggesting dialect through syntax. Consequently, the language rings true without condescension. This Rock , which is set during the early 1920s, alternates between the perspectives of a young man Muir and his widowed mother Ginny. Muir’s voice commands most chapters with Ginny’s appearing sporadically. This is a classic Cain and Abel story of Muir’s search for himself and his struggle with his brother Moody. In retrospect, I wonder why Morgan allows us to see Moody only through the eyes of his mother and brother rather than giving him his own chapters. I’ll have to mull about this choice because I’m sure it’s significant in understanding the way Moody functions in the story. One part of the book that doesn’t work for me is a segment about a circus coming to town and an elephant stomping a man to death. I think Morgan based this on a true incident, but it doesn’t flow within the context of the novel. A middle-aged Hank and Julie appear in this novel, but fleetingly. I recommend both books, and I look forward to reading more of Morgan’s fiction. (He has a Daniel Boone biography coming out in October, BTW.)
Gap Creek PS3563.O87147 G36 2000
This Rock PS3563.O87147 T48 2001
