Mudbound

In very exciting news (which will thrill my dear sister-in-law, Marcy--ha!) I am setting a goal to write a book review every day this week! I have finished several books recently and am behind in reviewing them, so I am designating this "book review week". (Sorry Laura--you could designate this "bean and pasta week" for your family and use your grocery money on books instead of yummy food, giggle.)

I'll start by sharing about the novel Mudbound by Hillary Jordan and will warn you this is a read-in-one-day kind of a book so make sure you don't have anything major going on the day after you start it in case you have to stay up half the night.
The characterization in Mudbound is so well-done I both like and dislike each of the main characters. Jordan set her characters in the mid 1940s on a farm in the South amid the historical conflicts of soldiers coming home from WW II and tense racial relations. The multi-layered story is smoothly told from the perspective of the main characters so the reader gets a sense of each person's individual conflicts, choices, and growth.

Add together a newly married couple, city girl moved to a harsh country life, an aging, racist, critical father-in-law in the home, an emotionally wounded returning soldier/brother, Black sharecroppers and their hero-soldier son and you have the makings of quite a story touching many aspects of the human experience. This story includes betrayal and love, hatred and forgiveness, growth and revenge, triumph and despair, laughter and tears.

I enjoyed the relationship between married sharecroppers Hap and Florence and laughed aloud over their sparring more than once. The father/son relationships were poignant, the mother/child relationships were insightful, and the brother relationship. . .well, I think it was the main point of the whole book.

The contrast between the two brothers, Henry and Jamie, and their life choices and experiences give the reader a lot to think about, even as it was easy to get caught up in the story. I love the way the author summed up their characters:

"I felt a ripple of envy, which I saw echoed on Jamie's face. How simple things were for Henry! How I wished sometimes that I could join him in his stark, right-angled world, where everything was either right or wrong and there was no doubt which was which. What unimaginable luxury, never to wrestle with whether or why, never to lie awake nights wondering what if" (182).

"Jamie was thin-skinned to begin with, had been all his life. He was always looking for praise, then getting his feelings hurt when he didn't get it, or enough of it. And he never knew his own worth, not in his guts where a man needs to know it"(185).

A friend recommended this book to me and I'm glad she did. It was a "good read" and thought-provoking at the same time. Check your library for a copy.