Helpful Score: 1
This third installment in Rick Bragg's family saga wobbles a bit at first, but quickly gets its legs under it as Bragg searches for a new understanding of the father he remembered only as a disruptive force who came and went with the violence of a hurricane.
What he found, through the eyes and voices and memories of relatives and childhood friends was a child born to a family of hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-fisted men, a child who grew into a boy of stubbornness and pride and a refusal to give an inch, and a boy who became a man touched early and often by the liquor and violence that had nurtured him.
Bragg intersperses these interviews with brief vignettes about becoming a father unexpectedly in his forties, when he married a woman with three boys, the youngest only five when Bragg began courting their mother. Somehow, the contrast between this child, growing up without his father present, and Bragg himself making the same journey but in very different shoes, drove him to want to learn more about the angry ghost who had for so long haunted his life.
What he finds does not lead to a Hallmark Movie Moment of forgiveness and redemption, but it does allow him to discover a man whose memory he can live with and whose struggles he acknowledges. Along the way, Bragg produces his powerful and lyric prose, dragged up from his soul and hammered into a thing of beauty on the page.
Bragg understands innately that time and place create the man. His descriptions of the brutal, man-eating cotton mills of the mid-20th century South equal anything Upton Sinclair ever wrote about the killing floors of Chicago's meat-packing houses, threaded through with a dark and terrible poetry thrown in at no extra charge. He writes of times and places that no longer exist, acknowledging both their beauty and their cruelty, with the understanding that both of those forces created the man who fathered, loved, disappointed, and abandoned him.
Taken together, All Over But the Shoutin, Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown are monumental as portraits of a vanished way of life, and a heartbreakingly real story of an American family.
What he found, through the eyes and voices and memories of relatives and childhood friends was a child born to a family of hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-fisted men, a child who grew into a boy of stubbornness and pride and a refusal to give an inch, and a boy who became a man touched early and often by the liquor and violence that had nurtured him.
Bragg intersperses these interviews with brief vignettes about becoming a father unexpectedly in his forties, when he married a woman with three boys, the youngest only five when Bragg began courting their mother. Somehow, the contrast between this child, growing up without his father present, and Bragg himself making the same journey but in very different shoes, drove him to want to learn more about the angry ghost who had for so long haunted his life.
What he finds does not lead to a Hallmark Movie Moment of forgiveness and redemption, but it does allow him to discover a man whose memory he can live with and whose struggles he acknowledges. Along the way, Bragg produces his powerful and lyric prose, dragged up from his soul and hammered into a thing of beauty on the page.
Bragg understands innately that time and place create the man. His descriptions of the brutal, man-eating cotton mills of the mid-20th century South equal anything Upton Sinclair ever wrote about the killing floors of Chicago's meat-packing houses, threaded through with a dark and terrible poetry thrown in at no extra charge. He writes of times and places that no longer exist, acknowledging both their beauty and their cruelty, with the understanding that both of those forces created the man who fathered, loved, disappointed, and abandoned him.
Taken together, All Over But the Shoutin, Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown are monumental as portraits of a vanished way of life, and a heartbreakingly real story of an American family.
Helpful Score: 1
This book was a little different from Bragg's other memoirs. I think he had a difficult time with this one because he seemed to find out that his father wasn't as bad a man as he believed. You could tell in his writing that he was struggling with what he found out from his father's friends. In the end, he came to realize that he was more than just a worthless drunk.
Each chapter included hilarious stories about about Bragg's youngest stepson stepson. They also gave insight into how he had a hard time relating to him because he was growing up so differently from the way Bragg grew up.
If you enjoyed the other two books then I highly recommend this one. Just remember that it's a little different from his norm. I plan on adding this one to my library along with All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man.
Each chapter included hilarious stories about about Bragg's youngest stepson stepson. They also gave insight into how he had a hard time relating to him because he was growing up so differently from the way Bragg grew up.
If you enjoyed the other two books then I highly recommend this one. Just remember that it's a little different from his norm. I plan on adding this one to my library along with All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man.
Helpful Score: 1
I love Rick Bragg's writing style. I find as I read now, I search for writers that have his way with words. No one seems to write quite like him. He's a talented writer.
Helpful Score: 1
My wife and I have read most, if not all, of Bragg's books and find them all informative, entertaining and insightful. There's some repetition since they all cover the life of his family, but still enjoyable. We were led to him though his monthly column in Southern Living magazine.
