Jack CBR-III #8 Sufficient Grace

Apparently I can't count and I'm too lazy to go redo it. So, here we are at number 8.

Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult. Apparently, although I was choking to death on Faulkner by the time I got out of grad school, I can't get away from Southern novels. Well, Southernish. This novel takes place between two neighboring towns and tells the stories of two families, one black, one white, brought together by the protagonist's slow decent into schizophrenia. There's no spoiler involved to tell you that one day Gracie wakes up, prepares her house, cuts up her credit cards, gets in the car and drives away from home, thirty year marriage, and grown daughter. She is found sleeping on the grave of Arty, dead husband of Mattie, and son of Ma Toot, in a town just across the state line. The two black women take her home and care for her. The rest of the story unfolds as the supporting characters each deal with Gracie's (who goes by Rachel at Ma Toot's house) madness and the effect it has on their lives.

There were two things that really struck me about this book. First, Gracie/Rachel's decent into madness is described in terms of the voices she hears and sometimes the specifically odd things they tell her. That, in and of itself, not so striking. But, the novel is peopled with other people who listen to voices of their own, and yet clearly aren't crazy. The juxtaposing of crazy voice versus the little messages we all hear from day to day is at times riveting. It made reading about this type of illness as accessible in a lot of ways.

The second thing is the richness of the characters and their individual development. Ed, Gracie's husband, who she leaves without ever looking back, undergoes two significant and completely believable transformations. Not only that, all the while, he struggles to do what he can to relate to his wife, support her, and find a way to bridge the disassociation between them. Ed and Ma Toots are two most developed characters in the novel and both their stories are compelling, but it's the humanity and level of detail given to even the tertiary characters that makes this novel so compelling. The aching, beautiful secretary, who has always wanted Ed's attention, in only a few pages comes alive and is more more interesting and sympathetic than the stereotype you might expect (and get) elsewhere. Ginger, Gracie's daughter, is equal parts irritating and relatable. Her fear of what family crazy means and the impact it will have on her specifically is sometimes moving, her impatience with her "crazy" mother in the closing chapters brings some good, believable comic relief.

Another interesting thing is the way the book explores how these people respond when new roads are opened up before them. Ed and Gracie have been married 30 years. It seems like all the decisions about their life have been made until she leaves and then Ed gets to make new ones. Mattie is grieving for her husband and has decided to make it a full-time endeavor until the presence of Gracie (and others) make her rethink the paths that may be available to her. Each character comes to know something new about themselves, something brimming with potential Some of the stories tie up a little more neatly necessary, but even still you can believe it might, could happen that way, if you listen really hard to the little voice inside.