Bloodroot Amy Greene

Wally Lamb said about this book, It has everything I look for in a novel." Pretty tall praise if you ask me.

I liked this novel, but honestly, for me, it didn't quite deliver. It's a multi-generational story about a family in the Tennessee Smokey Mountains living under a curse. The novel is broken into three parts covering the 3 generations, each with it's own fixation on Myra, the child born who should have broken the curse.

The early part of the novel, narrated by Myra's grandmother Byrdie, is vivid and engaging. Byrdie has the "gift" she inherited from the granny women. The description of her love for Myra, juxtaposed against that of Douglas, who loves Myra from a far during her childhood portrays Myra as an almost enchanting character. One wonders about what gifts Byrdie may have passed on to her. Unfortunately, the enchanting set up is lost after the first section as the novels circles in further and further on the hurt and disappointment suffered by the Lamb family.

The second section is narrated by the now adult twin children of Myra, who suffer in their own ways from the fall-out of her decisions. Although the reader still doesn't know the source of these decisions. The children are adrift, separated from each other in childhood yet still spiraling in the circle their heritage seems to have destined to them. In the final pages of the novel, I think we are suppose to find them hopeful, and I might be able to see it with Johnny, just a little, but I don't with Laura, at all.

The final section of the novel gives a first hand account of Myra and her husband John Odom. I have to be honest, I was disappointed here. Greene has a true gift for capturing horrific moments, of rendering the inexcusable part of every day life in a way that can be breath taking. However, the violence feels almost forced and this reader hoped for more than lustful romance turned sour when fermented in broken dreams and alcohol. I have to be honest, there also seems to be a kind of cultural acceptance, and community complicity about the way things are. At one point, Myra tells her granny, who comes willing to save her from her atrocious marriage, "I made my bed." A similar attitude resonates among other characters as well. It made this reader expect something more, some exceptional pull or force, most likely borne out of the mountain that held things as they were. The beginning of the novel seems to set up something like that, and more. There were moments, early on in the novel that reminded me of Gloria Naylor. I anticipated that kind of subtle magic and it never came.

The novel, is if nothing else, a successful love letter to the mountains. Greene brings the mountains to life in a way that makes you want to see them, breathe them really. The mountain is almost a character itself in the novel, pushing and pulling other characters in one direction or another.