05/02/2016
“Who can say what life will make of a body?” Watson (House of Mercury) asks in the affecting, nuanced story of a girl who “did not fear her own strangeness.” Jane, the youngest daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper, is born with a genital defect that renders her incontinent and incapable of having children. A local doctor takes an interest in Jane’s case—as well as her father’s home-brewed apple brandy—and becomes a lifelong advisor and confidant to the “prodigiously contemplative” girl. Jane is most comfortable in the woods around her house, though she does tentatively engage with the world, knowing full well that “she would always be the odd one, the one with the secret.” She indulges in a girlhood romance cautiously, unsure about what, if anything, to reveal about her condition. Jane is a great watcher, and the novel wonderfully conveys the amorous intensity with which she experiences nature’s fecundity, “the burst of salty liquid from a plump and ice-cold raw oyster, the soft skins of wild mushrooms... the tight and unopened bud of a flower blossom.” The story of Jane’s lonely, lovely life is more powerful because of its emotional reserve. With the exception of several stagey confrontations involving Jane’s older, coarser sister, Grace, Watson lets his ethereal heroine retain her quiet, dignified air of mystery. (July)
Astonishing prose brings to life a forgotten woman and a lost world in a strange and bittersweet Southern pastoral. Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America. Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren. The potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a trademark of Watson's fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm's irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.
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Miss Jane: A Novel
Astonishing prose brings to life a forgotten woman and a lost world in a strange and bittersweet Southern pastoral. Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America. Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren. The potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a trademark of Watson's fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm's irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.
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Editorial Reviews
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940170844272 |
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Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
Publication date: | 10/21/2016 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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