Book: Salvage the Bones

Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones works on many levels as a contemporary answer to Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, but Ward shouldn't be seen as just an imitator, and she doesn't have her sights set on creating a dialogue with African American literature alone. Medea and mythology, the Bible and hip-hop--all of them run through the book like currents of water. She writes with a poetry that startles, slapping you across the face with metaphors and imagery that embeds itself in your soul. The final third of the book is harrowing, as hurricane Katrina--which has been alluded to all through the book (and is discussed on the book's jacket, so this isn't a spoiler) finally arrives, and Ward doesn't coddle her characters, even as she leaves a space for hope. It's compelling stuff, and it's a reminder of how much good writing is still going in literature today.

It's a rough book--sexually explicit at times, heart-breaking at times, violent at times--and one I could see causing trouble among more conservative readers. But Ward gives us such a fragile and rich character in her narrator Esch that the sharp edges were totally worth it. This is a girl who loves and wants to be loved, that is bound to her flawed and hardscrabble family with bonds deep enough to cut. I loved the way Esch saw the world, even when it broke my heart.

At its heart, it's a novel about motherhood, in all its forms: absent, present, soft, hard, tender, violent, protective, independent, and so on and so forth. Ward's characters interact in so many different ways, but underneath many of these interactions are peaks and valleys that their mothers left in them. I like that concept, and a second reading I think would bring out even more fruitful material, but I had to tear through the book faster than I wanted due to school starting.

Still, this is good stuff. I think it could have some life in it beyond the typical span for contemporary fiction. I look forward to Ward's next book.

Grade: A-