|
|
Christine Lincoln
|
A
Baltimore native and a graduate of Washington College,
Christine Lincoln was the winner of the
prestigious Sophie Kerr Prize, an award for the most
promising writer on campus. Her first book of short
stories, Sap Rising, is described as “…twelve
spare, mesmerizing stories…that [take] us inside the
hearts and minds of African-Americans whose lives unfold
against a vividly evoked southern rural landscape. As
they navigate between the old and the new, between youth
and adulthood, they find themselves choosing between the
comforts of what they trust unquestioningly and the
fearsome excitements of what they might come to know."
|
From
Publishers Weekly
Abandonment and acceptance,
city versus country living, and the aching desire for
freedom are the themes of the 12 linked short stories
gathered here. Gently and skillfully, Lincoln leads
readers back and forth in time collecting and
juxtaposing fragments of stories set in a town called
Grandville, in the rural South. In "Bug Juice,"
nine-year-old Sonny gets a taste of grown-up dreams and
desires when his uncle comes to visit with a city woman
"the color of ripened mulberries," who tells him stories
about "Af-free-ka." Later on, in "All That's Left,"
Sonny appears again as one of a group of friends who
decide to gang up on a prissy girl, Pontella. Pontella
is the daughter of Ebbie Pinder, who runs away from
Grandville and returns with baby Pontella, only to
desert her three years later. When she realizes her
mother isn't coming back, in "A Hook Will Sometimes Keep
You," Pontella comes to believe she is turning
invisible, though her Aunt Loretta loves her dearly.
Lincoln's language can be trite and self-consciously
folksy, and her tales fit a little too snugly in the
mold of down-home Southern storytelling, but she
supports their sentimental trappings with harsher
truths. (Sept.)Forecast: Lincoln has already been the
subject of a number of feature stories in national
publications since she won a major writing prize as a
graduating senior and 34-year-old single mother at
Washington College in Maryland. A 12-city author tour
and national print advertising are supporting this
title, but it may fall between the cracks, being too
literary for readers of commercial African-American
fiction and too soft focus to succeed as literary
fiction., |
|
From
Booklist
In a series of 12 interconnected short stories, Lincoln
tells of the life of black people in a small Maryland
town. A young boy sees the power shift from his mother
to himself when he discovers her unfaithfulness. After
years of wishing her father dead, a young girl struggles
with the guilt she feels when he suddenly dies in a
drunken accident. A dying father looks back over his
life, strewn with the disappointments and humiliations
wrought by racism and his own weaknesses. A young woman
returns home from the city with a baby in her arms and
faces the shame of the community as she tries to
reestablish her place there. The stories move back and
forth in time, examining some events from the
perspective of different characters, as Lincoln weaves
the coming-of-age stories with stories of failed
marriages, death, births, moving--all the joys and
tribulations of life. Her stories evoke the small-town
intimacies seen in friendships betrayed, marriages
despoiled, and young girls seduced by the allure of
train whistles. Lincoln is a gifted storyteller.
--Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association.
All rights reserved
|
| |
|
|
