White Boys and River Girls: Stories - Softcover

Gover, Paula K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 068482518X ISBN 13: 9780684825182

Publisher: Scribner, 1996

Synopsis

From an exciting new voice in American fiction comes nine tales of barmaids and musicians, single mothers and burned-out businessmen--about lives lived a little too close to the edge and love longed for, lost, and sometimes regained.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In these nine sharply affecting stories, Gover reviews the hard life lessons learned by memorable, persevering characters in small towns and suburbs of Michigan and Georgia. The utterly convincing title story is narrated by Donnie, a 34-year-old construction worker from Tyler, Ga., a former hometown football hero and veteran womanizer who becomes hooked on Yolanda, an artist quite unlike his "regular type." Gover dazzles as Yolanda, who "wore color on her lips what never rubbed off... dusty-like and dark as old blood, and real different from them shiny fruit-tasting colors," introduces Donnie to issues of race, gender and love that he'd never considered before. With a keen ear for dialect and uncompromising candor, Gover writes with respectful affection of broken families, bereaved children, troubled lovers and stalwart individuals-especially independent women-as they choose, among the concrete details of daily life, between hope and despair. "Chances with Johnson" ends the collection as Elizabeth, whose ex-husband has disappeared with the older of their two sons, gambles one last time on loving another man, one who will reward her faith far beyond her expectations. While the strongest, most immediate stories are the first-person narratives, there are no weak entries in this impressive debut collection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Things do not go smoothly in the lives of Gover's characters, but this is a marvelous collection of stories. Each sentence is wielded with deadly clarity, and 15 pages can be an emotional journey of immense proportions. It is an emotional rather than geographic landscape that sets these stories in a true, solid place. In the title story, a white boy from a southern town recalls his romance with a river girl. Her voodoo superstitions and hidden past prevented them from staying together; but she exposed his prejudices with a devastating honesty, and he forever feels under her spell. In "Bastard Child," a son sees in his wife a reflection of his mother, who was betrayed by the men who disappeared from her life but who retained power over her sexuality to the end. "Naked Beauty" is a touching story about a mother facing her adolescent daughter's struggle to break away, and a mother's eternal love for the child within the blossoming girl. Gover quietly overturns lives, creeping through window sashes, walking through half-opened doors. The effect is like a cool spring breeze, clear-sighted and straightforward. These are moments and emotions we'd gladly walk out of the room to ignore. But faced obliquely or head-on, they enrich us just the same. Deanna Larson

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 068482518X
• ISBN 13: 9780684825182
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 225