The Night Train: A Novel Review

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The Night Train: A Novel ReviewI am especially fond of many southern writers--Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee, William Faulkner...--and I am now adding the name Clyde Edgerton. When his "The Bible Salesman" was first published, I read it, enjoyed it a lot, but this little book is better, mostly because the undercurrent running through the novel is a very specific historical time, 1963 when there were the intense racial conflicts in the South.
The book jacket says this little novel will, in time, be join the ranks of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "A Separate Peace." Maybe. Probably not. But close in my opinion. It is wonderfully crafted that has as much poignancy for today's reader as it would have had in the 1960s.
Clyde Edgerton is a master of dialect and dialogue, presented sparsely in a voice that is just so totally authentic. Let me give you a few samples:
"Uncle Young, on Mondays, late in the day, drove from Starke in a refrigerated truck to pick up fresh lungs, livers, stomachs, spleens, and hearts from a beef slaughterhouse in flint Springs, North Carolina. The meat run. He dleiver the animal parts in large vats to the dog food factory in Starke, where they were frozen before being ground up to be used in dog food--for protein...
"Scrap, their little white and tan 'sooner' dog, slept on the porch. He'd got to staying gone lately. Redbird, the dancing chicken, trotted toward Larry Lime as he pulled corn bread from his pocket. She looked like a happy, big-bosomed lady in a red dress, swaying side to side...
"Flash Acre's Mama--in the face--looked like a mole wearing glasses. Her two front teeth rode her lower lip..."
The novel is filled with delicious short sentences like "He'd got to staying gone lately." Isn't that just wonderful! And with the most wonderful descriptions of this great cast of characters.
The author is a master of point of view (POV). For example, when we first meet Flash Acre--oh, my, the names of people in this novel!--and his mama, the topic of why Flash isn't, at 33, dating and the married, is never brought up between the two of them. But the reader is provided with the POV of each. And it is priceless.
At the beginning of the novel, Edgerton establishes the geography of the place, one in which some white folk work along side blacks but where blacks live in separate sections of small communities. And as you might expect, a teenage black musician, Larry Lime, become friendly with a young white one, known as Bleeder, who has his own band. Naturally the mixing of races in friendship will become a problem.
The book itself is small. But it is worth the money. Although it will not rise to the ranks of Harper Lee's American classic, it is one that undoubtedly will be up there. If you love a good book with a wonderful cast of characters that the author knows so well, then do indeed treat yourself to this new novel.
By the way, when I read the three-star review--not that it is an actual review--I was surprised that somehow a Little, Brown book would ever be considered one of those far-right religious novels. Dear potential readers out there, this is so not one of those the-good-will-fly-off-to-heaven-leaving-all-sinners-behind-while-God-sets-fire-and-brimstone-to-wipe-out-the-earth books!The Night Train: A Novel Overview

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