![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveKevin Powers "A Shout in the Ruins" (Sceptre)
George Seldom is an old man who decides to take some time to revisit his personal history on a road trip. He travels through the Deep South and as he does so the reader is given some of the events that have led to a country on the brink of race equality. The plantation of Beauvais is owned by a cruel master Levallois who, even before the Civil War, has recognised that industry is the way forward, not agriculture. His neighbour goes to fight in the war and Levallois usurps his land, his daughter and his life. Rawls has been in love with Nurse but both are purchased by Levallois and are subject to his mind games. Reid goes off to war a proud Confederate but returns to find that he has lost everything. Minor characters fight for what they believe is right.
This is a complex and very moving book which looks at aspects of the Civil War and the changes in society from numerous perspectives. The characters are not easy to pin down - Emily seems powerless to stop her fate but does she fight back in the worst way. Even the minor characters, the gang leader, the apprentice and the boatman are given a sympathetic perspective and the descriptions of violence are visceral in the extreme. I hadn't read Powers' first novel but know it was well received, I can see why
George Seldom is an old man who decides to take some time to revisit his personal history on a road trip. He travels through the Deep South and as he does so the reader is given some of the events that have led to a country on the brink of race equality. The plantation of Beauvais is owned by a cruel master Levallois who, even before the Civil War, has recognised that industry is the way forward, not agriculture. His neighbour goes to fight in the war and Levallois usurps his land, his daughter and his life. Rawls has been in love with Nurse but both are purchased by Levallois and are subject to his mind games. Reid goes off to war a proud Confederate but returns to find that he has lost everything. Minor characters fight for what they believe is right.
This is a complex and very moving book which looks at aspects of the Civil War and the changes in society from numerous perspectives. The characters are not easy to pin down - Emily seems powerless to stop her fate but does she fight back in the worst way. Even the minor characters, the gang leader, the apprentice and the boatman are given a sympathetic perspective and the descriptions of violence are visceral in the extreme. I hadn't read Powers' first novel but know it was well received, I can see why
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}