Brighten the Corner Where You Are is the story of a day in the life of Joe Robert Kirkman, a North Carolina mountain schoolteacher, sly prankster, country philosopher, and family man. This novel from award-winning author Fred Chappell has won the hearts of readers and reviewers across the country.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Set in the 1940s, this series of interlinked yarns about life on a North Carolina ``scratch-ankle mountain farm'' is told from the point of view of Jess, age 11. PW called Chappell ``a gifted spinner of fictions that often verge on fantasy and the tall tale.'' (August)
Library Journal
Narrated with wit and engaging high spirits by his son Jess, this brief, sparkling novel re-creates the comic episodes that constitute Joe Robert Kirkman's last day as high school teacher in Tipton, North Carolina, in 1946: running afoul of a bobcat high in a poplar tree; rescuing a child from drowning; accepting a tribute from the parents of a suicide; coping creatively with the touchy subject of evolution in his general science class; discovering the humanity of the black janitor; coaxing a goat from a roof; and losing a Socratic argument to the shyest student in his world history class. With his open, Marxist (Harpo) view of the postwar world, Kirkman is a riotous, riveting fictional creation. A superb comic work.-- Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Kirkus Reviews
Well-crafted portraiture from southern novelist Chappell (More Shapes Than One, 1991; Brighten the Corner Where You Are, 1989, etc.), who offers proof that regional fiction is alive and well, and perfectly suited for export up North and farther afield.The first refreshing thing about Chappell is that he knows how to tell a story. The second is that he doesn't pretend to be doing anything else. Ostensibly, the central character here is Granny Sorrells, an elderly North Carolina hillbilly on her deathbed. Granny is surrounded by her kinfolk, but we more or less lose track of her as a character once her grandson Jess starts to reminisce about Granny's stories of the local women she spent most of her life with. We thus learn about "The Shooting Woman," who seduced her husband with her marksmanship; "The Figuring Woman," who became the village soothsayer; "The Madwoman," who lost her wits after an unhappy affair, and so on. Although this concentration on strong, self-reliant backwoods girls brings the novel perilously close to self-parody at times, Chappell is able to provide enough color and credibility to the (easily recognizable) types he works with to rescue them from stereotype, and the old-fashioned and very formal device of giving us a narrator who stands largely outside the action of the tale works nicely to bring us into what ordinarily would be a very strange and disorienting world. To a large degree Chappell, like most regionalists, is attempting to re- create an entire society, and the success with which he does so gives his characters an uncommon depth and texture. Although his rhetoric can get a bit overblown, it usually supports the action and fits the characters.
Busy, satisfying, and wholesome: Chappell casts a sharp eye upon a very rich landscape and gives us a portrait as poignant as it is clear.
From the Publisher
Deeply felt, warm, and funny . . . a wonderful tale, one full of wild humor and humanity.” The Los Angeles Times“The resonantly lyrical novel enchants us . . . we are lifted to a height of exhilaration few current writers can take us to.” New York Newsday
“Brighten washes you with language. Reading it is like leaping into one of those streams in the middle of nowhere where everything is green and our childhoods wait to reclaim something lost, something astoundingly simple as joy.” Charlotte Observer
“A raconteur of extraordinary gifts, Chappell fluidly spins mountain yarns, weaning spellbinding myths, hypnotic dreams, hilarious dialogue and unforgettable characters into the warp and weft of a funny, poignant and very human story.” Orlando Sentinel
“At once lyrical and plainspoken, relentlessly funny and, at crucial moments, breathlessly sad . . . Brighten the Corner Were You Are is Fred Chappell's finest work so far and thusI have been reading and writing and waiting forty years to say thisit's a blooming masterpiece.” George Garrett
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