This review is for Sweetsmoke, a novel by David Fuller, published by Hyperion and available in September of 2008. I obtained an advance copy via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. My appreciation to both Hyperion for its participation in the program and LibraryThing for making it possible. You can also visit Sweetsmoke’s Web site.

David Fuller’s “Sweetsmoke” builds on the familiar tradition of modern novels set in the Civil-War ravaged south: slave narratives and personal epics that, through a mixture of history and emotion, bring contemporary audiences face to face with the massive iniquities of our collective pasts. What Fuller does that’s new, however, is tweak this landscape by adding something new: a murder mystery. No, really.

Cassius, our Shakespeare-monikered protagonist, discovers that Emoline, a freed slave who rescued him from the brink of disaster and nursed him back to health (not to mention taught him to read, from his ABCs to Homer, in three weeks. Apparently.) has been murdered. Emoline’s violent demise is a vehicle for the rest of Fuller’s explorations: the conflicts of slavery, the social crisis of the South, the dreadfulness of the Civil War, and a complete rehash of the battle of Antietam. This is a big steak to chew, and it’s occasionally overcooked.

Fuller is a competent writer. Though “Sweetsmoke” is his first novel, his long experience in screenwriting gives his tone a confidence and cleanliness, if sometimes also a paucity of metaphor. The long scene that unfolds at the big “To-Do”, a multi-plantation summer gathering of slaves for dancing, drinking, fighting and loving, reads almost as an inverse of the ante-bellum Tara hedonism in the film adaptation of “Gone with the Wind.” Likely the most evocative portion of the novel, it is a rare moment when Fuller’s (thorough) historical research transcends the literary gap into meaningful sociological application and nuance–that is, the facts of slavery gain warmth and personality; his dip into inter-slave politics and hostilities felt thoughtful.

It’s not that the descriptions that flesh out the rest of the novel are akward or tedious. They’re coherent and specific, but in the end, they don’t tell us much beyond literal rendition. They don’t reach into that sensuous part of our perception. It’s as if Fuller can’t move away from visual description as something to be translated into literal scenes. WIDE SHOT INTERIOR GENERAL STORE WITH DRY GOODS, SACKS OF GRAIN, TOOLS, ETC. would be in some cases more direct and as accurate as anything Fuller is saying.

In the same screenwriting vein, the dialogue is good, and in some places great, though Fuller’s decision to give free people (black and white alike) quotation marks and strip them from slaves is a trifle heavy-handed.

Fuller has to deal with issues of preposterousness. In an interview about the book, he confesses a concern about a scene in which Cassius confronts and threatens a white slave patroller with violence. Fuller asserts that the incident was based on a real occurrence, but unfortunately, it’s his own carefully-built historical framework that forces us to confront the issue of believability–even in fiction. Fuller’s plantation-era Virginia is so tightly bound in historical themes–oppression, racism, poverty, desperation–that to invite in deviations or extradordinary circumstance is troublesome and strains our credibility. The same goes for the whodunnit aspect in respect to Emoline’s murder, though Fuller does, thankfully, treat this loosely: Cassius isn’t chasing down forensic incidentals so much as he’s chasing intuition.

Fuller’s clear enthusiasm for military history breaks through in the climactic scenes that put Cassius in the middle of Antietam. Those of similar passions might find this fascinating, but for me the entire episode seemed glaringly out of place and much duller than the rest of the story. I know enough about the battle to find that Fuller’s descriptions didn’t add much to my understanding, and the long passages seemed to waste space in an already tight novel.

“Sweetsmoke” is an enjoyable read. It’s carefully considered and driven, if heavily expository (Fuller will tell you exactly what characters are undergoing what existential crisis, every time). Read as a story, it’s taut, with nightmarish suspense leaving characters exposed and in danger, with shame and love and murder. But in the end, it doesn’t bring an epiphany.

LibraryThing Tags:

As always, see all of my reviews on LibraryThing.

Tags: arc, Books, civil war, early reviewer, fiction, novel, preview, reading, review, slavery, south

Been catching up on my reading, as you might imagine. By the way, have I ever mentioned that I have a peeve with certain “book reviews.” I absolutely hate it when a book review is not a book review but instead a synopsis. Especially when it gives away the ending. Sheesh. This following review goes as far down synopsis lane as I ever go. OK, so I admit that I give away that the novel ends darkly. But that’s a given from the very start. Within the first few pages. I promise.

p.s. Having just read a biography on Andrew Jackson was perfect for enjoying this book!

Thirteen Moons: A Novel by Charles Frazier

With a vivid sense of place and history, Frazier’s second work in many ways is more charming and entwining than his first (Cold Mountain), more personal and engaging. Eulogizing the mountain home of the Cherokees in engrossing language throughout the novel, Frazier’s narrator frames the plot with the land itself at all times. The novel is tactile, visual. But not just setting.

Frazier’s protagonist is an interesting, remarkably sensitive orphan who effectively builds himself alone, starting from age 12, when he is thrust into the wilderness by an alarmingly disaffected aunt and uncle with little more than a key and a vague map. Heck, they didn’t even have maps for the place he was supposed to go–a frontier trading post, to which he is bound (again by the unscrupulous family members) for seven years.

Here in this shack-store not even within American boundaries, he builds a life woven of the southern Appalachian landscape and the local Cherokees. He is adopted as a son by Bear, a sweet and lamentable elder. He meets a girl who smells like lavender, briefly, and falls terrifically in love.

But, as all things for the Cherokee went in the 1830s (bad), so do a lot of things here. Expect love and beauty and sinuous plot, but not joy. Frazier’s pace through the first half or two-thirds of the novel crescendos in a page-turner fashion, dragging you, the spectator, through many phases of the thirteen moons along with the characters. You see lovely things. Brief and beleaguered happiness. Knowing nothing good will come of this.

The last third of the novel feels like a dirge, winding down after an action-packed denouement. The greatest flaw of this story is its unwillingness to stop. You keep tumbling through the protagonist’s life until you wonder what you’re headed toward. Pain outweighs optimism at every turn. Each happiness leads to fifteen sorrows.

A beautiful book. Well worth reading and savoring. Expect to feel the mountains around you, dripping on you. Don’t expect redemption.

( )

Tags: 19th century, historical fiction, reading, south