Like so many others, I thought Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds was quite exceptionally good. Sadly, A Shout In The Ruins isn't nearly of the same quality. There is a lot of Powers's lyrical and sometimes very beautiful writing, but as a novel I found it very disappointing.

The story cuts between time periods (seemingly almost compulsory for new novels at the moment) around the Civil War and the early 50s, both in Virginia. The stories are…well…confusing, to be honest. There are illustrations of the cruelty of the slave era and depictions of the characters who both suffered and imposed that suffering, and there is also a pretty good evocation of its legacy in the era of segregation. Both of these still have relevance today and it should form a powerful indictment of racism in modern society, but for me it was too mannered in structure, too disjointed and too full of disparate characters to have the necessary coherence. I also felt that after books like The Underground Railroad, Days Without End and The Sellout (to name just a few) it was treading well-worn ground without adding much.

I'm sorry to be critical of an author I respect greatly, but that's the truth of it. It was well written and it certainly wasn't terrible, but it just didn't engage me and I didn't think I'd gained much from reading it. Only a very qualified recommendation from me, I'm afraid.

(My thanks to Sceptre for an ARC via NetGalley.)

This is a story of actions and consequences, as well as inactions and their consequences, and the ripple effect they have on lives.

What do we leave behind, what do we take with us, and what will survive after us?

Common Thread:
George Seldom is the common thread that weaves through the lives of the inhabitants of Beauvais Plantation, Virginia just after the American Civil War in 1865, all the way through to the closing years of the 1980’s.

George, we are told, was rescued as a three-year-old boy by a travelling band of brothers called Seldom, who gave him their name. They left him with their old teacher, and rode off to be hanged as bandits, and in later life the grown George himself leaves this house, and never looks back. However, nearing the end of his life 75 years or so later, George retraces his steps and, through a helpful waitress called Lottie, returns to find his roots in the tumbledown shack.

The lawless nature of the defeated South is laid bare early on, with roaming bands of Confederate soldiers raping, pillaging and murdering across Virginia. Newly liberated slaves are most at risk, especially if they give the wrong person “a look”, a situation that can only end in violence.

Characters:
Anthony Levallois is the shrewd, rapacious and debauched master of Beauvais, when we meet him just after the war. His neighbour Bob Reid went off to fight and presumed dead, Levallois swooped to take his land and daughter. He builds a railroad through the old homestead, and has ambitions to buy up the whole county. When Reid arrives back, he finds his wife dead, his daughter married, his home destroyed, and he lives on the charity of his son-in-law, slowly descending into madness.

We also meet Nurse and Rawls, two emancipated slaves (though still slaves in Lavallois’s eyes), and are privy to the brutal lives that was their lot in post-War Virginia. George is Nurse’s child, by Levallois.

Emily is the young daughter of Reid, who grows up very fast as a married woman, and her actions/inactions tear the Plantation apart. We watch helplessly as she becomes lonely and embittered, her girlhood gone before it really arrived. She feels as much a slave or a prisoner as Rawls and Nurse, except she volunteered for this life.

There are minor characters in the book, and their descendants are also relatively minor characters (e.g. the Sherriff Rivers and Billy).

There is no overseeing, ex machina narrator. We have the dialogue of each of the participants, and see events through their eyes, as they happen. There is an undercurrent of violence, especially in the 1860’s chapters.

Plot:
The book opens in the 1950’s with George, about 90 years old, being forced to move from his home as the Interstate is being built through it. It is a black neighbourhood, the only whites being the Jewish shopkeepers, who, when George says they must be the last white people there, tell George they “will be Jews when they cross the river to the white neighbourhood”. Racism is alive and well.

George begins to reminisce, for example about his old friend Huggins, and undertakes a journey to get back to his roots. He eventually meets Lottie, who helps him find the old house where he grew up. We leave George broken-hearted at the site.

While that journey is happening, interspersed we travel back in time to the 1860’s, where we see the fallout of the war, as well as how George came to be found.

We also go forward in time to the now middle-aged Lottie in the 1980’s, who has had her own life’s troubles and joys to deal with.

A Shout In The Ruins is a very well-written book, a lot of things hinted at as opposed to being overt, and Power keeps the story flowing steadily. There is a strong connection between the main characters, although sometimes invisible and unknown inter-generationally.

I would love this book to have left the same kind of impression on me that The Yellow Birds did, however the setting and the circumstances of this story and my embarrassing lack of knowledge of the American Civil War vs the war in the Gulf for The Yellow Birds more recently mean that it does not have quite the same powerful impact. If anything I think it highlights my knowledge gaps rather than any reflection of the author.

But I really did admire this, and the power of the authors writing is as poetic and stunning as it gets. I suspect will appeal to those who loved The Underground Railroad or 12 years a slave, really because of the similar themes.

Having said that, there is a chapter featuring Lottie and Billy that although only loosely connected to the main story of George, that nearly had me sobbing in public. So so beautifully written, and with paras I think I will be quoting forever more.

Perhaps my expectations were too high after Powers' wondrous Yellow Birds, because I found it hard to get involved in this book. Again, we have big themes of violence and history, but it's the intimacy of the first book that I missed. With too many characters, two many time switches, and too much going on in what is a short novel, this lacked the impact of the first book. There are moments when Powers' distinctive voice emerges from the text, but then it is submerged again... Hopefully this is the fabled difficult second book, as Powers remains a writer to watch.