Reviews
With her tough, tense and taut tale of one rural family's bitter and bloody fight for survival in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, [Ward] has secured herself a place among such other great Southern writers as Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee and William Faulkner. Ward's electrifying, exhilarating, edge-of-your-seat second novel, Salvage the Bones , takes us into the naked heart of one Southern family struggling for both survival and identity. With prose both powerful and poetic, Ward has imagined an unforgettable family., From its lyrical yet visceral first scene, this novel had me, and I hardly dared to put it down for fear a spell might be broken. But it never was or will be; such are the gifts of this writer., Salvage the Bones is an intense book, with powerful, direct prose that dips into poetic metaphor . . . We are immersed in Esch's world, a world in which birth and death nestle close, where there is little safety except that which the siblings create for each other. That close-knit familial relationship is vivid and compelling, drawn with complexities and detail., "A taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written. It feels fresh and urgent, but it's an ancient, archetypal tale . . . Jesmyn Ward makes beautiful music, plays deftly with her reader's expectations." --Parul Sehgal, New York Times Book Review "Ward tells the story with a tense patience, marking day after day; when the storm comes, overturning everything, it feels like a fatal relief. At least the waiting's over. Salvage the Bones expands our understanding of Katrina's devastation, beyond the pictures of choked rooftops in New Orleans and toward the washed-out, feral landscapes elsewhere along the coast." -- New Yorker "There's something of Faulkner to Ward's grand diction, which rolls between teenspeak . . . and the larger, incantatory rhythms of myth. She's fearless about her passion coming out purple, and for the most part the intensity of her story carries it off." -- The Paris Review "I've just read [ Salvage the Bones ], and it'll be a long time before its magic wears off . . . [a] fiercely poetic novel . . . What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico . . . Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy . . . A palpable sense of desire and sorrow animates every page here . . . Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it." --Ron Charles, the Washington Post "Strikingly beautiful, taut, relentless and, by its end, indelible . . . Ward stares down the truth . . . It's astonishingly brave." --Joan Frank, San Francisco Chronicle " Salvage the Bones is an intense book, with powerful, direct prose that dips into poetic metaphor . . . the story is told with such immediacy and openness . . . That close-knit familial relationship is vivid and compelling, drawn with complexities and detail." -- Los Angeles Times "The novel's hugeness of heart and fierceness of family grip and hold on like Skeetah's pit bull."" --Ellen Feldman, O, the Oprah Magazine "A fresh new voice in American literature, Ward unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope." -- PW Starred review for Where the Line Bleeds "Her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked make her novel a powerful choice." -- Essence for Where the Line Bleeds "A richly textured tale...like the best fiction, it creates its own world." -- Susan Larson, N.O. Times-Picayune for Where the Line Bleeds "A remarkable first novel...a lyrical, clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African-American reality that are rarely depicted." -- Boston Globe for Where the Line Bleeds, Without a false note . . . A superbly realized work of fiction that, while Southern to the bone, transcends its region to become universal., Few works of fiction can capture the heart-wrenching emotions attached to a natural disaster, and fewer still can do it in a way that seems palpable and fresh. Salvage the Bones , the latest by rising star Jesmyn Ward, accomplishes this feat, and then some . . . From beginning to end, Jesmyn flirts with perfection in this stunning second novel, and the reader is rewarded for it., "A taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written. It feels fresh and urgent, but it's an ancient, archetypal tale . . . Jesmyn Ward makes beautiful music, plays deftly with her reader's expectations." - Parul Sehgal, New York Times Book Review "Ward tells the story with a tense patience, marking day after day; when the storm comes, overturning everything, it feels like a fatal relief. At least the waiting's over. Salvage the Bones expands our understanding of Katrina's devastation, beyond the pictures of choked rooftops in New Orleans and toward the washed-out, feral landscapes elsewhere along the coast." - New Yorker "There's something of Faulkner to Ward's grand diction, which rolls between teenspeak . . . and the larger, incantatory rhythms of myth. She's fearless about her passion coming out purple, and for the most part the intensity of her story carries it off." - The Paris Review "I've just read [ Salvage the Bones ], and it'll be a long time before its magic wears off . . . [a] fiercely poetic novel . . . What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico . . . Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy . . . A palpable sense of desire and sorrow animates every page here . . . Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it." - Ron Charles, the Washington Post "Strikingly beautiful, taut, relentless and, by its end, indelible . . . Ward stares down the truth . . . It's astonishingly brave." - Joan Frank, San Francisco Chronicle "Salvage the Bones is an intense book, with powerful, direct prose that dips into poetic metaphor . . . the story is told with such immediacy and openness . . . That close-knit familial relationship is vivid and compelling, drawn with complexities and detail." - Los Angeles Times "The novel's hugeness of heart and fierceness of family grip and hold on like Skeetah's pit bull." - Ellen Feldman, O, the Oprah Magazine "Where the Line Bleeds was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award." "A fresh new voice in American literature, Ward unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope." - PW Starred review for Where the Line Bleeds "Her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked make her novel a powerful choice." - Essence for Where the Line Bleeds "A richly textured tale...like the best fiction, it creates its own world." - Susan Larson, N.O. Times-Picayune for Where the Line Bleeds "A remarkable first novel...a lyrical, clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African-American reality that are rarely depicted." - Boston Globe for Where the Line Bleeds, The narrator's voice sparks with beauty as it urges the reader through this moving story set in the shadow of Katrina., Ward uses fearless, toughly lyrical language to convey this family's close-knit tenderness [and] the sheer bloody-minded difficulty of rural African American life . . . It's an eye-opening heartbreaker that ends in hope . . . You owe it to yourself to read this book., I've just read [ Salvage the Bones ] and it'll be a long time before its magic wears off...Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretention, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy . . . A palpable sense of desire and sorrow animates every page here . . . Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it., A pitch-perfect account of struggle and community in the rural South . . . Though the characters in Salvage the Bones face down Hurricane Katrina, the story isn't really about the storm. It's about people facing challenges, and how they band together to overcome adversity., The novel's power comes from the dread of the approaching storm and a pair of violent climaxes. The first is a dog fight, an appalling spectacle given emotional depth by Skeetah's love for the pit bull China (their bond is the strongest and most affecting in the book). When the hurricane strikes, Ms. Ward endows it, too, with attributes maternal and savage: 'Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.', Where the Line Bleeds was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. "A fresh new voice in American literature, Ward unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope." - PW Starred review for Where the Line Bleeds "Her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked make her novel a powerful choice." - Essence for Where the Line Bleeds "A richly textured tale...like the best fiction, it creates its own world." - Susan Larson, N.O. Times-Picayune for Where the Line Bleeds "A remarkable first novel...a lyrical, clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African-American reality that are rarely depicted." - Boston Globe for Where the Line Bleeds, Jesmyn Ward has claimed her place both as a contemporary witness of life in the rural south and as a descendant of its great originals., [ Salvage the Bones ] is uncompromising and frank, showing both beauty and violence, poverty and resilience, in a powerful and poetic voice.
