Book Review: Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

Published by: Algonquin Books

Published on: March 26, 2013

Page Count: 352

Genre: fiction

My Reading Format: Advanced reading copy, Kindle edition from Netgalley

Available Formats: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle and Audible audio editions

My review:

Family secrets, disappearing acts, quirky old folks, memories, dark pasts, small town life, oral history, a beloved dog, those who are crazy and those who just pretend to be: ingredients needed to write a proper Southern novel. Jill McCorkle has included all these things and more in her first book in 17 years, Life After Life. In the spirit of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and the more recent A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (Joshilyn Jackson), McCorkle beautifully and convincingly captures the voices of a myriad of characters - all ages, both genders and those who will do good and the world and those who won't.

Life After Life takes place mostly in a small North Carolina town. A young girl named Abby feels more comfortable spending time next door at Pine Haven, the town's retirement home, than she does with her mother or her peers at school. Nearly every character has trouble fitting in to the world around them because of something: too many marriages, too many tattoos, too many affairs or too many inappropriate comments. At Pine Haven, the residents remember their life before they moved in: what they did for a living, how they raised their children, how they fit in in Fulton, North Carolina. What they can't remember or don't want to, they make up. Resident Sadie has made a business out of putting two old photographs together to create a new reality and make a new memory for its owner.

Though some residents appear to have moved to Pine Haven simply to wait around for the end of their lives, quite a lot of living is to be done here. It's their life after life, and so are their stories preserved by hospice volunteer Joanna. For one resident named Rachel, her reasons for moving south from Massachusetts are kept quiet, and she keeps much of the life she led before to herself.   

There are secrets and sadness for the characters like Abby who live outside the retirement home as well. McCorkle brings the two worlds in Fulton, North Carolina, together in beautiful ways as the story comes to a surprising, shocking, saddening close. 

4.5 out of 5 stars

*If you think you'll like Life After Life, you'll probably also like Lunch at the Picadilly by Clyde Edgerton and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson. 

Rereading

The other day on Twitter I came across an article published in the Mail called "Reading a book really is better the second time round - and can even offer mental health benefits." I completely agree! I've reread several things in the past several years for the second time, and found those stories to be much more wonderful the second time around.

Here are a few of my favorite rereads:

Lord of the Flies (blog post coming soon on this one) by William Golding
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Pride and Prejudice (OK, anything Jane Austen)
The Color Purple (turning 30 this year, by the way) by Alice Walker
A Wrinkle in Time (my most recent reread) by Madeleine L'Engle
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Diary of Anne Frank
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

What are your favorite rereads?

Author Readings by Faulkner and O'Connor

I love going to hear authors read from their books. I've recently found audio online of two of my favorite (deceased) authors reading from their works. Hear Flannery O'Connor read from "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (my favorite!) at Vanderbilt University in 1959. William Faulkner was writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia in 1957-58 and a website has a host of audio files from his classes, talks, speeches and readings. I particularly like hearing him read from The Sound and the Fury.

My Take on Oxford, Mississippi

I recently had the pleasure of writing a feature on Oxford, Mississippi, for Julep Magazine. Oxford is one of the most charming places I've visited in the last couple of years, and I hope that one day I'll be able to go back and see it again. The reasons I like this place probably come as no surprise: good food, a focus on the arts and artists, lots of Southern history and literature, and just nice folks.

Read the story. You'll have to create a login to see it, or view it on Julep's blog here.

Enjoy!

New Orleans' Literary Scene

Recently my husband and I celebrated our anniversary with a long weekend in New Orleans, and I'm not sure whether I was more excited about the food I was planning to eat or seeing the city where many great writers have penned their famous works. We spent three and a half days mostly in the French Quarter and I tracked down all the places I could find with literary significance. Here they are:

Hotel Monteleone has been visited by many important writers (see photo above for list). It's a beautiful hotel, and if you sit in the Carousel Bar near the window overlooking Royal Street, the people watching is top-notch.

Here I am on the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar. I was so excited thinking about Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire that I could barely contain myself.

William Faulkner lived in this townhouse just off Jackson Square in his early years as a writer. He wrote Mosquitoes and Soldier's Pay while he stayed here. As bookstores go, this one is pretty small, but so filled with great stuff you hardly even notice. I bought three books here that I'll likely be writing about after I've read them later.

This home on Bourbon Street was occupied at different times by both Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Now it's owned by Cokie Roberts' mother, Lindy Boggs, a politician and activist.

This home on St. Peter Street is where Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire.

And finally, this is Galatoire's, a French restaurant on Bourbon Street frequented by Tennessee Williams. Also, Stella took Blanche here in A Streetcar Named Desire. We ate here and the food was good, but many of the places we ate were much better than good.

My self-guided tour of New Orleans was satisfactory, but it was merely a substitute for a real one I'd tried to line up. There is just one literary tour in town and though the woman who gives them is supposed to be fantastic, she doesn't return phone calls and even hangs up on people calling at an inconvenient time for her (she has, apparently, never heard of voicemail). My suggestion to New Orleans is that someone else needs to give her some competition. New Orleans is far too important to American literature to only have one person telling all the good stuff. OK, the gripe session is over now.

Typewriters

I love old typewriters. One of my earliest memories is of my dad hunched over the typewriter in the room that would later be my younger sister's, typing out purchase orders and business letters (to this day he still uses the hunt-and-peck typing method). The typewriter had been my mom's in college, and we also had my grandfather's college typewriter around the house. Both were manual, of course, and you had to mash the keys down pretty hard to get the letters to appear at the right darkness to be legible and consistent.

Also when I was little, my grandmother had in her home office an electric typewriter, which I thought was one of the best toys ever. After pounding the keys of the two manual typewriters at my house, I found the keys of her typewriter to be almost too sensitive. (It was the color of Grey Poupon and was still in the same spot when she died two years ago.) I made lots of mistakes, and I don't remember her machine having correction tape.

I think I was in the sixth grade when I asked for a typewriter for either Christmas or my birthday. It, too, was electric (fancy!) and I could backspace and white out over mistakes I'd made, retyping right over it as if I'd never made a mistake! A few years later my family broke down and bought a word processor, the step between a typewriter and a computer, and finally, my parents bought their first computer after I had gone to college.

Now that I'm on my laptop the better part of most days writing, researching, editing what someone else has written and a host of other work- and fun-related things, I can't even imagine what it would take for me to write something just straight out. The way I write things is usually not start to finish. I can't even think of what it would be like for me if I had to retype a page each time I thought to insert a new paragraph somewhere in the middle. But I guess I would if I had to.

So with all that said, I just loved a series of photos I found via Twitter (be sure to follow me @betsyrhame) yesterday of writers with their typewriters (also note how many of these authors have a burning cigarette in their hands. I love that too. Not something you see too much anymore). Check it out.

Reading = Good Memories

I've just finished reading a very satisfying book by Lewis Buzbee called The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop. In light of my recent review of The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, it was especially nice to read a book that celebrates all the good feelings that come with facing down an entire bookstore and choosing something out of all the inventory available to be YOUR book, and later, opening the pages of that book to savor the contents.

When Buzbee began talking about what really made him become the voracious reader he is, it struck a chord with me. He said that rereading a book can take a reader back to where he or she first experienced that book in such a way: "I was ____ years old when I happened on a novel called _____, and within six months I had read every other book by the writer known as ____." As he also mentioned, he can most times remember his surroundings when he read a particular book.

For me, I was 20 years old when I read As I Lay Dying. I was in my sophomore dorm room on the yellow futon and I read all afternoon each day that week while my roommate was in class. That is how I knew I was completely hooked by 20th century American literature. I was 21 and in a course on Shakespeare's comedies and histories when I put on a crown with streamers and read the part of Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream in Meredith College's pre-renovated Joyner Hall. I was 16 and in my junior English class, listening to my teacher read out every word of the first chapter of The Catcher in the Rye. Each of these times, and many more, I knew I was really cut out to be a reader.

And, if I pick up The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop and read through it again years from now, I hope I will remember where I was when I read it: in a rocking chair on the front porch of a beach house while the sun went down for two nights in a row. My favorite place.

A Review of 2009

In thinking ahead about what I want to read in 2010, it seems like a good thing to do to reflect back on what I read in 2009, which included 69 books either read or listened to. Some of my favorites were:

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory
The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory
South of Broad by Pat Conroy
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg
Souvenir by Therese Fowler (a classmate of mine in the English department at NC State)
Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson with David Oliver Relin

Last week, USA Today marked the end of the decade and listed the bestselling books of the 2000s. I have read them all. See the article here.

Peacocks and Prizes

According to Flannery O’Connor biographer Brad Gooch, the late writer identified with the nearly 40 peacocks she bought while living on her family’s farm. Gooch said in a CNN interview in 2009 that she “made an effort to make the peacock her own personal logo.” A peacock feather is part of the cover art on Gooch’s Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor published this year. A peacock and its feathers are also draped across the cover of my well-worn copy of The Complete Stories.

This summer when I visited Andalusia, O’Connor’s farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, the director of the historic site, Craig Amason, told me a secret. The farm would soon again be home to peacocks. I was excited to hear the news and promised not to let the cat out of the bag. The peacocks have now arrived. To read more about this, visit Andalusia’s blog.

While we’re on the topic, in case you haven’t heard, The Complete Stories, which won the National Book Award in 1972, beat out five other writers (including two of my other favorites, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty) to win Best of the National Book Award Winners. Read more about the National Book Foundation here.

A Visit to Faulkner's Oxford

"...I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it..." - William Faulkner (1958)

The trip to Oxford and Tupelo, Mississippi, was a success. My husband and I had a lot of fun exploring these two towns.

Rowan Oak was fascinating, of course. I enjoyed the peaceful setting and seeing the house very much as it was when Faulkner was living there and writing prize-winning literature. My one (small) disappointment was that there was no gift shop. When I visit important literary sites, I love to come home with a small memento. This time, I'll just have to settle for the pictures.

Rowan Oak from the front walk.

The front parlor of the home. Faulkner's funeral was held here.

Faulkner's office. Notice the outlining he wrote directly on the walls!

The Faulkner statue in front of City Hall in Oxford.

I've visited Elvis Presley's birthplace in Tupelo once before, but while I was there, I had to go by again. Here are two photos of the historic site.

Rereading a Classic: As I Lay Dying

I love to read things that correlate with places I've just been or am about to go. I'm so thrilled about this weekend when I'll be visiting Oxford, Mississippi, that I decided I better reread some Faulkner. The highlight of my weekend, of course, will be a visit to Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home. The highlight of my husband's weekend will be watching his Tennessee Vols take on Ole Miss.

My first exposure to William Faulkner happened at a time in my life when I needed reassurance that I had made the right decision. I was a sophomore in college and had a terrible time choosing a major because I just wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. Over Christmas break I decided on English because I'd always liked the courses and teachers, and had always done well in the classes. I was under the gun, maybe the last of my friends to declare her major. I picked it because I knew I'd enjoy it and decided to figure out a specific career path later. As it turns out, I loved majoring in English so much that I did it again in graduate school and I love my job as a freelance writer/editor. And, would I be writing a blog if I had majored in psychology, speech communication or fashion merchandising? Probably not. Or at least not quite like this. So, see, it has turned out well.

But when I came back from Christmas break my sophomore year, I rearranged my class schedule to drop classes from a discarded major and add two English courses: Survey of British Literature and Survey of American Literature.

I knew American literature would be my all-time favorite when I read my first Anne Bradstreet poem. I just didn't know how much I would love American lit until a few weeks later when the class began reading Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Really, I think this novel is responsible for a lot of things where I am concerned, so here I am, 10 and a half years later, rereading it.

There is something about reading a book for the first time and loving it, but it is something else entirely when you revisit it after a long time and the plot and characters come back to you and it feels so familiar.

Check back later for more on my visit to Oxford.

Vote for your favorite National Book Award winner

The National Book Foundation has chosen 77 books over the past 60 years to win the prestigious National Book Award. To celebrate the organization’s 60th birthday, you can vote online for your favorite National Book Award winner from six finalists. The choices are:

John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
William Faulkner, Collected Stories
Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity Rainbow
Eudora Welty, The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

To vote, click here before October 21.

To learn more about the National Book Foundation and its National Book Award, visit their web site.

Celebrating Banned Books Week

The American Library Association is celebrating Banned Books Week from September 26 to October 3. Most of my favorite books have either been banned or challenged at some time somewhere in the United States. Some of my banned book favorites include:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (my all-time favorite)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
My Antonia by Willa Cather

To learn more about Banned Books Week and to see a full list of challenged and banned classics, visit the ALA web site.

Which banned book is your favorite?