Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter in The Roundtable

Apr 01, 2011 Sera rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, favorites, library, mystery

I loved this book from first page to last. The story was well-written, interesting and satisfying. Franklin gives an excellent portrait of life in 1980s and then modern day Mississippi and creates memorable characters who will stay with me for awhile. Interestingly, I recently listened to

, which was also set in the deep South, albeit post-WWII. Mudbound is a much more disturbing and violent depiction of racism so it was harder to get through than CLCL, even though all racism makes me sick t ...more

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Jan 25, 2014 Susanna - Censored by GoodReads rated it really liked it

Atmospheric mystery. Recommended.

For a further review: http://susannag.booklikes.com/post/77... . ...more

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May 27, 2012 Christopher rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21st-century, american, fiction, vergangenheitsbewaltigung

Lord, thank You for Your grace, and thank you for healing Larry's stuttering and his asthma. Please send him a special friend, one just for him.

Scary Larry Ott is not scary, or rather, if he is, it's only through the lens of misunderstanding and unfortunate circumstances. Accused but unconvicted of murder at a young age, he has lived his life in solitude and in penitence for a crime he did not commit. He owns a mechanic's shop no locals would patronize and nightly he prays the same prayer of his Lord, thank You for Your grace, and thank you for healing Larry's stuttering and his asthma. Please send him a special friend, one just for him.

Scary Larry Ott is not scary, or rather, if he is, it's only through the lens of misunderstanding and unfortunate circumstances. Accused but unconvicted of murder at a young age, he has lived his life in solitude and in penitence for a crime he did not commit. He owns a mechanic's shop no locals would patronize and nightly he prays the same prayer of his mother, that God would send him a friend, one just for him. He partakes in no intoxicants or diversions, besides reading, that may give him respite from his sad existence.

Silas "32" Jones is not scary either, or rather, he is but only to himself, as he alone holds the dark secret within his past. He is an all-star player within every field he applies himself, be it baseball or romance or sheriffry (yes, that is a word). But for all of his winning characteristics, he is the kind of person who asks often of himself, "what's missing out of you, Silas?"

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a study in chiaroscuro, in the contrast between subjectivity and objectivity, the assumed and the real, the black and the white (the color of people and their souls). It is a character book - if the reader feels no sympathy for the characters, this book will take them nowhere, and thankfully one must be psychopathic to read this heartbreaking account without feeling a deep sympathy for Larry and Silas both.

This is a hard book to criticize because it is completely enjoyable, worth every moment of reading time allotted. But it does feel lacking in some sense, perhaps in its technical realm. While the prose is serviceable, it certainly is no match for Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy, who are the first two authors this novel is compared to on the blurb. Myriad references to Stephen King's books and Franklin's own admittance to a fondness for King are significant, for the quality of his prose falls somewhere between King and Faulkner (thankfully, closer to Faulkner). And I must gripe about the title. Crooked letters represent Ss in Mississippi (M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-humpback-humpback-I), but there's no special way this relates to the novel. From what I can tell of interviews with Franklin, he simply thought this was a cool title. I wish there was an allegory here that would make Larry's and Silas's story the essential story of Mississippi, but it doesn't feel like The Great Mississippian Novel. It is decidedly American, even Southern, but not necessarily Mississippian, and to in effect name your book "Mississippi" borders on pretension. ...more

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