Salvage the Bones
Reading Salvage the Bones was like going back to high school. Indeed, a quick search shows me that it is, in fact, taught in secondary schools.
As soon as I hit my stride in the book — and learned the above — I wondered if the book had been challenged/banned. Another search shows me that I get to smugly say: KNEW IT. As a parent, I am truly, truly baffled by this. I would have loved for my kids to have read Salvage the Bones in high school. Here’s why:
1) Jesmyn Ward is an expert at simile and metaphor. I already knew this from Sing, Unburied, Sing, but Salvage the Bones is next level. The similes are everywhere. I read a copy that I own, so I tried to underline them all. It’s often several per page. And they are so good. Ward’s are not pat descriptions that give nothing to the reader; they are layered and nuanced paintings. “Sometimes I wonder if Junior remembers anything, or if his head is like a colander, and the memories of who bottle-fed him, who licked his tears, who mothered him, squeeze through the metal like water to run down the drain, and only leave the present day, his sand holes, his shirtless bird chest, Randall yelling at him: his present washed clean of memory like vegetables washed clean of the dirt they grow in.” There’s a double (or triple?) for you. And let’s not forget the overarching Medea/Jason Greek mythology theme that Ward carries throughout. Her best literary tricks propel the story forward instead of leaving it in 2D robotic stagnancy. THIS is accomplished writing.
2) Jesmyn Ward knows how to write a “cause” novel that nonetheless transcends a moment in time. (See my post about Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips and how novels about “events” are often cloying.) Salvage the Bones is about Hurricane Katrina. There aren’t many novelists who could take on a major contemporary event without stooping to a simple morality tale. Ward does.
Reading Salvage the Bones is a master class in what an artful novel can do. From a social, artistic, literary, and cognitive standpoint, we owe it to our youth to teach them from books like this.
(Congrats to Jesmyn Ward for her latest novel, Let Us Descend, being named Oprah’s most recent pick.)
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