SHINE HAWK

by Charlie Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 1988

A journey to collect the body of a dead sibling turns into a last hurrah for a trio of free spirits in 1950's Georgia: another densely lyrical novel from the author of Canaan (1984). Billy Crew (our narrator), Hazel Rance, and Frank Jackson are more than childhood friends from the small South Georgia town of Skye; they are--profoundly--joined. For the two men, Hazel has been the object of a lifelong infatuation; and while it was Frank who married her, Billy has been her lover--and Frank's lover, too. Starting in their teens, the three would take off on ""rambles""--hell-raising cross-country escapades, their declaration of ""incorrigible bawdiness."" Now it's 1957, and the three friends, pushing 40, are driving upstate to collect the body of Jake, Frank's older brother, dead from too much drugs and booze. The first sign that Frank may be as marked for death as Jake comes when he sets fire to Jake's trailer and shuts himself inside. His wildness infects his companions: Billy sends a cop sprawling, there is a chase, and they escape downriver in a stolen johnboat. Despite their increasingly desperate circumstances, underscored by dead Jake's decomposing body, the three have a riverbank orgy as Frank confesses that he helped Jake on his way by smothering him. Back in Skye, Frank assaults his mother and is jailed; we leave him in his treehouse in the swamp, preparing for his own death (he has just killed a deputy). An uneven but occasionally brilliant southern version of Appointment in Samarra, bloated by descriptions of the terrain (these proliferate like kudzu vines) and the erotic communion of the hellions which ultimately become cloying. Yet whenever Smith opens up the narrative, the result is terrific (there is an electrifying scene in which Frank is called to account by a black preacher). High-risk work, then, which may signal the emergence of an exciting new talent.

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Paris Review Ed./British American--dist. by Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION