LOBLOLLY

Lang’s Southern gothic novel includes women looking for love, a man incapable of intimacy, and a structure that is pure Greek in its trajectory.

Jonathan Hale’s ancestral home, Loblolly House, was named in homage to the surrounding loblolly pines that made his family’s fortune. Jonathan, a lawyer, is the fourth Hale to reign over the estate. His great-grandfather (the founder) and his grandfather respected the land and husbanded it well; his father was more impulsive and avaricious than patient and grounded, so Jonathan is determined to stem the decline of the Hale fortunes. The mansion itself is an intimidating pile built—no surprise—of loblolly pine. A young neighboring woman, Layla Mullins, comes to Jonathan seeking legal help, and they fall in love. The book opens after that affair, when Layla has left Loblolly and Jonathan has married Clara, who narrates much of the book and who, like Layla, cannot break through Jonathan’s Olympian reserve. Other important characters are Miss Pritchard, Jonathan’s intimidating housekeeper and general factotum, and Jun, a Black man who lives in a nearby shack and functions as the moral anchor and truth-teller of the story. Another force and mystical presence in the story is Rocky Creek, an ordinarily placid waterway that can become a roiling killer. Readers who see Rocky Creek and Loblolly House as symbolic adversaries are probably onto something.

Lang’s book is an impressive literary achievement in the Shirley Jackson tradition: The bride, Clara, is taken to a haunting (if not haunted) mansion with a room—untouched over the years—where a woman named “Layla” whom no one will talk about once slept. Clara’s new husband is courteous, even solicitous. But he simply doesn’t know how to connect with another human being. He also knows that any loose word, leak, or rash confidence will endanger this life of his, which is, in fact, terrifyingly and paradoxically fragile. Loblolly House is the embodiment of Jonathan’s ethos: The mansion hasn’t changed in decades, and everything has its place and must remain there. Move one of the dining table chairs just an inch from its designated place, or slide a drape just scant inches away from its mate, and Miss Pritchard will take note. She will be polite, but she will quietly correct that disturbance in the force field, so to speak—and she will not forget. Clara is also advised to stay away from Jun, whom Jonathan describes as “volatile.” Dialogic exchanges are direct and heated, the sentiments aphoristic. (“Clear to whom?” “To anyone who requires clarity.”) Lang has a subtle way with imagery and character, as with this sketch of Jonathan: “The posture made him appear both relaxed and immovable, like a man leaning against a fence he owned.” Without revealing the ending, it’s dramatic in the extreme, and readers will realize that hints about the denouement have been dropped from the beginning. This is not really a ghost story—no ectoplasm, no bumps in the night, no untoward shrieking and moaning—but as a story of loss, it’s infinitely more sad and more unforgiving.

An elegantly melancholic story with two unforgettable characters—Jonathan Hale and Loblolly House.