A Book Recommendation

The editor of The Christendom Review, and my friend, Rick Barnett, has a recently published book up on Amazon entitled Living in the Meantime: Three Novellas, and I'm here to tell you how good it is. There are promotional blurbs from literary eminences like Madison Jones (A Cry of Absence) and Marion Montgomery and our old friend from university days, Sterling Watson (whose novels can also be found at Amazon), the latter writing that what we'll find in these stories "is what we see from the car window if we venture off the interstates into the little places where big lives are still lived, if size is measured by passion."

Oddly enough, I was asked to offer some words of my own, so I said:

I had not thought - in the wake of the enormous Southern literary legacy of the 20th century - to have come upon another genuinely new voice from that region, but in this collection of novellas by Rick Barnett I have found one. It is his narrative genius that we can very nearly hear his characters' hearts beat in the very cadence of his prose, and because of this we come to love them all, even the most eccentric among them. I was able to set aside for other distractions not a one of these tales, but, if I might be permitted a note of partiality, I consider "Clemency" a small masterpiece.

I'm perfectly aware that many book blurbs are insincere exercises in obligatory puffery, but I want readers to know that I meant every word. You would do yourself, and possibly our culture, a good service by purchasing the book and, most of all, by taking these stories to heart and spreading the good word about them.

"Clemency" begins: "This is the story of the end of the world in a very small place." And it only gets better from there.
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Comments to the original. Read from bottom up:

William Luse

Submitted on 2014/04/04 at 2:53 am
Thanks, guys. I think you’ll find “Tooth and Nail” riveting as well. Part of it was excerpted in TCR. Horrifying, heartbreaking, hopeful.

Beth

Submitted on 2014/04/24 at 8:56 am
I’m enjoying them. There’s an O’Connor-esque feel to the characterizations. I tend to read very quickly the first time through something and decide if it warrants a slower read — I plan to go back to these. I’m going to loan the book to my colleague who teaches Southern Lit to see what he thinks.

William Luse

Submitted on 2014/04/24 at 12:24 am
How are you liking them?
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Beth

Submitted on 2014/04/23 at 1:15 pm
I confess I haven’t started yours yet. But Rick’s are shorter and it’s the end of the term.

I am enjoying his stories very much.
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William Luse

Submitted on 2014/04/15 at 5:33 am
You bought mine? You just made the top of my list of The Best 100 Good Women in America.
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Beth

Submitted on 2014/04/14 at 9:54 am
It is on its way right now, along with yours.
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William Luse

Submitted on 2014/04/07 at 4:11 pm
Told ya.
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Bill White

Submitted on 2014/04/07 at 10:45 am
Just finished Clemency this morning and now I’ve got no taste for facebook. I like this.
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William Luse
Submitted on 2014/04/06 at 12:11 am
I’ll tell him. He’ll be pleased.
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TSO

Submitted on 2014/04/05 at 9:10 am
Downloaded Kindle sample skeptically but was won over. Wow. Humorous, biting….He had me at “apostolic succession of single, working mothers” at which point I had to hit the buy button.
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Bill White

Submitted on 2014/04/03 at 10:30 am
Purchased. C’mon, UPS man.

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Terry

Submitted on 2014/04/03 at 6:13 am
On my “to read list” now.