Bitter Milk

by John McManus

Book Overview

From Whiting Award-winning writer John McManus comes a debut novel of startling originality and mystery. The son of an unknown father and an ostracized mother, and the next of kin in a long line of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312301936
• ISBN13: 9780312301934
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

"Boredom...the only reason anyone on earth cared about anyone else."

Set on the slopes of Chilhowee Mountain in rural Tennessee, Bitter Milk is the strange coming-of-age story of a Loren Garland, a nine-year-old boy who lives with an assortment of weird family members and attends school with an equally weird assortment of teachers and students. Bright but very fearful about school and all other aspects of his life, the 150-pound fourth-grader lacks friends his own age, and he clings emotionally to his mother, Opal. The more he seeks attention from Opal, however, the more often his alterego, Luther, who is the book's narrator, clamors for attention. Opal, who prefers to be called Avery, has been avoiding her extended family for almost a year while exploring life as a man, and she is frequently depressed and impatient with Loren. Upon the death of his grandmother and the sale of the family's land to developers, Opal/Avery suddenly disappears, telling Loren, in a peculiar note, to call her sister Ruby and to go there to dye eggs for Easter. From this point on, Loren is shunted from relative to relative, and though he stops eating and blames himself for his mother's disappearance, he also begins to learn something new about himself in each bizarre household. Luther remains hidden inside him and stays relatively quiet until Loren begins to make friends with Eli, Ruby's abusive young stepson, who introduces him to the joys of alcohol and the sniffing of Magic Markers. Though the author frequently gives lyrical descriptions of nature--birds, animals, plants--he also shows the ignorance (the "ignartness") of man toward nature. The trees Loren loves on the mountain are being bulldozed for development, a cat is grotesquely abused and then killed, a fish hooked through the eye is not put out of its pain. However much these people abuse nature, however, they also abuse each other-breaking noses in fights, mocking each other, telling the elderly grandfather that he is going to die, deliberately goading a teacher and then defying her, tormenting fellow students. Filled with bizarre characters who resemble hominids more than humans, the novel shows a "society" that is still close to the level of tooth and claw. Though Loren learns a good deal about himself, the characters around him do not, and many readers will neither identify with them nor care what happens to them. Though there is a good deal of dark humor in their lives, the characters lack charm and the humor often falls flat. Ultimately, the novel remains rooted in the unique, never developing the universal themes which make the reading of novels rewarding. (3.5 stars) n Mary Whipple

A promising debut novel by a gifted writer

BITTER MILK by John McManus August 21, 2005 Rating: 3 ½ stars Here's a book that was unique from the start. The debut novel BITTER MILK by John McManus is narrated by a character that does not exist, except in the mind of its main character, Lorn. The narrative is rambling at best, almost like a stream of consciousness type of writing. The story takes place in the east hills of Tennessee, and 9-year old Lorn lives there with his mother. He's overweight and very much the loner, except for his "friend" Luther. Lorn's mother isn't your typical maternal character. She's very independent and has wanted to be a man for a long time. Luther, the imaginary friend (or is he real? The book does a good job making him as real as he may seem to the boy Lorn), has a mind of his own, and as the reader will find out, in some ways Luther is in competition with Lorn's mother. Luther wants Lorn all to himself, but Lorn is trying to get the attention of his mother, who is so obsessed with her own troubles. Yet, Luther is treated as a real person, as is seen when Lorn's mother sets a place mat at every meal for Luther as well as Lorn. This is southern gothic at its best, with characters that are dysfunctional and situations match the characters that live them. The crux of the story is Lorn and his self-esteem, and the reader will watch him start off as a very insecure boy, but moving toward adolescence and growing in self-confidence by the end of the novel. What is interesting is that Luther, at least for a while, disappears. Lorn no longer needs him, especially when he is off looking for his mother, who had gone away due to reasons Lorn is not aware of. Besides the focus on Lorn and his mother, there is the subplot of the new uncle who has brought developers to their mountain, planning on taking over the family land and turning it into moneymaking real estate. BITTER MILK is a very difficult read. It's non-traditional in its structure, with no chapter breaks or quotation marks to denote conversations. Yet, if a reader is willing to delve into the life of Lorn Garland, they will walk away that much more enriched. John McManus shows promise as a literary talent, although this novel does not quite succeed in doing what he was trying to accomplish. However, I would definitely keep an eye on this author, because he's one that is not afraid to challenge literary standards and try something new for the sake of his art. The youngest ever recipient of the Whiting Writer's Award, John McManus is a writer that will go far.

Quirky musings about a dysfunctional family

Wow, talk about your dysfunctional families. Loren Garland's takes the cake. Avery, his Mother --- who desperately wants to be a man --- tells her nine-year-old son, "Whatever they [other family members] say to do, do something else completely different, cause everything they say is useless cause they don't understand you." Great advice for a grossly overweight, fatherless boy, don't you think? Well, actually, maybe it is, once you meet Aunt Ruby, Uncle Cass and Papaw --- Mother's cranky old father. Between the three of them, they don't have the brains to walk a straight line. And if you think that doesn't make sense, neither do they. If Papaw isn't making up illogical, obscene songs, he's spewing illogical, nonsense lines. Everybody tells him so. He doesn't care. He has just buried Mamaw and now he is fixing to sell the old homestead to a developer. He doesn't care about that either. But the dysfunction doesn't limit itself just to Loren's family. Oh, no. It extends all the way into his school. Ms. Rathbone, his teacher, can hardly be called, um, competent. Rather than handle the classroom's antics, she yields to frequent bouts of yelling and barely controlled tantrums. And the principal --- well, it is hard not to wonder about Mr. Ownby. The best one can say is that he seems to be on Loren's side, which is a rare thing indeed. Loren worries about everything. Almost anything might cause him to drown, gag, fall off the earth, or just shrivel up and die. How he functions at all is truly amazing. It may be that Luther keeps him going. Luther --- who, incidentally, has no body --- narrates Loren's story. While Luther is generally pretty accurate, he can be frank to the point of downright meanness. Apparently, Mother created Luther the same day she created Loren. But for some reason, she acts as though she is jealous of her son's imaginary friend. When Mother unexpectedly disappears one day --- and coincidentally Luther disappears at the same time --- Loren is left to fend for himself. First, he tries out a night at Cass's house, but doesn't like either Cass or his skanky girlfriend. He decides Aunt Ruby might be better, but that turns out not to be the case either. Papaw may be his favorite, but he's a loony old goat, not really a fit guardian for the boy. But then, no one in Loren's family is. For a few days, Loren bounces from one family member to the next, learning a great deal about all sorts of stuff in a very short time. By the end of the book, he just might have learned enough to get by. But now what if Mother returns? BITTER MILK is one chapter --- albeit a 195-page-long one --- in Loren Garland's life, full of quirky characters and interesting adolescent musings. --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Excellent

A careful reader not given to name-dropping from the publishing industry (like the first reviewer) will surely see what an excellent novel BITTER MILK is. Essentially a bildungsroman like most first literary novels, BITTER MILK does two things worth praising: 1. it shows us the character's inner discoveries while 2. painting the outer pressures that confuse yet fascinate him. Excellent.

A Fine Read

John McManus is one of those writers whose popularity peaked with their first book and who have been trying to maintain popularity ever since, in the face of a shrinking market for the literary novel. His first book got a lot of reviews, and the author won the coveted Whiting Award for young writers. The next book got a handful of respectable notices, but you could tell the tide wasn't coming in for young McManus. Now there is BITTER MILK, sort of a cross between Freaks and Geeks and the Appalachian legend stle of the late David Grubb (of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER fame). The "old. weird America" in which little Loren lives with his hippie mother in Eastern Tennessee. He's fat as a boy can be and his chubby stature in some ways mimics the strange androgyny of his mother, who keeps her breasts bound to ward off evil and who goes by a man's name. White trash and violent teens drive all over this mountain ridge, menacing young Loren with their shotgun antics. There's some magic realism, some mystic insights into grownup nature. No wonder he has a littler friend inside of his head-a twin called "Luther" who whispers wisdom to him, in a literary device old as modernism itself. We saw this device handled exquisitely just last year with Tom House's hilariously bent novel THE BEGINNING OF CALAMITIES, and McManus in comparison is a little rough, careless. It may be that Picador might be able to sell this one on the back of Jonathan Safran Foer's recent novel EXTREMELY LOUD ETC which likewise features an improbably bright nine-year old telling you this sophisticated story, but on the other hand people who've read the Foer book first probably won't want a second helping of the same kind of whiz kid precociousness.