How Far She Went

by Mary Hood

Book Overview

Mary Hood's fictional world is a world where fear, anger, longing-sometimes worse-lie just below the surface of a pleasant summer afternoon or a Sunday church service. In "A Country Girl," for example, she creates an idyllic valley where a barefoot girl sings melodies "low and private as a lullaby" and where "you could pick up one of the little early apples from the ground and eat it right then without worrying about pesticide." But something changes...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820307238
• ISBN13: 9780820307237
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Every word pure protein, no filler

She's good, one of those sardonic southern writers who couldn't write a bad sentence if you held her feet to the fire or offered a bribe. She's got that fine ear that condenses our common language and turns it into near poetry. Every word pure protein, no filler. She fuses voice to people to place, like Grace Paley only Hood's people live in rural Georgia, tend to hunt, and Church sends its long shadow. So, imagine cross between Grace Paley and Flannery O'Connor. THrow in the terse existentialism of the blues. Richer language than Raymond Carver, or Tobias Wolfe but part of that short story renaissance that started in the Eighties. She's one of the best.