Seek the Living

by Ashley Warlick

Book Overview

Reading Ashley Warlick is like listening to the bluesy heartbreak of a country song. Set in the landscape of the new South, with its aging farms and low-rent strip malls, Seek the Living tells the story of a strong-minded young woman whose past catches up with her. When Joan Patee's wayward brother, Denny, breaks one heart too many and takes a beating for it, their father sends Joan to set him straight. Since her mother's death, Joan has had to keep...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 061834148X
• ISBN13: 9780618341481
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Not Just Popular Fiction...

As I read Warlick's "Seek the Living," I was reminded of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" and the ways in which Faulkner's characters reveal complexities that reach beyond the telling of a good tale to ring out the potential recklessness and restlessness within us all. The universality of Warlick's work; how she creates moments of vast poignancy; how she captures the tensions of self/family/place; how she masterfully generates passion and longing for what may be, what was, and what could have been; all of this sets Warlick's novel apart as a work of art - true literature. Poetic and introspective, the voices and experiences of Warlick's characters at once encourage us to question the certainty of and to embrace the ambiguity within our own lives. This novel will carry you away.

nuance and wisdom

Ashley Warlick writes sentences that are as smooth as silk and as sharp as a glass shard. And these wonderful sentences lead us into another of her Southern families with heartaches, secrets, joys, feints, and resolutions. As always in Warlick's books, she deciphers the body language of her characters with an unerring and subtle wisdom. One test of a novel is to put the first and last words together to see what note they ring about the novel: SEEK THE LIVING's would be "when . . . land". And yes, this is a novel about the pressures of the past and its shaping and settling in the present. We all know her characters; we meet folks just like them on the streets and in the strip malls everyday. Now we know them better.

thought-provoking and stylish

I would add to the other positive reviews that this book has some good humor, especially in the middle, as well as suspense and surprise, especially towards the end. Although it reads and entertains as well as an airport store kind of book, it has much more depth and artistry. Warlick has an exceptional ability to evoke a mood or arouse a feeling in creative ways, with the barest of small but precise touches. She's skillful at using ambiguity effectively in dialogue and character development. Her characters are not ordinary or typical people, but nor are they unbelievable; at a party with a cross-section of society, they're the select ones you'd catch yourself watching from a distance now and then during the night. I didn't want to reach the end of the book, and I found myself contemplating the characters long after I had.

Great talent

Ashley Warlick's newest novel Seek the Living is her latest addition to a body of work that continues to showcase an incredible talent from a wise and deft storyteller. Joan Patte joins Warlick's previous creations, Mavis Black (Distance from the Heart of Things) and Lindy Jain (Summer After June) as a woman fully entrenched in her family and her place, for better or worse, as she struggles to simultaneously live with the heartaches of her past and desires for her future. Joan is, appropriately, an archivist who charts the minute details of her state (South Carolina) for a private foundation. She is the cornerstone of her family, a consequence of her mother's death, and finds herself facilitating a tenous relationship between her father and brother. Joan longs for her sweet, patient, and frequently absent husband with whom she is having difficulty conceiving a child. Along with mourning her mother's death, she is still haunted by a former lover whose death may have interrupted a completely different course for Joan's life. Ultimately, Joan's strength lies in her ability to visit the graves of her past without falling in. Warlick's prose is honest and clean, balancing darkness and light as only Southern writers can. Buy this book.

Go and Seek The Living

This novel is brilliant. I have read Warlick's two previous novels, which moved me to buy her third, but I must say that this one is a step away and above. Warlick is so capable of capturing the delicate nature and intricacy of human relationships that all of us feel, but lack the literary talent to express. I would rate this very high on any must read list.