Meth labs and malnourished children are far too common. Poverty and ignorance and racism still abound in certain pockets of Southern states. But there is so much of the South that harbors seeds of darkness. I’ve been so incredibly fortunate in my life. Berry bushes and grape vines and fruit trees are budding, promising all the fruit we can eat by summertime. Azaleas are blooming riotously, in hues ranging from crimson to white, mingled with lavender and fuchsia and cotton candy pink. Goats dance and chickens scratch and my niece is chasing our big black dog. As I type, I can look out my window and see sunlight dappling green grass through the boughs of evergreens and reawakening oaks. Like I’m talking to God with my fingers.” “Can’t nothing bother me when I got my hands in the dirt, he said. Ward writes stories firmly rooted in the South, and though this was the first of her novels I’ve read, it won’t be the last, because she does a phenomenal job of capturing both the beauty and the repugnance of the rural South.

For me, that comes in the form of novels set in the American South. There’s something about reading a novel that shares your life in some way, whether that entails a shared heritage or setting or lifestyle, that just speaks so deeply to readers. So where did Sing, Unburied, Sing fall in this mixed bag of a genre? While it doesn’t rank among my favorite books ever, I did very much enjoy it. “Sometimes the world don’t give you what you need, no matter how hard you look. However, I have been fortunate to find some absolutely gorgeous books in the genre, a handful of which are now among my very favorite books on the planet.

There’s this level of pretension found in the writing of many such titles that I find difficult to stomach. I’ve read quite a few that I desperately wanted to like, but I just couldn’t. Literary fiction is very hit or miss for me.

Sing unburied sing novel