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Mudbound: A Novel
by Hillary Jordan
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9781565125698 |
Awards
2006 Bellwether Prize for Fiction
Video
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm — a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not — charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.
The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."
Review:
"Jordan's beautiful debut (winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize for literature of social responsibility) carries echoes of As I Lay Dying, complete with shifts in narrative voice, a body needing burial, flood and more. In 1946, Laura McAllan, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher, becomes a reluctant farmer's wife when her husband, Henry, buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta, a farm she aptly nicknames Mudbound. Laura has difficulty adjusting to life without electricity, indoor plumbing, readily accessible medical care for her two children and, worst of all, life with her live-in misogynous, racist, father-in-law. Her days become easier after Florence, the wife of Hap Jackson, one of their black tenants, becomes more important to Laura as companion than as hired help. Catastrophe is inevitable when two young WWII veterans, Henry's brother, Jamie, and the Jacksons' son, Ronsel, arrive, both battling nightmares from horrors they've seen, and both unable to bow to Mississippi rules after eye-opening years in Europe. Jordan convincingly inhabits each of her narrators, though some descriptive passages can be overly florid, and the denouement is a bit maudlin. But these are minor blemishes on a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Hillary Jordan's first novel, 'Mudbound,' arrives emblazoned with the Bellwether Prize, a biennial award established in 1999 by Barbara Kingsolver 'to support a literature of social responsibility.' That sounds like wearing a 'Kick Me' sign on the literary playground, but sneer all you want, O Decadent Literati. These judges know that 'social commentary in our art is frequently viewed with suspicion,'..." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)
Review:
"[A] sophisticated, complex first novel." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review:
"Mudbound, an ambitious and affecting debut, may very well become a staple of syllabi for courses in Southern literature. It is accessible, engaging and spiked with suspense." Paste Magazine
Review:
"[A] poignant and moving debut novel....Jordan faultlessly portrays the values of the 1940s as she builds to a stunning conclusion. Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review:
"The perils of country living are brought to light in a confidently executed novel." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"A real page turner — a tangle of history, tragedy and romance powered by guilt, moral indignation and a near chorus of unstoppable voices. Any reader will appreciate the overlap of forbidden loves and deadly secrets." Stewart O'Nan
Synopsis:
Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, Mudbound is storytelling at the height of its powers: "the ache of wrongs not yet made right, the fierce attendance of history made real" (Barbara Kingsolver), as men and women from two families become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale.
About the Author
Hillary Jordan grew up in Dallas, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma, and received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Mudbound, her first novel, was awarded the 2006 Bellwether Prize, founded by Barbara Kingsolver to recognize literature of social responsibility.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
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katatrina, August 5, 2008 (view all comments by katatrina)
This was just as good as NPR promised it would be. Hillary Jordan is great at delivering the different voices that this book is told in, and the story is rich and well-developed. Sometimes when a book is told in parts by different people, I want to skip ahead to the next section told by one of them, but in this book I didn't have that problem.
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sstroo, July 16, 2008 (view all comments by sstroo)
This was a singularly amazing book, unexpected at the time but now I can't get it out of my head as I go about my day. It seemed to by the end, as though this was a story that had always existed somewhere, painfully dwelling in the shadows of southern history, waiting for someone to bring it out and tell it to the world. Every detail, every word was necessary-- nothing pretentious or extraneous. There was a vaguely Shakespearean element to the way the story all came together, the lust, anger, betrayal-- such raw and ugly emotions and yet, such a compelling and beautiful story. This book is not to be missed, but it is a challenge to keep your eyes on the page and call to us all, I believe, to continue to embody the good we believe is out there.
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awisehart, June 5, 2008 (view all comments by awisehart)
This is a compelling, engrossing novel about life in 1940s rural Mississippi. It was hard to put down. The characters are vivid and complex, well drawn. The story is told from the point of view of six different characters, and for this reason the narration is occasionally choppy, but it's well developed. A beautifully written story about prejudice. Hillary Jordan digs deeply into the lives of her characters, taking an unflinching and complex approach.
View all 3 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781565125698
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
- Subject:
- Historical - General
- Subject:
- Historical
- Subject:
- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination and Race Relations
- Subject:
- World war, 1939-1945
- Subject:
- Farm life
- Copyright:
- 2008
- Publication Date:
- March 4, 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 328
- Dimensions:
- 8.5 x 5.5 in
