William gay box set

The scent of wildflower rode the winds and he moved through this Edenic world with a newfound confidence. He began to think he might make it after all. L ater that year his mother told him she was going to die. She waxed and waned like a fever. She was going to die she said but he already knew everybody was going to die.

“Fugitives of the Heart,” by William Gay

Of these, I have chosen my top ten reads for the year, limiting myself to just one book per author. Here are the ten in no particular order. All come highly recommended from me. Clicking on the covers will take you to the listing for the book on Goodreads. This novel, her first, is the very best of her non-WWI output.

I Love William Gay’s ‘The Long Home’

Episodic writers tend to write a series of scenes that are self-contained. Stylistically, this is the method Gay has used with all his writing when the main character is a young man. So, narrative leaps are actually more attune to how a young man in this world would think and operate.

“Stories from the Attic” by William Gay

Gay, however, never condescends. He refuses to make fun of the people or the society he writes about. Each character has some redeeming quality, some reason for why they become the way they are. It is easy to point at a social degenerate as someone who is distasteful. As if to punctuate the desperation his characters face, he places them in almost uninhabitable conditions.