Showing posts with label Raney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raney. Show all posts

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Raney, by Clyde Edgerton


Book image courtesy of Google.com

Read, reviewed, and released in May, 2006

It was a very quick read, light-hearted, gentle and funny. I wish some of the characters had been more fully developed, especially "Mama." I liked her.

Here are a couple of excerpts that I particularly enjoyed:

On the death of Raney's beloved Uncle Nate, "It was all a shock. There was this giant black hole in my life. And it couldn't hit me all at once. It was like a hourglass was holding things back."

On Raney's and Charles' marital difficulties: "Sometimes I think life is a bed of rose thorns."

One thing that took some getting used to, even for this south Alabamian, was Raney's North Carolina southern accent. I never could get used to her use of "won't" for the past tense, until I substituted "weren't" (even if it wasn't grammatically correct; I'm used to hearing ungrammatical speech). For example: "It won't Mel Tillis...It won't a Mel Tillis record." equals, "It weren't Mel Tillis..." meaning, "It wasn't Mel Tillis..."