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..."