October 2017 Meeting: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Three weeks before Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award, the conversation was about how Jesmyn wrote Leonie’s character with so much compassion that, whether you loved or particularly didn’t care for her, you felt for her. When reading novels, it’s very easy to draw lines around characters we find difficult and read around them. Beyond her ability to tell stories, Jesmyn’s gift as a writer is that she writes her most difficult characters in a way that can only be reckoned with head on. From this reckoning, you get that life is less about the things we’d just like to do, but about the things we have to do—and what our lives can become if we neglect to do them.
