Cavedweller [Library Binding]

Years and years ago, I devoured Bastard out of Carolina. Then I got ahold of Cavedweller - and it might as well have dwelt in a cave itself for all the notice I took of it. Why did it take me so long to pick it up and read it?
Answer: the cover photo was ambiguous and didn't draw me in, and the title was...odd.
What a mistake! I picked it up while cleaning out bookshelves a few days ago, flipped to the first page, and barely put it down till I'd finished it. It begins with death, and death (or the threat of death - many near misses) persists throughout. But somehow the women of this book triumph above poverty, narrow-minded neighbors, small town pettiness, Holy Roller invective, no-good men (though, to Allison's credit, there ARE a few good men), and lack of opportunity.
I admire the author's ability to move seamlessly forward in time without her readers demanding to know absolutely everything that happened in the intervening years. Characters grow and learn and change, and Allison's writing plops us down at the critical moments so we can observe first-hand the events that caused the transitions.
Wonderful book, wonderful characters, wonderful writing.
Highest recommendation, right behind Bastard out of Carolina.

I, too, must have missed something here. While the first several chapters definitely had me hooked, I found the rest of the book slow going. Most of the characters, but especially Delia, were only partially-drawn, and each seemed to be keeping a BIG SECRET that never emerged. There is a lukewarm family drama described in retrospect toward the end of the book that could be considered expository, but it seemed like an author's afterthought, and didn't work at all.

The whole cave thing was too little, too late, and the fact that it dictated the book's title surprised me. I was most frustrated with how Allison takes us deep into a character, and then pulls back, as if teasing us with detail that is ultimately inconsequential. The most fascinating characters, Rosemary and Amanda, are dangling like rag dolls at the end of the story.

Echoing the voices and revisiting the region of her starkly splendid debut novel, Bastard Out Of Carolina, Dorothy Allison sets her story of family, friendship, and redemption, Cavedweller, in rural Cayro, Georgia. This community with its myopic mores and entrenched culture is as much a part of her tale as the gritty, determined women who call it home.

With disarming candor and often lyrical prose Ms. Allison relates the story of Delia Byrd, who fled Cayro for Los Angeles a decade ago, running from an abusive husband, Clint Windsor, and leaving behind two baby daughters. Delia became the whiskey-voiced, whiskey dependent lead singer for a rock group called "Mud Dogs." When her second husband, guitarist for the group and father of her third daughter, Cissy, dies in a fiery motorcycle crash, Delia packs a few belongings plus her protesting daughter into an enfeebled Datsun and heads for home. Determined to stay sober and reunite her family, she drives cross-country "as if her sanity depended on it."

There are no welcome home signs in Cayro. Recognizing Delia, a diner cook announces, "You that bitch ran off and left her babies......don't think people don't remember....You the kind we remember." Her return is greeted with even less charity by the congregation of the Cayro Baptist Tabernacle, and Scripture quoting Grandma Windsor who has raised Delia's other two daughters: Amanda, 15, a hellfire and damnation religious zealot, and Dede, 12, a caustic cigarette smoking nymphet. Only M.T., "a big woman, muscular under soft pads of flesh" offers succor to "her lost best friend and the daughter at her side."

Desperate to reclaim her girls, Delia strikes a bargain with the cancer stricken Clint - she will care for him until his death in return for custody of their daughters. Thus, dysfunctional as it may be, they are a family again as Delia works herself into exhaustion, Amanda prays, Dede scorns, and Cissy forms a tenuous rapprochement with the dying man.

While the first half of this deftly crafted narrative focuses on Delia as she battles guilt, recrimination, poverty, and the urge to drink, the second portion belongs to Cissy. It is her coming-of-age tale, rendered with compassion and eloquence. Doubtless there will be parallels drawn between Cissy and Harper Lee's "Scout" in To Kill A Mockingbird. Cissy does not suffer by comparison. Viewing the world with a probative eye she searches hungrily for her identity.

When Cissy is introduced to the mysteries and challenges of spelunking, it is within the black recesses of Little Mouth cave that the young insomniac finds rest and a modicum of peace. "Looking up into the rock ceiling...she imagined she could hear gospel music in the darkness just outside of the light's little circle....she found herself thinking about God, the God who stacked rock on rock and watched after fatherless girls."

Ms. Allison draws her characters forcefully, with telling detail, etching them upon the reader's consciousness. Her description of Clint's final moments is surely one of the most memorable scenes in contemporary literature. Few describe a redneck with the hair trigger accuracy of this author, or more truly limn the evangelistic fervor of southern fundamentalists. Her depiction of enduring friendship, non-judgmental and patient, is tribute to both Ms. Allison's estimable skill as a wordsmith, and the generosity of the human heart.

Rather than the unrelenting cycle of poverty and oppression described in some of Ms. Allison's previous work, this novel ends on a hopeful note. "I wanted to write about people who could change," Ms. Allison has said. "You can create redemption for yourself." Cavedweller is unforgettable affirmation of her belief.

- Gail Cooke