Mudbound
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Product Description
Review
This is storytelling at the height of its powers: the ache of wrongs not yet made right, the fierce attendance of history made as real as rain, as true as this minute. Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm --Barbara Kingsolver
Blatant injustice is heartbreakingly brought to life by Hillary Jordan in her debut novel...A tale that has echoes of the novels of John Steinbeck and Alice Walker...The varied viewpoints allow for an intimate insight into each character's thoughts and motivations that enriches the novel --Glasgow Herald
Blatant injustice is heartbreakingly brought to life by Hillary Jordan in her debut novel...A tale that has echoes of the novels of John Steinbeck and Alice Walker...The varied viewpoints allow for an intimate insight into each character's thoughts and motivations that enriches the novel --Glasgow Herald
Book Description
When I think of the farm, I think of mud...There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
57 of 60 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is really powerful. It's set in the Deep South of the USA just as World War Two has finished, where little had changed since the abolition of slavery. White and black farmers live side by side amidst terrible prejudice, yet the war has changed things, and terrible consequences follow. But there's also a lot of love, and family in the book. If you liked Cold Mountain I think this might be a good choice.
The story is incredibly dramatic. It's told by each character in turn, so you hear lots of different voices as the tale progresses. My hair was on end for much of the book and I cried at the ending, which is heart-wrenching. It is as vivid as a good film, but in addition, is beautifully written, with a really strong, muscular sense of the story and of the characters. Hillary Jordan makes a point of showing the goodness and the evil that are both in the world, and links the terrible events of the book to tiny chance decisions that could have gone either way. The ending is really brilliant too. I think Richard & Judy have picked some really good books and this is another one.
The story is incredibly dramatic. It's told by each character in turn, so you hear lots of different voices as the tale progresses. My hair was on end for much of the book and I cried at the ending, which is heart-wrenching. It is as vivid as a good film, but in addition, is beautifully written, with a really strong, muscular sense of the story and of the characters. Hillary Jordan makes a point of showing the goodness and the evil that are both in the world, and links the terrible events of the book to tiny chance decisions that could have gone either way. The ending is really brilliant too. I think Richard & Judy have picked some really good books and this is another one.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of those books I guess which will continue to resonate, and linger in the mind. Its particularly shocking as it forces us to remember how VERY recently the civil rights movement became something mainstream.
In the year when Americans elected Barack Obama to the White House, its so shocking to remember that only a few decades ago, in the most powerful nation on earth, apartheid was still the norm in some states, that the lynching mob was still in operation for black people who 'stepped out of line' (a line drawn by racists)
This story, set at the end of World War II, and dealing with the effects of that on the men who returned to the States from Europe, changed both by an expansion AND a loss of innocence, and also it is about the effect of family, both in its strengths and weaknesses.
The book is told through several different voices, and Jordan builds our sense of compassion, horror, pity, shame and disgust beautifully.
Her ending hints at, but doesn't guarantee, hope
In the year when Americans elected Barack Obama to the White House, its so shocking to remember that only a few decades ago, in the most powerful nation on earth, apartheid was still the norm in some states, that the lynching mob was still in operation for black people who 'stepped out of line' (a line drawn by racists)
This story, set at the end of World War II, and dealing with the effects of that on the men who returned to the States from Europe, changed both by an expansion AND a loss of innocence, and also it is about the effect of family, both in its strengths and weaknesses.
The book is told through several different voices, and Jordan builds our sense of compassion, horror, pity, shame and disgust beautifully.
Her ending hints at, but doesn't guarantee, hope
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Early in the second chapter of Hillary Jordan's brilliant new novel Mudbound, one of her leading characters, Laura, says, "I suppose the beginning depends on who's telling the story. No doubt the others would start somewhere different, but they'd still wind up at the same place in the end." And this is the key to the book's whole structure. We have just seen the end. In Chapter One we saw Laura's husband and his younger brother digging a grave on their farm, a grave seven feet deep in what seems to have been total mud. They were burying their father, who did not, it is hinted, die from natural causes. How this end came about we are told in the following chapters, each of which is narrated by one of the others.
This is of course a structure similar to William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, but the comparison need not stop there. Hillary Jordan writes with the same slow-burning intensity and this area of the Mississippi Delta is struck by the same tragedies, the same storms - meteorological, emotional and racial - as any in Yoknapatawpha County.
Two young men have returned to the Delta from serving in World War Two: Laura's young brother-in-law and the son of one of the black share-cropping families who work on her husband's land. They have seen a different world and no longer fit in to this bigoted and racist community. They become friends. But the young black is seen to be riding in the passenger seat of his friend's pick-up truck instead of in the back where he belongs, and that is cause enough for all that follows. It is a violent and brutal story but told with understanding and compassion.
Mudbound won the Bellwether prize for fiction, a prize awarded biennially to a first literary novel that addresses issues of social justice. and I feel sure that there will be many more prizes won by this outstandingly gifted writer.
Neil Curry
This is of course a structure similar to William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, but the comparison need not stop there. Hillary Jordan writes with the same slow-burning intensity and this area of the Mississippi Delta is struck by the same tragedies, the same storms - meteorological, emotional and racial - as any in Yoknapatawpha County.
Two young men have returned to the Delta from serving in World War Two: Laura's young brother-in-law and the son of one of the black share-cropping families who work on her husband's land. They have seen a different world and no longer fit in to this bigoted and racist community. They become friends. But the young black is seen to be riding in the passenger seat of his friend's pick-up truck instead of in the back where he belongs, and that is cause enough for all that follows. It is a violent and brutal story but told with understanding and compassion.
Mudbound won the Bellwether prize for fiction, a prize awarded biennially to a first literary novel that addresses issues of social justice. and I feel sure that there will be many more prizes won by this outstandingly gifted writer.
Neil Curry
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Powerful Story
This is a story that is so vivid and powerful that you can smell it, taste it and touch it. It is told through several characters whose lives are interwoven. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Farah Yousif
Mudbound Must Read
Couldnt put this book down. Horrified and yet enthrawled. In a time when people just didn't seem to know any better, their behaviour is just despicable. Yet I had to read on.
Published 2 months ago by Mrs B. East Yorkshire
OMG BRILL
This book was so fab I just couldn't put it down and afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was bought as a Christmas present and I didn't think it would be might sort... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Barney
if you loved The Help or any Fannie Flagg novel, you'll love this!
if you loved The Help or any Fannie Flagg novel, you'll love this!
Couldn't put it down!
The characters are great, you really feel like you're right there on... Read more
Couldn't put it down!
The characters are great, you really feel like you're right there on... Read more
Published 5 months ago by A. Philipson
Couldn't put it down
Read it in a day, couldn't put it down, loved every page.
Characters well crafted and believable.
Didn't think the blurb on the back cover did it justice! Read more
Characters well crafted and believable.
Didn't think the blurb on the back cover did it justice! Read more
Published 7 months ago by Lighthouse Keeper
Great. A fast, fascinating, thoughtful read.
Given the amount of people who have already covered the style and story of Mudbound, I have the luxury of giving a mere opinion. Read more
Published 10 months ago by A Dunlop
Brilliantly written and thought provoking
I loved this book. It's set during and after the second world war on a farm in the Mississippi delta. Read more
Published 12 months ago by K. Price
VERY GOOD
Good book bit slow at start but true to life for america. If doing history AS recomend it it helped me.
Published 13 months ago by a dorito
Mudbound
A good easy read, but lacks depth. A clever twist at the end but probably not the best book I have read on the history of slavery in America. I enjoyed"The Help" much more.
Published 13 months ago by HJH
unbelievably moving
I have just finished reading this wonderful book, I saw it in a charity shop amongst lots of others but the cover stood out for me , I read the first chapter and I was there... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mrs. G. mcmonagle
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