Customer Reviews

Mudbound

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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

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

It is hard to believe that this is the author's first novel. Beautifully written from the points of view of several of the protagonists, each is as distinctive as it is convincing. You can hear the voices of the deep South negroes in your head as you read. All the characters are rounded and smypathetically portrayed (apart from the truly appalling Pappy)and as the novel reaches its dreadful climax, it is quite impossible to put it down. One of the best novels I have read in a long time. If you want a beautiful, human, intelligent and gripping read, look no further.

This was a truly great read.. a real page turner. It was difficult to put this book down.. great characters. I enjoyed it immensely and passed it on to my sister and brother in law who both loved it. Brother in law read it in one sitting. Highly recommended and will be passing it on to others to read too.

An excellent read, after reading other reviews of this book, I knew I had to get it, It certainly didnt disappoint, from the opening page it gripped me. The book is now doing the rounds with my friends. Cant wait to read Hilary Jordons next novel.

Laura thought she was destined for spinsterhood until Henry McAllan chose to make her his wife. What she didn't bargain on was his desire to own land, and their move to a cotton farm a few years later with two small girls. Laura hates the farm, which she and her daughters christen Mudbound, and hates her father-in-law, who has no place to live but with them. When World War II ends, Henry's brother Jamie comes to stay with the family, and so does Ronsel Jackson, the son of the sharecroppers nearby. Sharing the common bond of fighting men, Ronsel and Jamie become friends of a sort, in a way that no one in the South will tolerate for very long.

It's hard to say I liked this book, but it was compelling and completely horrifying in parts. This is particularly so because most of the characters in the book are very racist. I know people genuinely thought like this when and where this book is set, but it bothers me and I can't understand it (which, I suppose, is a good thing). I wanted all the characters to stop being close-minded, to think more like Jamie, who sees Ronsel as a person despite the color of his skin and respects the military achievements that he made.

The book rotates between viewpoints, giving us insight into all of the characters' heads. We can witness Laura's unhappiness, Henry's land-lust, Jamie's jitters and bad memories. Ronsel's memories of war in Europe were for me the most affecting. He describes the difference it made in Europe when he was defined as a man, not as a black man; the wonder of having a white woman fall in love with him and everyone make him feel like he was valued. He had to be my favorite character and my heart broke for him over and over again, stuck in a racist town working on a farm where he'd never be appreciated the way he should have been.

Mudbound is a powerful and affecting book, but it won't leave you happy. It will leave you unsettled and anxious to change the world, correct anyone who might still feel this way. It's an evocative and moving picture of the American South, but I hope it has changed very much.

Mudbound is about people, relationships, and racism set in a 1940s Mississippi backdrop. If you have read any American history or any fiction based in the South during this time period, then some of the issues in this book will be quite familiar to you. I appreciate that not everyone will be aware of just how bad the racism was at that time, or that from the 19th century into the 1950s, most US states enforced anti-miscegenation laws, so in that respect this book might be a real eye-opener if these things were unclear or unknown to you beforehand.

Mudbound is the name of the farm but it is also a metaphor. All the people in the book are stuck, some of them are trying to climb out of the mud and others are being sucked further into the mud, others are quite happy rolling around in it. The novel has a multi-narrator point of view, meaning that it switches from character to character for each chapter. There are six characters that are allowed to tell the story, and the concept of who has a voice and who is allowed or not allowed to use it, is definitely interesting, especially relating to what happens to one of them during the course of the novel. I would say that you do have to pay attention to the chapter titles, especially at the beginning, so you are clear on who is speaking. The beginning of the book for example, I assumed was voiced by Laura (since the story implied it was about Laura and Henry)until she turns up in page 6 and I realise that it's actually the younger brother who is speaking in this first chapter. Pay attention to the chapter headings to avoid any confusion!

The book is narrated by Laura, her husband Henry, his brother Jamie, and the tenant farmers; Hap and Florence, and later their son Ronsel when he returns from fighting in WWII. By far the most interesting narration comes from Florence, Ronsel and perhaps Laura. Henry is a character that held no interest to me and all through the book I was hoping Laura would leave him and run off with Jamie or just go back to her parents house if only for the indoor plumbing! I'm really glad that Pappy, the grandfather, was not given a voice, as I think those chapters would have made my skin crawl.

Despite the multi point of view, I really believe this is a book aimed at women. I don't think it's a book that would speak to the majority of men. It is basically the story of what happens to city-dwelling Laura, when her husband uproots her from her comfortable existence in her family home in Memphis, and deposits her unceremoniously in the mudbound farm of the same name. In 2008, it's really hard to put yourself in Laura's shoes, to understand how accepting she was of everything and how little choice she had, and how much she was required to obey her husband. Personally I would never have put up with Henry, and would have refused to go live in a shack in the middle of nowhere, especially considering this came completely out of the blue. Henry had never shared his ambition to be a farmer with Laura until the day he announces he has bought a farm!

All of the southern white characters are racist to some degree. Some are more racist than other, ranging from Pappy who is so full of hate it is palpable, to Jamie who is a little more open-minded than the rest about some things, but who still believes interracial sex is wrong. Remember it was still against the law - between 1913 and 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced anti-miscegenation laws! It can be a little hard to read, and it is truly offensive in some parts and incredulous in others, but what happens in the book is really quite mild in comparison to what happened in reality.

The ending was a little predictable and that was a disappointment. There were also some not so subtle hints of what was to come dotted through the book, so that even from the first few pages you already knew what to expect and really it was just a matter of reading on until they happened. The problems with the end of the book make it seem anti-climactic after the "tragic climax" making it feel almost rushed in an attempt to tidy up any loose ends quickly. Yet this is a very readable worthy book with some important messages about racism and humanity as well as some real insight in to life in the Delta sixty odd years ago.

Is it a good choice for the first Richard and Judy New Writers Book Club? Well, it has already won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded biennially to a debut novel that addresses issues of social justice. It was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick for summer 2008, a Borders Original Voices selection, a Book Sense pick, and one of twelve New Voices of 2008 chosen by Waterstone's UK, so yeah I think it was a good choice and a pretty safe bet.

I give this book 7 out of 10 for being an engrossing and compelling read. Points deducted for lack of originality and some predictability.

If you liked this book, then I would recommend The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, In The Fall by Jeffrey Lent; or if you would like to try some non-fiction; There is a River : The Black Struggle for Freedom in America by Vincent Harding.

I have to say I haven't enjoyed a book as mauch as this one for a long time. The subject matter was very shocking at times and the divisions between two cultures was a real eye opener and made me question how I would react if I was treated in a less than humane way...
I have passed the book onto my Mum now as i think it is a book she would enjoy as much as I have.

Recommended to our book club. An excellent group read as well as personal. Characterisation, sense of place, story line, flawless. I kept expecting to see mud when I looked up from the book.