The Past is Never (2018 by Tiffany Quay Tyson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Past is Never (2018)

by Tiffany Quay Tyson

Forest, Mississippi

Mississippi: 7/18

   I know when the book jacket copy references Flannery O'Connor and "Southern Gothic" that the book in question will be interesting.  The Past is Never is set in the Delta, but the story stretches to the Florida everglades, making this title a bit of a 1,001 Novels: A Library of America Mississippi/Florida cross-over. Like many of the books from this part of the United States, The Past is Never features three young siblings who are being raised in benevolent neglect in a rural part of the country.  Here, the relevant landscape feature is a forbidden abandoned quarry where the children like to swim during the hot summer.  This being a novel, tragedy strikes when the two older siblings who are the protagonists, misplace their younger sister.  Somewhat suspiciously, their money counterfeiting father disappears around the same time.

   The first half of the book features the brother/sister duo struggling with the repercussions of their sister's abrupt and final disappearance, and then the second half has them off the Florida everglades in search of their father, who "dies" under extremely suspicious circumstances in a Florida motel room after a decade of non-contact.  Everything is fecund and you can practically hear the mosquitos buzzing throughout.  Personally, I didn't find much that was Faulknerian other than the locale, let alone any themes or stylistic writing motifs that reminded me of Flannery O'Connor- it just seems like those are the two reference points for any white southern author with any literary ambition.