Delicious Foods (2015) by James Hannaham

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Delicious Foods (2015)

by James Hannaham

Ovis, Louisiana

Louisiana: 27/30

  I read this whole novel thinking it was set in Mississippi, not Louisiana.  It very much reminded me of Paul Beatty, and I was more than a little surprised it took the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America to bring Delicious Foods to my attention.  Significantly, Delicious Foods contains an element of transgression in its plot, about a modern-day farm where drug-addicted African Americans are held in sort of debt peonage to a white owned corporation.  Crack itself is a character here, who goes by Scotty, if I'm not mistaken, and the protagonist is Delores, a mother-of-one whose life takes a crack induced downward spiral after her do-gooder husband is murdered in vile fashion by contemporary analogues of the KKK for his organizing work in rural Louisiana. 

 After a trick goes bad and Delores gets a couple of her teeth knocked out, she is easily recruited to the farm, where she is provided with necessities (including crack) and a dormitory type living environment, and compelled to work on harvesting and maintaining a variety of crops, notably watermelon.  Despite the marketing materials using the term "slavery" to describe the environment Delores finds herself in, the truth is more complicated, and Hannaham seems to also being working on a critique of the underlying capitalist system as much as he is making any race specific statement.  On the other hand, the environment and characters are very specific to the plantation south and "second slavery" system, so there is a complexity of theme that is often absent in the works in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  

  There is also nothing specifically Louisiana about Delicious Foods, rather it is a work from a third area, the delta, which crosses state lines in the north of Louisiana and the center of Mississippi. 

White River Crossing (2026) by Ian McGuire

 Audiobook Review
White River Crossing (2026)

by Ian McGuire

   I saw White River Crossing, the latest book by English novelist Ian McGuire, had been released and immediately went back and listened to the Audiobook for The North Water, his second book.  I read his last book, The Abstainer, when it was released and recognized McGuire of a writer who had both popular ambition and literary merit, working in the field of historical fiction.   I really enjoyed listening to the Audiobook of The North Water because McGuire is really a novelist of the 19th century British empire, and the backgrounds (and accents) of his characters reflect a diversity that wouldn't necessarily come across to someone READING the book.   The Abstainer was historical fiction but it was set in an urban environment, and in that sense White River Crossing is more of a successor to The North Water than The Abstainer.  Listening to them back-to-back the thematic similarities were apparent. 

  White River Crossing is a land-based version of The North Water, set on a remote trapping outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company (I'm assuming, the name is never used.)  The greedy leader of the company fort hears tell of a source of gold far to the north and sends a secret mission with his brutish second in command, a few other workers from his fort, and a party of Indian guides.   As was the case in The North Water, once the adventurers are away from the last outpost of civilization, all kinds of gruesome hell breaks loose.  McGuire is not interested in softening the edges of 19th century colonialist enterprise, and his characters often act like they've been written as examples of the negative press this period has received from the past half century of historiography.