A Good Hard Look is a novel by Ann Napolitano set in Milledgeville, Georgia in the ’60’s. The small town and its people definitely loom large in the novel, but it’s the cast of central characters who are somewhat stereotypical, yet presented in such a compelling way that make this novel sing:
- A writer has returned home to live with her mother when her crippling disease becomes more than she can handle. She seems to fit there on her family farm with her peacocks (yes, peacocks!), and I often wondered how she would be different living the life of a writer in New York City.
- A man moves from New York City when he and his new wife decide to settle in her old hometown. As a lifetime New Yorker, he’s a bit out of sorts in this small town where everyone knows everyone. He and the writer strike up a secret friendship.
- His wife was once the “it girl” in town, but moved to New York City to try to exorcise her demons, which mostly existed in her mind. She went from being the subject of everyone’s attention to not being noticed at all until her husband-to-be noticed her and they had a whirlwind romance, giving her the confidence to return back home.
- A middle-aged woman feels disconnected from her family and further disconnects by seeking solitude in her job and masking her loneliness with drugs.
I felt just as compelled to continue reading as the characters did to keep hurdling towards their unwise decisions. As in real life, some of their decisions were more selfish and more self-destructing than others, but they all affected those around them in some very real way.
On paper it sounds like a depressing gut-wrenching piece of fiction, but it’s not that at all. The writer? She’s Flannery O’Connor, an American great who until recently I have to admit I thought was a man. So you don’t have to know or care about her in particular to be interested in this fictional portrayal of some very real attitudes that her town had towards her.
I consider A Good Hard Look literary fiction, because of the style of the prose and the look into the character’s motivations, but it’s light and accessible enough to appeal to those who generally gravitate more towards popular fiction. I couldn’t put this one down, and if you enjoy character-driven fiction, I think you’ll enjoy it as well.
Jennifer Donovan is pretty glad that no one has taken a good hard look at the many bad decisions she’s made. She blogs about lighter fare at Snapshot.