Sunday, December 9, 2001
Some of the best parts of the book deal with interactions between members of the family.
By THERESA HEGEL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
"The School of Beauty and Charm," by Melanie Sumner (Algonquin Books, $23.95)
Melanie Sumner's first novel, "The School of Beauty and Charm," is satiric, yet poignant, Southern fiction. Arranged in roughly chronological vignettes, the book tracks Louise Peppers of Counterpoint, Georgia, from early childhood to the brink of adulthood.
Throughout the novel, Louise, thirsty for experience and excitement, struggles against her conservative Baptist upbringing and searches for her true place in the world.
Along the way, she indulges in an ill-fated affair with a crude employee of her father's corrugated board factory, enjoys a brief stint wearing a gorilla suit in a traveling circus and lands 90 days in the slammer for a DUI before ultimately finding salvation.
Brother's death: The driving force behind Louise's alcoholism and high-risk behavior is the untimely death of her older brother, Roderick, when he was barely a teen-ager. Neither she nor her kooky mother and stoic father can cope with Roderick's death. The primary conflicts in the novel derive from the strained relationship that develops between parents and daughter after the tragedy.
Sumner's prose sparkles with flawless wit and beautiful imagery. The novel's raw pain is moving but never sentimental, its satiric edge sharp but never biting.
She populates "School of Beauty" with eccentric characters whose vivid mannerisms and quirks nearly jump off the page. Louise's mother, Florida, has an artistic flair and a penchant for outrageous fashions and interior decor. Henry, her father, is a meticulous neat freak with a strong work ethic, a fascination with accident scenes and a tendency to run out of gas on long car trips. Her grandparents live on a rustic Kentucky farm and are obsessed with death. The interactions between the characters are often hilarious.
Difficulties: The main problem with Sumner's novel lies with Louise. For a book written in the first person, the tone is surprisingly distant. Though Louise describes her wild actions in detail, I was often left wondering what she was feeling, what motivated her. Certainly, much of her behavior can be traced to her brother's death, but other internal factors involved are not always made clear. Also, the chronology of events in the novel is sometimes fuzzy.
However, these flaws are easy to ignore for the novel's many good points. Sumner is a promising new talent who will likely iron out such narrative wrinkles in later works.
hegel@vindy.com