I love being an author.
But my first true love was reading. I love to read; I love nothing more than to spend some time with my mind fully engaged and my imagination completely immersed in a good book. I love books, and I always wished I had friends who read as voraciously as I did and also enjoyed talking about what they read. I love when people enthusiastically talk to me about a book I should read, or mention that they love a book that I loved so we wind up discussing what we loved about the book. That’s why I like to write about books I’ve enjoyed here; while the conversation is inevitably one-sided (which far too many would say is my preference and/or default), I love talking about books, and here I have a place where I can do it whenever I want. I’m not a reviewer; I haven’t written an actual review in over twenty years. Nor am I a critic; I do not have the education or training to deconstruct fiction and how it is a reflection and exploration of some philosophical aspect of life, culture, and humanity.
No, I just like to tell you how much I liked a book and why I did.
And I absolutely loved Kelly J. Ford‘s The Hunt.
By the time Nell Holcomb pulled up for her shift at Mayflower Plastics, the KAOK news van had parked in her spot. Adding insult to injury: Maggie, the office manager, stood in front of the camera, chatting them up. Wearing her new bedazzled Hunt T-shirt that clashed with the fake tan she’d maintained since her sorority days that still showed her white skin in the underarm creases. Talking about how “causation does not equal correlation” and “accidents happen.”
Tell that to the families, Nell thought. Maggie never would, though. Not to her face or anyone else’s. But she’d go on TV and tell the world and call herself and other people like her “Eggheads,” like they were a fun little group and there weren’t any deaths associated with the Hunt every year, serial killer or not. If Nell didn’t know any better, she’d guess that Maggie worked for either the radio station or the Chamber of Commerce.
Nell walked on by Maggie and the news crew without saying a word, hoping they wouldn’t recognize her as the little sister of Garrett Holcomb: white, young, handsome, smart and dead.
The Hunt is Kelly J. Ford’s third novel, after an impressive debut with Cottonmouths and its Anthony nominated follow-up, Real Bad Things (which I’ve not gotten to yet; I always try to hold one back per author I love so I know I always have something of theirs to read yet). The premise of the story is a small community in northeast Arkansas has an annual “Hunt for the Golden Egg” sponsored by the local radio station. The station records clues that the participants have to decipher in order to find the egg, and whoever finds it gets a cash prize. Over the years the prize money has increased, and in a fairly working class/fairly impoverished area, that kind of money can be life-changing. The problem is, the annual Hunt has become haunted by tragic death, and rumors circulate that a serial killer “hunts” people hunting for the egg–and Nell’s beloved older brother was the first victim. That alone would be enough to make Nell hate the hunt, which is what everyone thinks; but Nell has her own, much darker secret: the night Garrett disappeared, she had a fight with him because they both were interested in the same girl, who chose Garrett. Nell kicked him out of the car…and that was the last time he was seen alive. The girl, Tessa, gave birth to a posthumous child, Elijah, whom she abandoned. Nell has taken over raising him as an atonement for her own guilty secret, and he is the center of her life. (She is also keeping another secret–she has been seeing and messing around with Tessa for a few months already at the start of the book.)
The other point of view character of the book is Nell’s best friend, Ada. Ada’s son Anthony was Elijah’s best friend, but they seem to have fallen out–and Ada herself has conflicted feelings about Nell. She loves her friend, wonders occasionally if they might be able to move further than that in their relationship, and she also loves Elijah. The conflicting feelings of love and aggravation at the bad choices Nell seems impossible to keep herself from making over and over again as part of her inability to forgive herself.
The hunt is coming up again, Nell’s having to deal with all the horrible memories and makes some more bad choices…and then another person disappears. Has the serial killer struck again? Is it a coincidence? Are all the deaths coincidences?
Ford has no weaknesses as a writer and a lot of strengths. As a Southerner myself, she writes in a way that reaches deep inside my soul and twangs its guitar strings. I know these people, I know these claustrophobic small towns where everyone knows everyone else and their business and has opinions. She captures the despair and misery of working class life, but her work isn’t depressing but uplifting and hopeful. Nell’s grief and guilt are the fuel that drive the engine of this story, and if I had to give a capsule elevator pitch description of her work, I would say “she writes the novels Dorothy Allison would if she wrote about crime.” The language, the poetry and musicality of the words leap from the page, and she also is capable of writing the kind of suspense scene that raises your hackles and makes the downy hair on the back of your neck stand up.
If you haven’t started reading Kelly’s work, what on earth are you waiting for?
Queer and Loathing in America 