Chapter 2: A Book By a Female Author

Ruby: A Novel, Cynthia Bond

This book should come with a trigger warning in bold letters on the cover. Spoiler alert: everyone in it is abused in some way. Everyone.

It's unlikely that the Texas tourism board will add Ruby to any of its recommended reading lists. Set in the tiny, all-black town of Liberty, the novel is overstuffed with tragic tales of human and supernatural depravity. It is difficult to read just for the sheer volume of violence. There is a weight of authenticity that makes it all the harder to bear.

Focusing on the main characters, here's the basic story. A little girl is sold into prostitution and survives decades of torment at the hands of men, women, whites, and blacks. She is hardened yet vulnerable and either driven insane or possessed or both. She returns to her childhood home and falls down a rabbit hole of filth, sorrow, and torment.

Enter the hero. A slow and steady man. The town fool. Emasculated in his youth and raised by his socially powerful sister. In love with the title character from their only meeting in adolescence, he makes a plodding and blundering path to save her with the power of love and patience. And cleaning supplies.

Their histories wind through the pages as he carefully courts the woman deemed unworthy by the rest of the town. With each rising conflict, we flash back to some revelation about the handful of families that form Liberty.

It's difficult to say that I do or don't recommend this book. To recommend it would be to inflict a form of abuse on the reader- the pain etched on each page. But to not, would be to ignore the real plight of people who are abused. Her own story and those of survivors she has worked with are threaded through the chapters.

I have pretty strong feelings about ownership of stories (if you haven't heard my thoughts on The Help, stay tuned for another episode). Ms. Bond definitely owns enough of these tales to be an authentic storyteller. Even those she borrowed from friends and family are close enough to her own. She is probably compared to Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou for superficial reasons when more genuine ones exist. Her debut shows potential for adding her to their ranks in time.

There are a few points of criticism to note. A well crafted description tarnishes with use. What begins as poetic becomes tired by the end of the novel. There are a few phrases that are used a few too many times for my taste. Rephrasing or omission would polish it.

Paradoxically, the authenticity noted above, is also a weakness to the overall story. The descriptions of abuse and murder are all painfully realistic, but there are so many that it becomes difficult to suspend disbelief. In this town of a half-dozen families, there are hundreds of murders, mostly unsolved. And, while Ms. Bond is credible as a voice of the abused, her characterization of poor blacks in the rural South falls short. If it were funny, it would be satire. Instead, the townsfolk are so one-dimensional that I sometimes wondered if they had been drawn by an ambitious and overstepping white woman. In a word, they are simple. That lack of detail works to dehumanize in some ways.

Despite the difficult subject matter and my fairly minor technical critique, this is a well written story. Some twists come as expected and some are surprises. There is beauty in words depicting hideous acts. The structure and pace seem to conjure a spell over the reader, making it move nicely. If you can stomach what my friend politely calls "soul crushing fiction," Ruby is worth the effort.