Many of you have heard me sing the praises, and many of you have yourselves, of Charles Baxter's Feast of Love. If you like that structure, you may want to check out Jill McCorkle's Carolina Moon. Same structure, minus the cheezy prologue and epilogue, minus the distracting conceit that Charles Baxter--the author, is also Charles Baxter--the character.
Yep, here's my two cents guys--Jill McCorkle does it a helluva lot better.
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4 comments:
i'm not going to enter a mccorkle/baxter debate (it seems so strange, those two paired in the same sentence, but i'm excited to check out this mccorkle novel). i find it curious that she is so overlooked. any ideas as to why? probably many of you have heard me rave about her short story, billy goats, which was reprinted in best american short stories 2001. i'm obsessed with that story in a healthy way and that's saying a whole lot.
carmen had a couple of her books on the floor of her empty apartment right before she moved out. i'm misting up as i write this.
and though i've never read her, i would venture to say that jill mccorkle is overlooked simply because her publisher designs her book covers with a compass and some crayola felt-tip markers.
maybe the new book is better looking, but someone should let them know that seriously, those books get judged by their covers.
yikes. seems kamps has/d a *thing* for something. animal chapter titles and metaphors or namely, jill mccorkle.
and billy goats was in bass 2002, not 2001.
I'm so psyched to check this out. There's room in my life for a billion baxter/mccorkles!
In an effort to uncover the same question that Michael brought up--I went on Amazon and read the customer reviews. It's depressing--don't do it. But I think regular readers want her to be less literary --they kept saying--this sucks, Lee Smith is much better. And then the literary people--well they don't pay attention to anybody but Cormac these days right?
Okay gross oversimplification.
She's on my list now. Thanks for that!
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