Humanity between two covers

I've always believed that books choose people, and reading Kaye Gibbons' A Virtuous Woman only convinced me of that further.

I picked the book up back in May at a used book sale benefiting a D.C. library. It was one of two dozen that I carried out in a 11" by 15" cardboard box provided by the volunteers when they saw me struggling with my newly purchased loot.

There was a rawness that resonated with me from the back cover's description: 

 "When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was twenty and he was forty. She was the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry and he was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. She was newly widowed after a disastrous marriage to a brutal drifter. He had never asked a woman to do more than help him hitch a mule. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life."

I didn't reach for the book until last night and finished it this morning. Gibbons allocates alternating chapters to Jack and Ruby's reminiscences of their lives before and with each other, told at various points of time -- and in the case of Ruby, from the grave (something the reader discovers on the first page of the first chapter).

Gibbons' book feels less like a novel and more like time spent chatting on the porch with someone you've known most of your life. Her writing in a consistent Carolina dialect, her attention to detail in constructing a believable world, and the complexity of her characters' emotions in the face of life's heartaches allow them to step off the page fully formed.

The conclusion of the book, though moving and somewhat satisfying, felt rushed and tacked on to the otherwise thoughtful narrative, however. The entrance of an omniscient narrator who had never appeared before the last chapter was jarring and the last few pages felt as if Gibbons ran out of steam in trying to tie up the loose ends. A reliance on an increased amount of internal dialogue also was introduced in the final chapter, adding to the reader's disorientation. Lastly, the book seems to be set in the peak of 1950s life in the South, which includes allusions to racial inequality and prejudice that offends modern sensibilities. (I understand it was written to reflect realistically that time period).

Those weaknesses aside, A Virtuous Woman is worth reading. The themes of struggling with man's quest for immortality and wrestling with society -- both in trying to conform to its demands and in aiming to beat its expectations -- were portrayed with vulnerability that comes from a compassionate author's alertness to human nature and the world around her.

I'm richer for having been picked by this gem of a book.