A Miracle of Catfish
by Larry Brown
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Book Summary Information
Author: Larry BrownEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-20
ISBN: 1565125363
Number of pages: 455
Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book
Book Reviews of A Miracle of Catfish
Book Review: You simply MUST READ this book! Such a masterpiece!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I was devastated when I heard that Larry Brown had passed away. What a loss to his friends and family, and what a loss to his fans. This man could spin a tale, write a story, take you away, pull you in. Such a loss - God bless him!
I have read EVERY book that Mr. Brown ever wrote -- FAY, JOE, FATHER AND SON, etc. When I saw A MIRACLE OF CATFISH on the new book shelf at my library, I almost fell over! Knowing Mr. Brown has passed, I was shocked and happy to see this book there -- all 454 pages of it.
Let me tell you, at first I didn't think I was going to be able to get into this book. Which I found very puzzling! So, I sat down and really READ and by page five I was HOOKED!! I will think of this book for years to come!!! It is just THAT GOOD.
The characters in this book are sooo life-like and believeable. There are not many people in this novel, but you don't need many. Each chapter revolves around one character and their life; however, they are all inter-twined and make the book was it is ~~ EXCELLENT.
The main characters are Cortez Sharp, who farms and raises cattle. His wife is ill and his grown child lives in Atlanta. He is older and very lonely. He decides to build a pond and stock it with catfish. When the author describes the tomato sandwiches Cortez makes, yum, hook me up with one!
Another main character is Jimmy, a young boy who lives with his white trash family down the road from Cortez. He is a lonely little guy whose step-sisters treat him like crap. His mom, Johnette {gotta love the names!}, works, eats, and sleeps (around!!) and doesn't pay her children too much attention. Hence, Jimmy is looking for attention, affection, interest, and love. He wanders down by the new pond only to get kicked off the property by Cortez Sharp, which is how these two main characters meet.
My favorite main character was Jimmy's dad who is only referred to as Jimmy's daddy. Such a loser! Such a womanizer! Such a sorry excuse for a father! Always thinking of himself, always looking out for himself. Loves his old '55 car more than his family. But all of these bad traits make him the great character he is. You have to give Jimmy's daddy credit -- he does try, he does love his family; however, if something bad is going to happen it happens to Jimmy's daddy. He never quite makes things work right for himself or his family.
Cortez Sharp decides to have a pond dug and filled with catfish. He doesn't know how having this pond will affect not only him, but Jimmy down the road. The book takes us on a journey that involves all of the above mentioned characters and simply their lives -- at work, school, their friends, family, their affairs, and the deep dark secret that Cortez Sharp lives with daily.
Sound boring? It is NOT. I found I could not turn the pages fast enough. The way the story is told and how life in the South is related just takes you right to the banks of that pond with a fishing pole in hand and trouble on the way. Life in this small southern town is one hell of a ride. Get this book and enjoy it.
You must get this book and read it. There are other not so main characters that add spice to the book. The writing is stupendous -- you can feel the heat, see Cortez taking care of cattle and riding his tractor, see the dirty, nasty living conditions at Jimmy's trailer, see the dirt and grease on Jimmy's daddy's hands, feel the hurt in Jimmy's nasty teeth, see the trashy way Jimmy's sisters and Mom dress. Mr. Brown had a talent and gift that will be sorely missed. I find I am having a problem finding my next "read" as nothing seems to compare to this wonderful book.
Take my advice and the advice of the other reviewers -- get this book, read it, and then get the rest of Mr. Brown's works and just enjoy. Every book he has written is simply a treasure! A MIRACLE OF CATFISH ~~ a miracle in itself!!!!!!!!
Thank you!!!
Pam
Summary of A Miracle of Catfish
Larry Brown has been a force in American literature since taking critics by storm with his debut collection, Facing the Music, in 1988. His subsequent work?five novels, another story collection, and two books of nonfiction?continued to bring extraordinary praise and national attention to the writer New York Newsday called a "master."In November 2004, Brown sent the nearly completed manuscript of his sixth novel to his literary agent. A week later, he died of a massive heart attack. He was fifty-three years old.
A Miracle of Catfish is that novel. Brown's trademarks?his raw detail, pared-down prose, and characters under siege?are all here.
This beautiful, heartbreaking anthem to the writer's own North Mississippi land and the hard-working, hard-loving, hard-losing men it spawns is the story of one year in the lives of five characters?an old farmer with a new pond he wants stocked with baby catfish; a bankrupt fish pond stocker who secretly releases his forty-pound brood catfish into the farmer's pond; a little boy from the trailer home across the road who inadvertently hooks the behemoth catfish; the boy's inept father; and a former convict down the road who kills a second time to save his daughter.
That Larry Brown died so young, and before he could see A Miracle of Catfish published, is a tragedy. That he had time to enrich the legacy of his work with this remarkable book is a blessing.
When Larry Brown died suddenly in 2004 at 53, he left a nearly finished sixth novel, A Miracle of Catfish, that revisits several of his favorite themes: fatherhood, alienation, and loneliness. Shannon Ravenel, Brown's Algonquin editor, had the daunting task of trimming the enormous manuscript to manageable size, almost impossible for a responsible editor to do without the help of the author. Brown's prolix, rambling style is at times mesmerizing and at times--just rambling. Brown's notes at the end show us where the story might have gone, but it does not suffer for being unfinished. Larry Brown definitely knew where he was taking his reader, and Ravenel helped him along.
Consideration of the fatherhood theme centers around a man known only as "Jimmy's Daddy," an unregenerate, wretched human being and an ignorant, violent drunkard. His preoccupations, view of women, and treatment of Jimmy might be seen as caricatures if we didn't know that such people actually exist. Another father, with a much more interesting story, is Cortez Sharp, a farmer in the low hills near Oxford, Mississippi, for nearly fifty years. He has a daughter, Lucinda, living "with a retard" in Atlanta. The man is a layabout artist who suffers from Tourette's Syndrome, which makes Cortez think that he is simply retarded. Cortez has a deep, dark, guilty secret which is eventually revealed, but the two things that we know about him from the beginning are that he is terribly lonely and is stocking a pond he just had dug with catfish--thousands of catfish. Two minor players are Cleve, a muderous black man who is an occasional employee of Cortez's and Tommy, who delivers fish to stock Cortez's pond and owns Ursula, the Mother of all Catfish. Jimmy is the hapless nine-year-old who suffers at the hands of his daddy, and comes to the attention of Cortez who tells him--initially--to get off his property. All of these lives intersect in unexpected ways and are changed by the encounters. Brown writes hell-bent-for-leather in a style uniquely his own which carries the reader along, into landscapes interior and exterior. --Valerie Ryan
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