Want something quick but razor sharp and very  unique? Look no farther than Mary Robison.  I tore through her newest novel “One D.O.A., One on the Way” this week and picked up another– “Why Did I Ever”– because I was so impressed. Reminiscent of authors like Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie, Robison’s minimalist style is an exercise in gorgeous wordsmithing. There’s also a veneer of southern gothic in these books, probably due to Robison’s upbringing in Mississippi and her professorships at southern universities. “One D.O.A., One on the Way” captures the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans in appropriately fractured mini-paragraphs, building the tension so sneakily that we are shocked by its inevitable conclusion.

“Why Did I Ever” is its worthy predecessor, having been the book that pioneered Robinson’s minimalist style (suffering from an extended case of writer’s block, she scrawled the novel on index cards and then strung them together). It’s protagonist, named Money, dictates the slow crumbling of her word, the violent assault of her son, and her long drives to nowhere. Written with an elegance and sharpness that literally takes my breath away, I am racing through this book, unable to put it down at night.

Robison is an accessible writer, her books hauntingly unique. At least once as I read these books, I closed my eyes in jealousy at a wickedly perfect or perversely beautiful sentence.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 9:38 pm and is filed under j.a. howard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.