Book Review of "Concord, Virginia" by Peter Neofotis

AUTHOR: Peter Neofotis

ISBN: 978-0-302-53737-1

PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Press

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RATING: 4½ out of 5 stars

BOOK BLURB:

"In the places set between folds in the Earth, voices echo against mountains ..."

So begins the story of Concord, Virginia, one of those places set between folds in the Earth. It's a place like almost any other Southern town, filled with self-righteous preachers, descendants of slaves, upstanding town leaders, and the ladies of the local bridge club. But Concord has something else: a dark heart.

A church has been abandoned. Vultures have been roosting in the trees at George MacJenkins's house. Poisonous snakes follow Rachel Stetson into the river for a swim. And the ghost of Thomas Jefferson has recently spoken through a man chained to fate.

Deftly spinning a web of stories from the voices of the town, Peter Neofotis creates a captivating portrait ~ comic, dramatic, bombastic, and tragic ~ of a place trapped in time and possessed by the valley landscape that surrounds it. In the tradition of great Southern Gothic writing, Neofotis brings to life the town of Concord, Virginia, allowing even the ancient voices there to swirl through the glazed brick streets like the Fork River.

BOOK REVIEW:

The eleven stories in this collection can be read on their own ~ each focuses on a particular person in the small town of Concord, nestled in the mountainous southwestern part of Virginia. But they build upon one another, painting a portrait of the town as a whole until the reader sees it not as a setting or locale but rather as another character in the stories that unfold upon the page.

In each story, the town comes alive through its citizens. As minor characters are introduced in one story, they take center stage in the next, bringing their story to the forefront and giving the reader a glimpse of who will be up onstage in successive tales. I found this way of storytelling to be very innovative and unique, and it kept me reading from one story to the next. Usually with anthologies I tend to read a story, set the book down, pick it up later and read another story, set it down again ... with this book, I found myself intrigued by a minor character in one story and had to read on to the next to find out just what they had to tell me before I could be satisfied.

The characters in this collection are as quirky as you'd expect to find in such a small town as Concord. There's George MacJenkins, a hunter who accidentally shot his wife and hasn't touched a gun since, not even to scare away the vultures that have taken roost in his yard. Ms. Tzigane, a bona fide Roma whose people were killed by the Nazis in Germany during the war. Simon Donald, the town queer who is brought up on charges for sodomizing his college roommate. Betty Joe Lee deButt Carlisle, a direct descendant of General Robert E. Lee who killed her own father after he shot her prize show horse. Tom Dorian, a carpenter in town who, though well liked, was still chained to the Natural Bridge and left to die by the Klu Klux Klan for his marriage to a white woman.

Living in Virginia, I found the descriptions of both the setting and the people dead on. The author's voice is exquisite, and captures the nuances of modern Southern life beautifully. All the prejudices are there, the inherent racism that still exists, the homophobia, the resistance to change. The jacket cover says the author lives in New York but he has to have roots in Virginia to have written so eloquently about the place, and to have captured its beauty ~ and its ugliness ~ so perfectly.

Of all the stories, my favorite was "The Strangers," which details a December romance between a Gypsy woman and Jewish immigrant, both of whom lost their families to the Nazi regime in WWII Germany. She is a free-loving spirit who doesn't want to be tied down, even so late in her life, by anything as conventional as marriage. He is a religious man who won't eat any meat that isn't kosher and won't continue a relationship with her if they aren't wed. The reason I liked the story so much stems from details Ms. Tzigane gives of the way she escaped the Nazis, as I like stories about survivors of the Shoah.

When I began reading this collection, I wasn't sure it was "gay" enough to review for this site. Only one of the stories centers around a gay character, Simon, though he's present in most ~ if not all ~ the stories as narrator or observer. The town is seen through his eyes, and in each of the stories can be read an element of feeling "queer" ~ that is, unusual, controversial, or against the norm. The author's own feelings of being queer obviously came into play when writing these stories. These emotions tinge every aspect of the tales, from the love in them to the loss, be it gay or straight or anything in between.

Each of the stories in this collection portrays an eccentric character and, in the end, combine to chronicle the queer history of the fictional town of Concord, Virginia. This would be a great book for those looking for a subtle introduction to queer literature who aren't into romance or erotica. Those particularly interested in Southern fiction will enjoy it immensely.