The first in Adriana Trigiani’s trilogy, Big Stone Gap like its mates runs to 305 pages in paperback. Aspiring authors are told to write what they know, well guess what, there really is a place named Big Stone Gap and there really was a book entitled Trail of the Lone Pine by John Fox which became a movie and is enacted each summer on an outdoor stage in town by amateurs. If the characters she writes about are as real as everything else in this book one can only hope she’s still welcome around town. And in an insular small town no one keeps secrets anyway.
Trigiani captures the language and spirit of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and echoes its turns of phrase and world outlook. Of an exceptionally good-looking man it is said, he makes Levi’s sing. A malevolent gossip’s lips are like two tightly packed firecrackers waiting for a match. The local gospel preacher plays snake charmer at revival meetings picking up rattlers.
As book one closes the story enters the present century rather dramatically. The narrator discovers her best buddy won’t marry her because he’s gay. She ends her spinsterhood at 36 by marrying a mountain coal miner with whom she went to school. What ensues is about what one would expect from an independent business woman whose values collide with a traditional male ego. Where book one was chatty Big Cherry Holler is gossipy. The storyline descends into soap opera, but then the author does write for TV.
Two thirds of the way through book 2 I lost interest as the book became a full-fledged romance dime novel.
Trigiani captures the language and spirit of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and echoes its turns of phrase and world outlook. Of an exceptionally good-looking man it is said, he makes Levi’s sing. A malevolent gossip’s lips are like two tightly packed firecrackers waiting for a match. The local gospel preacher plays snake charmer at revival meetings picking up rattlers.
As book one closes the story enters the present century rather dramatically. The narrator discovers her best buddy won’t marry her because he’s gay. She ends her spinsterhood at 36 by marrying a mountain coal miner with whom she went to school. What ensues is about what one would expect from an independent business woman whose values collide with a traditional male ego. Where book one was chatty Big Cherry Holler is gossipy. The storyline descends into soap opera, but then the author does write for TV.
Two thirds of the way through book 2 I lost interest as the book became a full-fledged romance dime novel.
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