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truculent_tofu 's review for:
Clock Without Hands
by Carson McCullers
Set in a small, Southern town on the eve of the Court's decision in Brown v. Board, Clock Without Hands explores the lives of several of the town's residents as they deal with the changing racial climate of the civil rights era. A story of fear, intolerance, and violence, the novel features a rich and interesting cast of characters that quickly draws you in and a terrible building tension that keeps the pages turning. One of my favorite characters that I've read in a long time is Judge Clane, a "great Southern statesman" who feverishly collects Confederate dollars in the blind hope that the currency will one day become valuable again. I found it really interesting how the story dealt with the law in the town through the character of the Judge, portraying it as sort of a guiltless, inflexible mechanism for resisting change.
My favorite thing about the novel was the depth and richness of its characters. McCullers writes with an unsparing tenderness, laying bare characters who are either unable or unwilling to see their own personal failures. Faced with the possibility of change and equality, the characters instead take confidence in a false sense of tradition and heritage. When their own memories of the past prove to be too imperfect to give them shelter, they simply adopt a more reassuring history of events and believe in that instead.
This probably seems strange, but the novel actually reminded me a lot of Hamlet in a way. More than anything I think it's because the federal government almost seemed like a separate character in the novel in a way that reminded me a lot of Fortinbras' army (it's been a while so I could be wrong, I even had to double check if that was the right name). Even though it's never physically present, the federal government--with its distant promise of equality and civil rights--becomes increasingly present in the characters' lives in a way that reminded me a lot of Fortinbras' army, sort of an ominous external force that's always bearing down closer, invincible and inevitable.
After I finished the novel, which ultimately offers a promising, hopeful call for equality, I felt restless and I couldn't really figure out what to do with myself for a while. I didn't feel like going out for a walk, had already drunk way too much coffee, and definitely wasn't ready to pick up another book. So I ended up going back and reading the Court's opinion in Brown v. Board again, and that turned out to be the perfect complement to this beautiful novel.
4.5/5
My favorite thing about the novel was the depth and richness of its characters. McCullers writes with an unsparing tenderness, laying bare characters who are either unable or unwilling to see their own personal failures. Faced with the possibility of change and equality, the characters instead take confidence in a false sense of tradition and heritage. When their own memories of the past prove to be too imperfect to give them shelter, they simply adopt a more reassuring history of events and believe in that instead.
This probably seems strange, but the novel actually reminded me a lot of Hamlet in a way. More than anything I think it's because the federal government almost seemed like a separate character in the novel in a way that reminded me a lot of Fortinbras' army (it's been a while so I could be wrong, I even had to double check if that was the right name). Even though it's never physically present, the federal government--with its distant promise of equality and civil rights--becomes increasingly present in the characters' lives in a way that reminded me a lot of Fortinbras' army, sort of an ominous external force that's always bearing down closer, invincible and inevitable.
After I finished the novel, which ultimately offers a promising, hopeful call for equality, I felt restless and I couldn't really figure out what to do with myself for a while. I didn't feel like going out for a walk, had already drunk way too much coffee, and definitely wasn't ready to pick up another book. So I ended up going back and reading the Court's opinion in Brown v. Board again, and that turned out to be the perfect complement to this beautiful novel.
4.5/5