Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503040026
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARY ANN JOHNSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Little distance need be traveled to obey the title of William Hoffman's new collection of stories, ``Follow Me Home.''
Home is here, Virginia and its environs. Little stretch of imagination is needed either, because these stories are rich with a sense of reality and authenticity. Characters are as real as place.
Descriptions are visual and images are colorful. The preacher in ``Abide with Me'' is ``so heavy that when he walked you felt his weight through the floor. Wayne Pritchett down at the post office had joked, `If Reverend Amos was a hog, we'd had him `fore now.''' The building inspector was ``so trifling that if the politicians hadn't hired him because of his many voting kin he would've starved to death trying to figure out how to raise food to his mouth and not burn energy.''
Other stories have different subjects and different tones. Genteel ladies of demented mind stand in fields of daffodils; soft-mouthed retrievers return grouse ``never breaking the skin and leaving just a little spit;'' social strictures are broken over a fence during a fox hunt; a disabled Vietnam vet munches Golden Grimes apples as he seeks revenge on society.
Dialect falls on the ear with appropriate sound as in the repartee between an elderly white woman and her black companion in ``Coals.'' And details provide vivid pictures throughout. Human moments are sometimes augmented by humor and sometimes by anguish.
These stories are fresh though familiar. We've been to the places; we've met the characters; we've heard the language; we've sensed the struggles.
Familiar, yes - and there is pleasure in familiarity.
Mary Ann Johnson teaches at Roanoke College.
by CNB