THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407220493
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BRITT RENO
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
SILK HOPE, NC
LAWRENCE NAUMOFF
Harcourt Brace & Co. 352 pp. $21.95.
THERE IS A bond to land, family and simpler times in Silk Hope, NC. Lawrence Naumoff, having lived in the real Silk Hope, has filled his fourth novel with his poetic impressions and harsh realities. It is a story about women who have experienced the charms and tragedies of a small Southern town, as told by a man who has known them.
Silk Hope, NC, is a tale of two very different sisters and their responses to their absent father, the death of their mother and the impending loss of their family farm. Frannie Vaughan is a reckless 21-year-old with a twisted sense of propriety and a promiscuous nature. Off on a three-day spree with three different men, she misses her mother's death and funeral. Her older sister Natalie is stable, gainfully employed and devoted to her fiance, Jake, a consummate yuppie banker. After her mother's death, Natalie looks after Frannie.
The women of the family have passed down the farm as an ``ancestral sanctuary,'' meant to ensure the strength and independence of the female progeny. But taxes have chipped away at the homestead, leaving only the farmhouse, barn and 12 acres. Natalie no longer needs its protection. She and Jake decide it is best to sell the family farm and split the profits. They want to buy a modern home in town. Frannie, single and unsure of herself, clings to the land that has been in her family for generations and to her early memories of her father.
By pairing two such different sisters - one caring, one selfish; one stable, one adrift - Naumoff sets up a sort of fairy tale or fable. The characters are types, written to serve his agenda: Jake is the Snidely Whiplash of Silk Hope. He represents money-hungry bankers and businessmen. Reuben, Frannie's new beau and knight in shining armor, is a saint. No one else would put up with her shenanigans.
In between the plot points, Naumoff's ponderings on the state of society, nature and modern relationships are just as simplistic. Women are victims of the word ``yes,'' and developers are greedy and evil, swallowing up farmland to erect plastic amusement parks. He relegates the qualities of dignity, honor and virtue to the simple folk of Silk Hope.
Woven throughout this larger fable are other lessons: the tale of Great-Great-Grandma Delia who was tricked by an evil man into leaving her family, and the sad story of the old man next door who never recovered from being robbed in town. These are testimonies to the innocence of the people of the past and the cruelty of the outside world.
Southerners and country people in particular are traditionally good storytellers. Frannie's life is one big yarn. There's the one about the 400-pound sow that saved her from a rapist, the televangelist who found her pornographic poem in his new boxer shorts, the time she hauled piglets in the trunk of her Chevy.
Unfortunately, the humor of these incidents is lost because Frannie is too much of a whiner to be funny. Meant as a free-spirited romantic rebel, she is instead a thoughtless, self-pitying kid, incapable of taking responsibility and seeing beyond her problems. And for all the power of her female lineage, it is her absentee father, and Reuben, she ultimately turns to.
In the end, Naumoff turns the fable on its head. The grasshopper beats out the ant and Prince Charming marries one of Cinderella's stepsisters. Frannie mistreats others, acts irresponsibly and still gets the fairy tale ending simply because she stood by her land. Perhaps Naumoff has known women like this who have won out despite their selfish and aimless lives. And I suppose they stole his heart. MEMO: Britt Reno is a writer/photographer and part-time resident of North
Carolina's Outer Banks. ILLUSTRATION: Jacket illustration by DAVID TAMURA
by CNB