A Good Hard Look

May 9, 2011
Napolitano's second novel (after Within Arm's Reach) is a study in the rural milieu of Milledgeville, Ga., whose famous resident is known not only for her writing, but also for keeping peacocks and for other colorful proclivities. Wealthy New Yorker Melvin Whiteson meets Flannery O'Connor at his wedding to the beautiful but insecure Cookie, who has persuaded him to relocate to her hometown. Melvin forms an unlikely friendship with Flannery, and keeps it secret from his wife, who's intimidated by the author. While explaining one of her stories to Melvin, Flannery telegraphs Napolitano's primary theme: "it's possible that the characters are closer to grace at the end of the stories. Grace changes a person, you know. And change is painful." Cookie slowly becomes an integral part of high society by serving on numerous committees and creating an enviable house. She enlists the interior design help of Lona Waters, a lonely seamstress stuck in a lifeless marriage with a police officer, and Lona soon rediscovers her purpose in the arms of a 17-year-old boy, an impetuous act that will have a great impact on a number of Milledgeville residents. Though Napolitano steeps her tale in the Southern gothic made famous by her famous character, she could have used O'Connor's help with her prose.

Napolitano's book, set during the two years preceding the death of its pivotal character, Flannery O'Connor, is fiction, not biography. On the night before Cookie and Melvin's wedding, O'Connor's peacocks set up an unholy racket, leading to a series of bizarre events. With sections divided into "Good," "Hard," and "Look," Debra Monk's performance deftly delineates each of the characters whose lives appear to revolve around the famous ailing author. (O'Connor suffered from lupus, the autoimmune disease that killed her father.) Monk offers an unsentimental O'Connor and a confused, unhappy Melvin. She manages a subtle shrewishness as Cookie and mind-numbing ennui as Lona, the police chief's wife. Napolitano's stark prose depicts the unexamined lives of the residents of Milledgeville, Georgia, O'Connor's hometown, and Monk delivers all truthfully. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine