Normally this wouldn't really be my type of story, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. While it still isn't my favorite general topic, I did enjoy this book. It's compelling. The chapters count the days, and we know that what's coming is Hurricane Katrina, like a countdown to disaster. We saw the news footage and we know what kind of destruction the storm will bring, but our characters do not.
There's one passage of the book that I thought was particularly well-written, even though it's not the most affecting. In it, Esch and her brother Skeetah are tending to Skeetah's dog and her puppies in the shed while another brother Randall and their dad use their tractor to tear down a chicken coop in the yard outside. I love how the two settings play off each other, with repeated language and images:
"
There is a crack of wood and then a metal whine as Randall presses the gas again and the tractor jerks forward. 'Hold it! You got chicken wire stuck in the grille.'
Daddy tugs at the wire, pulls at the grille and the hood. He yanks, leans forward so far he almost puts his face in the grille, detangles, and then he begins pulling at the wire again. Randall is still.
'Do it,' Skeetah commands China.
China's ears are flat as plastic knives laid on her head and her mouth is wet and pink as uncooked chicken, except where the bone shows. She is quivering, her muscles beset by a multitude of tics. She is shaking all over, now eye to eye with Skeetah, seemingly ignoring the dirt-red puppy rounding her bowl, waddling for milk. He is the one that is a model of the father, of Kilo; he is the fattest, the most well fed, the bully. Turgid with the promise of living. When their eyes eventually open, I think that he will be the first.
The tractor idles and the engine turns, sounds as if it going to move.
'Don't do it!' Daddy yells against his tugging, but his grunts eat the Don't, and I don't know what Randall hears, but he lets up on the brake and slips it in gear, and the tractor eases forward. 'Stop!' Daddy yells. He is pulling back, his hand clenched in the wire, and he twists so hard his arm looks long and ropy.
The red puppy creeps forward, rounds China's bowl, noses her tit. China is rolling, rising. The rumble of the tractor is her growl. Her toes are pointed, her head is raised. Skeetah falls back. The red puppy undulates toward her; a fat mite. China snaps forward, closes her jaw around the puppy's neck as she does when she carries him, but there is no gentleness in it. She is all white eyes. She is chewing. She is whipping him through the air like a tire eaten too short for Skeetah to grab.
'Stop!' Skeetah yells. 'Stop!'
Randall puts the tractor in gear, switches it to park, but the small hillock the coop is on pulls the tractor back as the engine idles.
'No!' Daddy calls.
Daddy flings his hand free. There is oil on it. He holds to his chest. His shirt is covered in oil. Daddy's jaw is slack. He is walking toward the light of the shed. The oil on his T-shirt turns red. The sound coming out his open mouth is like growling.
'No!' Skeetah calls.
The blood on Daddy's shirt is the same color as the pulpy puppy in China's mouth.
"
Gruesome, but very well done. Also, consider yourself warned that there is some other gruesome stuff here, notably a dog fight. Reading this book is like watching the proverbial train wreck: you just can't look away, even though you want to.
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