A Rare View Of The South As It Really Is. As a native Son of the South – and in particular of a region *so* steeped in most *all* of its history, from prehistoric Native American burial mounds to the first female (and last slave owning) US Senator – it is rare for me to find a book that portrays Southern life *well*, both in its strengths and its weaknesses. This book does exactly that. It doesn’t shy away from our ne’erdowells, it doesn’t make excuses for assholes. But it shows that most everyone is somebody to someone, even if it takes them a lifetime to figure that out. There’s a lot here that may make some uneasy, including a violent on screen suicide to open the book, a detailed discussion of breast cancer in an era before that particular affliction was as well known as it is now, a mother’s untimely death, and I’m sure even more depending on the reader’s own sensibilities – those are just the biggest ones. But even there, Dietrich uses those things in furtherance of the story he is telling, and he does in fact wind up using every single one quite well to paint a particularly vibrant tapestry of words. There are many stories to tell of Southern life, but if one is looking to read a zany at times tale that will pull the heartstrings quite a bit – and yes, even make the room quite dusty a time or two – this is absolutely one of those types of tales. What Jimmy Buffett’s fiction did for the Caribbean, Sean of the South’s is doing for the American South in general. Very much recommended.
This review of Kinfolk by Sean Dietrich was originally written on December 29, 2023.
