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Hellenga is fearlessly inventive. Could anybody
else combine snake handling, the Ituri pygmies of the Congo, life in a
women's prison, learning to play timpani, a murder trial and a poignant
love affair in three hundred-odd fast-paced, highly readable pages?
—Maxine Kumin The truest and most moving portrait of the romance of research and the lyricism of learning that you will ever find. Plus: a good solid story, right down the center. I loved this book. —Mary Doria Russell He's an anthropology professor. She's a snake-handling ex-con. What they share, in this gloriously quirky sixth novel from Hellenga (The Italian Lover, 2007, etc.) is a hunger for knowledge. It's a time of beginnings. The world is soon to begin a new millennium. The professor, Jackson Jones, again feels vigor after being racked by Lyme Disease. And Sunny is primed for a fresh start after six years in the slammer. Their stories are intriguing. Jackson did his fieldwork in the Forest, in the Congo, living with the Mbuti, or pygmies. He went native, sleeping with a young Mbuti woman; she bore him a daughter; he's tempted to return. Sunny hails from Little Egypt (southern Illinois). She was only 16 when she married Earl, the pastor of a Pentecostal congregation that handles snakes. When Earl thrust her arm into a box of rattlers, she shot him in self-defense, wounding him, nothing serious. She's now 35, five years Jackson's junior; in prison she lost her religious faith but caught up on her education, and is now enrolled at Jackson's central Illinois university. He offers her the apartment above his garage that belonged to his handyman, her dead uncle. They become lovers; there's an astonishing scene, Lawrentian in its fervor, that invokes Greek mythology. Then Earl arrives to reclaim his wife. The story proceeds on parallel tracks. There's a roller coaster involving Jackson, Sunny and Earl, which will climax with a second shooting and trial. Then there's the story of two unconventional people with open minds. As Sunny gobbles up her courses like a kid in a candy store, Jackson travels to Little Egypt to pursue "salvage anthropology" and observe the charismatic Earl at work. The author affirms the validity of both backwoods magic and scientific inquiry on campus. Three reasons to love Hellenga: He's a fine storyteller; he gives us new eyes; he restores our sense of wonder. Attention must be paid. —Kirkus Reviews (1 July 2010) (starred review) |
Washington Post, "The Best Novels of 2010." Kirkus Reviews, "Top 25" / "The Best Fiction of 2010" BookBrowse, "Editor's Choice" ___________________________________ "Don't start reading this book if you've got a dinner party coming up in the next few days, or a committee meeting or a golf game. You'l be calling people up with fake excuses and feeling bad about yourself—at least that's what happened to me. A masterpiece. Thank you, Mr. Hellenga! For, among others things, inspiring your readers instead of trying to edify them." —Washington Post Book World |
 Chicago Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak "You want to be open to surprises at every stage of the game. If you work at sticking to a plan you're likely to shut off inspiration." —interview, 25 September 2010. Chicago Tribune Books. |
"You are in Hellengaville,
searching for your lost shaker of angst… Hellenga makes
anthropologists of us all." —The
Los Angeles Times "Themes--good and evil, woman and man, religion and science, truth and falsehood--abound, but they do not overwhelm a genuinely exciting story." —BookBrowse |
"Recounting the novel's many
strands doesn't communicate Hellenga's
crafty, mesmerizing style, a marvelous melange of the mundane and the
magical. Not only does he conjure the Mbuti environment credibly, he
communicates the wild atmosphere of the snake-handling church with
singular zest, and even the sex scenes, which are notoriously difficult
to craft, are believable. … Talk about purple prose. B ut also
talk
about how skillfully Hellenga injects humor to reduce the swelling." —Chicago Sun Times |
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The lovers in Hellenga's moving,
profound novels do
not live in a world of conventional happy endings. His romances often
end in attenuated moments of both disappointment and tenderness,
partings that have the feel not of failed relationships but of life
moving on and working out as it must. There is melancholy in that but a
kind of happiness, too. So it was in his best-selling debut, The
Sixteen
pleasures (1994), and so it is in his latest novel, about a young
woman, Sunny, just released from prison after serving five years for
shooting (but not killing) her husband, and Jackson, an anthropology
professor torn between his desire to return to Africa and to settle
into the comfortable university life he's found in southern Illinois.
Everything changes when Jackson meets Sunny, who grew up in a
snake-handling church in Illinois' Little Egypt area (she shot her
husband after he forced her to put her hand in a box of rattlesnakes).
Sunny rents Jackson's garage apartment and quickly becomes his lover,
but she is trying to escape her childhood and her husband, and Jackson
is entranced by her stories of the Church of the Burning Bush with
Signs
Following, eventually going there to do fieldwork. Hellenga fills the
novel not only with fascinating details of snake handling and the
religious ecstasy it inspires, but also with a beguiling portrait of
the comfort and shared intimacy of domestic life. Jackson and Sunny
dance between the "safe harbor" of their life together and "the wider
sea of courage, risk, and adventure," each teaching the other about the
many forms of joie de vivre. Yes, it is a melancholy story, but it is
also immensely satisfying and even uplifting in that unique way that
only deeply felt life can provide. —Booklist (1 August 2010) (starred review) |
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"It felt like
my whole body was on fire," Sunny said, putting her hand on his leg.
"It was like being struck by lightning. It was like a pot of raspberry
jam boiling over on the stove." "You know just what to say to a man," he said. "I like pulling into the drive," she said. "I like the crunch of the gravel under the wheels." "You did a good job," he said. She'd graded the drive about a week earlier. "There's a low spot up ahead that needs more gravel. I should probably put a pipe under it. And that tree." She pointed at a big old oak that had fallen across the fence into Jack Delacorts field. "I can take care of that." |
Everyone brought food and wine and
hard liquor too, and
everyone was having a good time. It really was like a church supper,
but with better food. Claude's big French table was loaded down with
shrimp, pasta salads, guacamole, cheese, all arranged around the big
cassoulet, which we had cooked in a terra-cotta pot. Claire had put her
special New York Chocolate cheesecake out on the deck to keep cold. Everyone was very agreeable. Not just agreeable, but making it clear that they were happy to be here and not somewhere else. And these were the people Earl would consign to Hell. |
I woke up in the morning to the sound of the dog barking. Four loud barks, then quiet for a while. Then four more loud barks. Then quiet. I looked out the window. Jackson was throwing a Frisbee to the dog. He was standing down below me on the gravel in front of the garage, throwing the Frisbee down the hill. It went a long way, but the dog managed to catch it every time. She'd bring it back to Jackson, drop it in front of him, and start barking. It took him four barks to pick it up and throw it gain. Joey de viver, I thought. Joey de viver. |
16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. —Mark 16:16-18 |
 photo by Maria Dryfhout |
My
small
breasts looked nice
and firm in the spaghetti-strap
camisole. I admired myself in the mirror over Jackson's big chestnut
dresser. I don't think I've ever been so aroused. The dress was like
the magic girdle I read about in Western Civ. Not a girdle but some
kind of a belt that you fastened under your breasts. more like a bra
than a belt. Hera, the queen of the gods, borrows it from Aphrodite,
the goddess of love, when she wants to seduce her husband. All you have
to do is put it on and you are irresistible. That's the way I felt.
Irresistible to myself too, even though I hadn't taken a shower, and
when I put my hands up to my nose I could smell snake and gasoline and
whiskey (and maybe Cramer too). My body was trembling, just the way it
had when I'd confronted the big snake. My mind was spinning, my heart
pounding, my feet and hands tingling, my stomach churning. "Jackson," I called. "Come up here. I want to show you something." He took his time, made me wait. Then on the stairs. I felt each step like a smart sassy slap on the ass. At the top of the stairs we confronted each other in a rush of fear and of pleasure. I could hear my own bones singing, like a rattlesnake's rattle. I could feel my stomach coiling, and below my stomach, something ready to strike. "I wondered what happened to that outfit," Jackson said, looking me up and down. "But I was afraid to ask." "You look ten times better than you did when I got here," I said. "You look like you're full of life." I could already feel his hands on me. I unfastened the cache-coeur and the little putty-colored skirt and then pulled the cami over my head, like a snake shedding its skin. I could feel my blood thickening. I was turning into DX's two-headed snake, into a powerful erection that would pulse under this man's touch. I was Snakewoman, I was the python in the San cave in the Tsodilo Hills, and when we embraced we turned into the ancient Mesopotamian tree of life. His kisses were like blood and salt. But afterwards, when he turned to me and asked, "What just happened?" I didn't say anything about the snakes. "What just happened?" I had to think. "My heart started beating faster," I said, "and my breathing got faster too, and I tightened all my muscles, and my nipples got hard, and my clit swelled up and my pelvic area got engorged with blood, and I had about fifteen muscle contractions, and then my body got rigid, and then it relaxed. Why? What do you think happened?" "You took me inside you," he said, "and devoured my seed when I was most vulnerable, and you were most triumphant. I explored your dark continent at my own risk. You lured me on. But because I survived the encounter, you will now share your great riches and power with me, because you love me." It wasn't really funny, but I started to laugh. "Is that what really happened?" "That's what really happened," he said. I thought maybe he was right. |
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