Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've been a fan of Harry Crews since first reading "The Gypsy's Curse" about 25 years ago. His novels are populated by grotesques; and his story lines are often comic, sometimes bizarre. However, he writes with gritty realism. His characters are intensely credible, human and sympathetic. Some are even appealing. This is what I've come to appreciate about his writing.
"Celebration" is different. I don't mean that it's bad. It's just not what I'm looking for when I pick up a Harry Crews book. A beautiful young woman moves into a trailer park full of old people who have little else to do but wait to die. She works, rather obscurely and mystically, to open up these people to what she calls "the chance of ultimate possibility". (I must say, however, that some of her methods are entertaining.) Many of the characters and their conduct are rather surreal. I had a hard time understanding them, let alone relating to them. This novel, particulary its "surprise" ending, owes more to the horror-fantasy writing of Clive Barker than to the hardcore southern grit tradition that Crews usually represents so well.
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