Ruby

Ruby Bell was a constant reminder of what could befall a woman whose shoe heels were too high. The people of Liberty Township wove her into cautionary tales of the wages of sin and travel. They called her buck-crazy. Howling, half-naked mad. The fact that she had come back from New York City made this somewhat understandable to the town. She wore gray like rain clouds and wandered the red roads in bare feet. Calluses thick as boot leather. Hair caked with mud. Blackened nails as if she had scratched the slate of night. Her acres of legs carrying her, arms swaying like a loose screen. Her eyes the ink of sky, just before the storm.

When Ruby first opens with this description, I thought I had really found something. The writing was not only lyrical but slightly off-kilter (“acres of legs” seemed fresh and slightly challenging), and as the mystery of Ruby's presence in this East Texas unincorporated coloured settlement is slowly teased out – as conjuring and haints and exorcism are introduced – I finished the first section of this book curious for answers. But when these answers eventually involve a relentless and gratuitous catalogue of child abuse, religious hypocrisy, and rabid misogyny, I mentally checked out: there is no doubt in my mind that life for African Americans in the Deep South 1950s could be nasty and brutish, but this narrative does nothing to illuminate the actual; the situations are so over-the-top that author Cynthia Bond does a disservice to the memory of those who in reality were lynched and raped and beaten down. I picked this book up because it made the shortlist for the 2016 Bailey's Prize, but it's the Oprah's Book Club 2.0 sticker that should have warned me off: like so many of Oprah's picks, Ruby is the story of a southern woman who attempts to overcome a childhood of poverty and abuse. And even if that's what you're looking for, this would definitely not be my recommendation for a feel-good read. It's feel-bad. Spoilers ahead (for real: I was able to hide most of my spoilers behind tags on Goodreads but I don't have that feature here; be forewarned).

Ruby opens in 1973 with the title character bearing little resemblance to the chic city woman who disembarked a bus eleven years earlier; once beautiful and regal, Ruby now wanders the roads and digs in the forest dirt and lays down willingly for any man who grabs her. Ephram Jennings – her childhood admirer – has been watching Ruby's descent for all these years and finally decides to offer his heart – and his sister's famous white cake – to the crazy woman of the woods. We learn that Ephram's father was a respected Reverend who lost his church when Ephram's mother showed up naked for Easter service. When their mother was hauled off to a mental institution and their father was eventually lynched on his itinerant preaching route, Ephram was raised by his older sister Celia; a pillar of the church whom Ephram calls Mama. There are many mysteries hinted at that take a long time to answer: How did Ruby get that plum job as a paid companion to a white woman in the city as a child? (It was actually a brothel that the Reverend Jennings sold six-year-old Ruby to.) Why did the Reverend have questionable behaviours? (He was the ringleader of a secret society that had bonfires in the woods where they raped little girls “to gain their power”. Oh, and he killed both his parents as a child, sleeping with both his mother and a sister along the way.) What made Ephram's mother go crazy? (She witnessed her husband presiding over one of these rituals, and when she cried out at the sight of little girls being raped, she was gang-raped too.) Why could Celia not offer Christian charity to Ruby? (She also witnessed a bonfire ritual and assumed that the child Ruby had bedevilled her father.) What was Ruby doing in New York City? (Supposedly searching for her birth mother, Ruby primarily prostituted herself while reserving her heart for lesbian relationships.) Why does Ruby now scream in the night forest and dig graves in the dirt? (She is birthing/mothering all the dead children who haunt her, like the ghost of her friend Tanny; another child sold into prostitution whose murder Ruby witnessed.)

These answers, when they come, are never revealed organically: over and over, a character (usually Ephram) will think of someone who isn't present in the scene and the next paragraph will start a flashback featuring that person. It got so predictable that eventually, if I read that Ephram was thinking of, say, his mother, I'd wonder, “Well, what else am I to learn about her?” (Oh, she was used as a guinea pig for horrifying experimental cures in the mental institution because she was in the Coloured Wing. Gotcha.) This device felt amateurish as did many of the repetitions: the “listening” piney woods, the crows that are watching everything (but that's okay because the main one is Ruby's dead cousin Maggie), the constant rain storms, the mysterious and powerful Dyboù that dips in and out of the story (but that's okay because it's actually the evil spirit of the dead Reverend trying to take control of Ruby once and for all). Also amateurish was the immediate description of each new character's skin tone, and while I appreciate that African American skin in all its glorious shades might make for an important trait (and not least of all for the way that characters' lightness or darkness might affect they way others treat them), it was the immediacy and abruptness that kept jarring me: name a new character, then straightaway identify where they fall on the creamed corn to walnut to plum spectrum. 

And through it all we have Ephram: perhaps slow-witted, he seems content to be a grocery bagger in town; content to allow Celia to take his tips and wages to buy her church clothes and wigs. Ephram appears to be the only man in Liberty who doesn't have a hatred of women at his core; the only person who goes to church for humble worship instead of using it as a platform to jockey for power and prestige. And yet, despite his decency and life-long affection, it takes Ephram eleven years to reach out to Ruby. Once he does, no amount of crazy or resistance will shoo him off. Ephram is just too good to be true, with motivations I couldn't understand.

In the first section, when the young Ruby, Maggie, and Ephram enter the witch's hut in the woods, I thought that I was going to love the supernatural elements; the folksy superstitions; the haints that Ruby attracts. But it didn't take long for it to feel like just too much – again, this layer of the story came off as clunky and amateurish. And, again, the unrelenting abuses (and especially of children) totally turned me off: piling abuse upon abuse is a cheat; a short-cut to emotional gravity that the narrative doesn't earn (which is such a shame because in the first section, when the bad guys were Klan members and corrupt sheriffs, I was totally on board; when the truth of history is full of incredible evil, why would an author feel the need to add elements that I refuse to believe?)

I understand that Ruby is the first volume of a planned trilogy, but I'm not left with unanswered questions or a burning need for more. I didn't like the writing – neither the big story arc or the fine details – and I do not recommend.

Ain’t nobody ever gone answer you cries. You can fill a well with tears, and all you gonna get is drowned. You sit there long enough and the crazy man find you. You weep too long, your heart ache so, the flesh slip off your bones and your soul got to find a new home. You wait on answers ’til the scaredy-cat curl up in your belly and use your liver for a pin cushion. And that’s just how you die. Ascared and waiting. And death find your ghost wailing for help. In this life, if someone promise you aid, they a lie. If someone offer they hand, check five time ten to see where they hide the bill. You ain’t nobody but alone. And God come to those with the fight to find It. Ain’t nothing easy. Not for the likes of you.

I don't usually follow the Bailey's Prize, but since I had read some of these titles already, I thought, why not? So much regret. Perhaps I'll find a gem yet. Later edit: Yes, there were gems to be found. I am delighted that The Glorious Heresies won the Bailey's Prize: the best of an uneven but respectable shortlist; here in my ranking order.

The 2016 Bailey's Prize shortlist:

Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies
Anne Enright: The Green Road
Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen
Cynthia Bond: Ruby
Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love
Hanya Yanagihara: A Little Life