The Library book group group is open to all! The book selection for February is
Miss Jane by Brad Watson. Be sure to read it before the meeting on
February 15th at 1pm! You can pick up a copy at the Reference Desk at the library.
Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the
Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the
South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in
America. Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson
explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural,
early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that
would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time
and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature
around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country
doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave
her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren. The
potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a
trademark of Watson's fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a
hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable
loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm's
irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live
her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and
her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she
mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that
lives beyond her still. --from the publisher
