Ava's Man by Rick Bragg Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ava's Man
Book Review: So much and more
Summary: 5 Stars
I came to know about this book from seeing Rick Bragg on a "Book TV" episode one Sunday afternoon. He was so down to earth and funny, I wanted to know more about him. I was searching for All Over But the Shoutin, when I found Ava's Man instead, so I grabbed it. It has been the most fun, best book I've read in a good while. You see my family is from the area he writes about. My mother was born in Anniston, Al. a few years before Charlie Bundrum. She and her family lived through the same hard times. It lets me know about the culture, and the poor but proud attitude of my mothers family. I've heard of family members being "run off." I've got the black cast iron skillet that made all the moves through the depression. I've heard the superstitions mentioned in the book from my own family. Rick Bragg has given me a look into my ancestors daily lives. If you are at all interested in genealogy from the South, if you have family that is gone now and can't shed some light on the way things were, you'll enjoy this book.
Like the previous reviewer that said Charlie was not what hero's are made of, that may be true, but your family tree is your family tree. The good bad and the ugly. Their strengths let them survive and gave us the chance to be born. The previous reviewers boasts about what he chooses to do in his profession would not be a hero in my eyes. Give me Charlie anyday. He loved life.
Book Review: Someone I would like to meet
Summary: 5 Stars
We need more positive southern stories like those written by Ricky Braggs, I've read "all over but the shouting" too and this one is better. I'm sure he takes more then a little poetic license with events but the events described here and the cast of characters is amazing. I don't care if you live in Charleston South Carolina or San Francisco California this is a book everyone should readBook Review: Spiders in her Voice
Summary: 5 Stars
I've never much cottoned to white male Southern writers, not even to Mr. Faulkner. They too often seem swollen, full of machismo, overly conscious of their Great Literary Tradition. But not Rick Bragg. Bragg is a real story teller without all the Southern Writer baggage.
Take his Ava's Man. That man is Bragg's grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, dead before Bragg was born but still living inside people who knew him. Using their memories, Bragg rebuilds his grandfather's life and the life of the woman who loved him, Ava.
I cherish Bragg's book for four reasons:
1) It's well-paced, written in short chapters that often left me with a swift intake of breath.
2) It has marvelous characters, vividly drawn. My favorite minor character is Hootie. Bragg writes, "He had a face like a pickax. His nose was long and hooked, and pointy on the end, like he had bought it at the Dollar Store and tied it on his face with a string, and it curved all the way down past his lips."
3) Bragg has a instinct for apt comparisons, often as striking as these:
of Bragg's great-granddaddy: "[He] moved like a shadow through the forest, his hobnailed boots soft as velvet slippers in the dry leaves."
of his ancestors: "they grew in [that culture] the way a weed grows in a crack."
and my favorite, of Ava: "there were spiders and broken glass in her voice."
4) To top it off, Bragg writes with clarity and compassion about his grandparents and their world. This book features Brundum, Ava's man, but it also paints a glowing picture of Ava who is just about as feisty as they come.
Read Ava's Man. You'll like it.
Marilyn Coffey is an award-winning writer of poetry and a widely published author of prose. Read her work: Great Plains Patchwork, Marcella, or KANSAS QUARTERLY Vol. 15 No. 2.
Book Review: The American South Told in a Heartwrenching Saga
Summary: 5 Stars
Ava's man was Bragg's maternal grandfather who passed away before Rick was born into poverty.
Like William Faulkner, Bragg writes of the poor American South with such vivid descriptions that you feel as though you are walking along a hot, dusty path in a depression era back woods, spiting tobacco and drinking moon shine as your caloused hands and achy back trudge along yet one more soul depleting day.
Like Pat Conroy, Bragg captures the essence of an abusive father who simply won't let go of the booze and the demons.
Life was hard, mean and nasty and wore Bragg's family down to a pulp. Bragg's admiration for his grandfather shone through.
This is the second book of his that I've read and I'll continue to learn of Bragg's saga. It is wonderful to read such clear, crisp images. This guy can write!
Book Review: The Best Southern Book Since "Prince Of Tides"
Summary: 5 Stars
I was born and raised in the very woods and mountains Ricky Bragg writes of, and he makes them seem new and magical even though I've seen them every day of my life.I worked in a Textile Plant fresh out of high school and didn't make much, but once a month I went to Salvation Army to buy 25 cent books, and I found "All Over but The Shoutin" and knew I'd never find a author so close to home.
Ava's Man, made me cry and curse and run to my Daddy when I needed to know which river or road Ricky was talking about, and my Daddy would alwasy swell up and explain to me where it was and add a short story about it.
This book isn't a fancy story about huge white houses and sprawling orchards, its a simple book about a simple man that would other wise be forgotten.
Charlie reminds me of my Daddy, and my Paw Paw and his Daddy before.
A dying breed of men with strong work ethics and big hearts, and a taste for the likker.
My Daddys eyes are bad and he cant read, but he enjoyed the pages I read to him, and my family would ask me to copy pages and we would all sit around and agree with Bragg on holidays.
Maybe it sounds lame, but this book brought my family together.
With his Cracklin bread and c'modity cheese. The likker and catfish, and of course the small strong women with hands as rough as a man and a tongue twice as sharp.
If you want to know the ways of Alabama, and the culture we pass down, read this book, slide into the slang and enjoy yourself...I know I did.