LUDIE'S LIFE
Cynthia Rylant
Harcourt
Fiction/Narrative Poetry
ISBN-10: 0152053891
ISBN-13: 9780152053895
128 pages

With a straightforward title and a simple, unassuming format, LUDIE'S LIFE by Cynthia Rylant would appear to be the story of an Appalachian woman. The narrative poetry should help the reader flow along effortlessly inside the days of an Alabama girl who marries and becomes a mother raising a family in the coal camps of West Virginia. The petite size of Rylant's book (5"X 7 ¼") and the concise length (112 pages) could make for a smooth, convenient read. But the life of Ludie in the hands of Rylant is anything but smooth, simple and unassuming. It's compelling, heartbreakingly honest and haunting.

As a West Virginia native, Rylant draws deeply on her roots and family connections to portray the life of an individual woman. A unique setting, the coal camps of West Virginia, provide a stark, work-till-you-die background to the comings and goings that make up a family grown against the backdrop of towering mountains.

While the mountains provide, they also seclude, and mountain people tend to be self sufficient because they learn early on how difficult the mountains can make life. Groceries, funerals, church and hospitals are always a challenge because of the mountains. Rylant explains how emotionally dangerous seeing the ocean can be to someone living in the mountains.

"The ocean went on too far
for Ludie,
who preferred seeing only the next ridge
out her kitchen window,
where trees grew whose names she knew
and a creek flowed,
small enough."

Rylant's depiction of Ludie as she experiences a plethora of events in marriage, children and life is stark and clean. This is exactly how Ludie liked her coal camp house built by the mine owners and set in identical rows at the base of the mountain. Ludie's house and life were simply furnished and regularly sanitized.

Ludie's life is shared with the reader through her thoughts about this relative or that neighbor. Rylant writes as if she has been granted express permission to record Ludie's sometimes-harsh opinions and melancholy remembrances. Rylant turns a fictional character's voice into such a realistic pathos that the reader can feel like an unwelcome voyeur addicted to seeking the sordid intricacies of Ludie's existence. While Ludie lives a good woman's life, her own sense of reality leads her to think unkind things about everyone and everything, from children to church.

Ludie lived a long life full of the "...joy, laughter, heartache, and loss..." that accompanies any life. There are more moments of painful reality than hilarity, but Rylant turns country humor with effortless grace. When speaking of her daughter finding religion after growing up refusing it, Ludie says, "Imagine the strain on that marriage. An ex-junkie from the Bronx and a born-again Christian hillbilly. It didn't last. He moved out, found a reasonable woman and remarried." Rylant has always been a master of irony and doesn't overuse the tactic in LUDIE'S LIFE, but inserts it when the reader least expects it. The effect is more realism, as if Ludie is sitting across the old kitchen table telling you a story and adding her own wry comments along the way.

Rylant writes of one woman, but thousands and thousands have lived Ludie's life and will identify some of their own histories woven into the rich fabric of this book. Some will shout hooray, some will sob, and some will stoically close the book and lay it aside knowing that the real truth of their lives has been rendered in black and white for the entire world to know. LUDIE'S LIFE is a brilliant contribution to the growing collection of Appalachian literature that tells the story as honestly and purely as life in the mountains has always been and always will be.

   --- Reviewed by Joy Held

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