Kaethe

I have an ARC; I'm pretty much beside myself with antici- (say it) -pation.***It may not be The, but it is certainly A Great American Novel. Barnhardt has a marvelous way of capturing the absurdities of an era, as he showed in [b:Emma Who Saved My Life: A Novel|92484|Emma Who Saved My Life A Novel|Wilton Barnhardt|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367749777s/92484.jpg|89190]. More importantly, where the wise author sees the folly of his characters, he doesn't mock them for their earnest embrace of the mores of their times. Like Dickens and Austen, he is sympathetic to the situations people find themselves in, to the hazards they create for themselves.Background: the novel is set primarily in Charlotte, NC during the first decade of the 21st century. Conversations and flashbacks take us back in the lives of the Jarvis-Johnston family as far as the Civil War. For these people the past isn't over. There's Gaston making a fortune writing historical novels, and his sister Jerene's work maintaining the family art collection at the museum, and her husband Duke's devotion to re-enacting with maximum authenticity, and preserving a battle site. The past is ongoing, too, in the efforts of the next generation, where Annie finds a way to help previously discriminated-against families purchase their first home in integrated neighborhoods, and Bo and his wife Kate struggle to do God's work in a contentious suburban church, and Joshua tries to keep his sexual escapades on the down-low using his best friend Dorrie as a beard.All of these characters, and many more, are trying to find some way to accommodate a weight of history that both protects them and holds them back. They are all struggling against the expectations of Society (such as it is down here) and against sexism and racism and classism, even as they enjoy some privileges from the system. Book One introduces the family and runs through their gamut of first-world problems, and I was afraid, I admit it, that maybe Barnhardt was going to give in to Tom Wolfe-like railing against everyone and everything.Then there's Book Two, which lifts the book above mere witty sniping, into something sympathetic, and understanding, and revealing. There is no bogus Hollywood ending, but the good receive some reward, and the wicked receive some punishment, and the result is the best one could hope for, given the characters and modern history.Barnhardt is a writer with scope and the best sort of human charity. His novels are infrequent, but the rewards are earned.***Publisher's ARC provided for review