Library Alabama Classics
3 total works
William March's debut novel, Company K, introduced him to the reading public as a gifted writer of modern fiction. Of that World War I classic, Graham Greene wrote: ""It is the only war book I have read which has found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is bare, lucid, without literary echoes."" After Company K, March brought his same unerring style to a cycle of novels and short storieshis ""Pearl County"" seriesinspired in part by his childhood in the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama. The University of Alabama Press is pleased to be bringing these three novels back into print.
Third in the ""Pearl County"" series, The Looking-Glass is March's story of a small Alabama town in the early days of the twentieth century. Connected by relationships that bind, support, and strangle, the citizens of Reedyville are drawn ineluctably toward a single climactic night. March's skillful blend of humor and pathos evinces his deep insights and empathy into the problems of the mind and heart that are both peculiar to Reedyville yet found in every town and family.
Third in the ""Pearl County"" series, The Looking-Glass is March's story of a small Alabama town in the early days of the twentieth century. Connected by relationships that bind, support, and strangle, the citizens of Reedyville are drawn ineluctably toward a single climactic night. March's skillful blend of humor and pathos evinces his deep insights and empathy into the problems of the mind and heart that are both peculiar to Reedyville yet found in every town and family.
William March's debut novel, Company K, introduced him to the reading public as a gifted writer of modern fiction. Of that World War I classic, Graham Greene wrote: ""It is the only war book I have read which has found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is bare, lucid, without literary echoes."" After Company K, March brought his same unerring style to a cycle of novels and short stories–his ""Pearl County"" series–inspired in part by his childhood in the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama. The University of Alabama Press is pleased to be bringing these three novels back into print.
In The Tallons, the second novel in the ""Pearl County"" series, March tells the story of two farm boys, Andrew and Jim Tallon. Their placid and predictable life is upended by a girl from Georgia, Myrtle Bickerstaff. The conflict which engulfs these three arises from a series of carefully chosen and extraordinarily telling incidents to a dramatic climax which will be remembered long after the book is set aside. March framed the novel as ""a study in paranoia"" and to the end of his life considered it one of his strongest works.
In The Tallons, the second novel in the ""Pearl County"" series, March tells the story of two farm boys, Andrew and Jim Tallon. Their placid and predictable life is upended by a girl from Georgia, Myrtle Bickerstaff. The conflict which engulfs these three arises from a series of carefully chosen and extraordinarily telling incidents to a dramatic climax which will be remembered long after the book is set aside. March framed the novel as ""a study in paranoia"" and to the end of his life considered it one of his strongest works.
William March's debut novel, Company K, introduced him to the reading public as a gifted writer of modern fiction. Of that World War I classic, Graham Greene wrote: “It is the only war book I have read which has found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is bare, lucid, without literary echoes.” After Company K, March brought his same unerring style to a cycle of novels and short stories—his “Pearl County” series—inspired in part by his childhood in the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama.
Come in at the Door is the first in March’s “Pearl County” collection, and it tells the story of Chester, a boy who lives with his withholding, widowed father, and Mitty, who keeps house and serves as a surrogate wife to Chester’s father and a mother to Chester. One morning before dawn, Mitty takes Chester to the Athlestan courthouse to watch the hanging of a man who’d killed “a grotesque, dwarflike creature” he thought had “laid a conjure” on him.
Throughout Chester’s rambunctious young manhood, the gruesome memory hovers just below the surface of his mind, recalled in detail only at his father’s death, when the book sweeps forward to its shattering denouement. A classic of Southern Gothic that illuminates family, class, race, and gender, Come in at the Door marks the homecoming of a Southern storyteller at the peak of his craft.
Come in at the Door is the first in March’s “Pearl County” collection, and it tells the story of Chester, a boy who lives with his withholding, widowed father, and Mitty, who keeps house and serves as a surrogate wife to Chester’s father and a mother to Chester. One morning before dawn, Mitty takes Chester to the Athlestan courthouse to watch the hanging of a man who’d killed “a grotesque, dwarflike creature” he thought had “laid a conjure” on him.
Throughout Chester’s rambunctious young manhood, the gruesome memory hovers just below the surface of his mind, recalled in detail only at his father’s death, when the book sweeps forward to its shattering denouement. A classic of Southern Gothic that illuminates family, class, race, and gender, Come in at the Door marks the homecoming of a Southern storyteller at the peak of his craft.