Daddy Dearest

I finished The King of Kings County, by Whitney Terrell. The story covers a span of several decades, and manages to stay true to the characters in a realistic manner as human beings, not two-dimensional characters. I hate it in a movie when we see the character as a child, and then twenty years later as an adult, and they are wearing the same glasses and clothing so we know who they are (I think of this as "The Big Change," although that might not be fair to said movie). Heavy-handed visual cues like that pander to the audience, making a paternalistic assumption that we are too dumb to otherwise follow a story. In this book, the characters didn't just get older, they grew up, and did so in a thoughtful and well-planned manner.

I liked this book; I doubt I would have picked it up unless it had been recommended to me, but having read it, I not only enjoyed the story itself, but I enjoyed the writing enough that I will probably take a look at Terrell's other works. I seem to be on a kick recently, reading books told in the first person by authors writing about themselves, talking about their difficult relationships with their respective fathers (see sidebar for my current book). You don't have to be Freud to figure out why I have been reading this type of book recently, but it also helps that they are well-written and, realistically, don't resolve neatly or cleanly. I'll give this book a solid B.