On Agate Hill is Lee Smith's 10th novel and her best work to date. Its haunting story is told with a power and honesty that reveal her maturity as a writer. Smith had completed most of her research for the novel when the unthinkable happened; her 33-year old son died unexpectedly on October 26, 2003. She went, finally, to a psychiatrist who ultimately wrote her a prescription to "Write every day." For three days she just sat, then, she began to write. A moving essay by Smith in the September 24, 2006, Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer, "Showing up for Work", provides details that have a direct impact on the novel and its development.
It is 2006 as this stunning novel opens, and Tuscany Miller, erstwhile graduate student, has rediscovered focus in her life. She writes her former professor to tell him and ask for re-admittance to his program. Her much-resented father has left the family in favor of his boyfriend, had a sex change, married, and moved into a dilapidated Civil War era house between Burlington and Hillsborough, North Carolina. The latter, incidentally, is where Lee Smith lives in a home she has named "Agate Hill." Tuscany's - she chose the name herself - father has found a treasure of diaries and letters in a small cubbyhole while renovating the house, and has shared them with Tuscany. She tells the professor the papers have changed her life, enabling her to reconnect with and forgive her father.
It is 2006 as this stunning novel opens, and Tuscany Miller, erstwhile graduate student, has rediscovered focus in her life. She writes her former professor to tell him and ask for re-admittance to his program. Her much-resented father has left the family in favor of his boyfriend, had a sex change, married, and moved into a dilapidated Civil War era house between Burlington and Hillsborough, North Carolina. The latter, incidentally, is where Lee Smith lives in a home she has named "Agate Hill." Tuscany's - she chose the name herself - father has found a treasure of diaries and letters in a small cubbyhole while renovating the house, and has shared them with Tuscany. She tells the professor the papers have changed her life, enabling her to reconnect with and forgive her father.
Traditional Literary Conceit
Tuscany allows the papers to tell the story. Minimalist notes from her link the sections and heighten the reality of the story that unfolds. Many writers have used this literary device, but few have employed it with the effectiveness found here. Lee Smith has created a many layered masterpiece superior to her well-received (2001 Southern Book Critics Circle Award) previous outing, The Last Girls. Her story is one of love lost and regained, redemption and rejuvenation. The decaying South post Civil War is a perfect metaphor for the dissolution of family and the social contract. Molly shows us the impact of Reconstruction on regular folk.
Smith's masterful prose reveals a world where the social fabric has been torn apart as surely as Agate Hill, the plantation house, and the family in it are dying. Molly Petree's family were plantation owners, slaveholders, and fought on the Southern side, yet they are sympathetic characters. Her father was killed nearby at the Battle of Bentonville and his pieces buried there. Two of her brothers and a first cousin also died. Two siblings and a first cousin died young, another cousin has gone West, and another is mentally slow. It is into this crumbling, dark world inhabited by the dead and dying that Molly is given a diary on her thirteenth birthday, May 20, 1869 and told to write about her dead parents and brothers so that she will remember them.
Tuscany allows the papers to tell the story. Minimalist notes from her link the sections and heighten the reality of the story that unfolds. Many writers have used this literary device, but few have employed it with the effectiveness found here. Lee Smith has created a many layered masterpiece superior to her well-received (2001 Southern Book Critics Circle Award) previous outing, The Last Girls. Her story is one of love lost and regained, redemption and rejuvenation. The decaying South post Civil War is a perfect metaphor for the dissolution of family and the social contract. Molly shows us the impact of Reconstruction on regular folk.
Smith's masterful prose reveals a world where the social fabric has been torn apart as surely as Agate Hill, the plantation house, and the family in it are dying. Molly Petree's family were plantation owners, slaveholders, and fought on the Southern side, yet they are sympathetic characters. Her father was killed nearby at the Battle of Bentonville and his pieces buried there. Two of her brothers and a first cousin also died. Two siblings and a first cousin died young, another cousin has gone West, and another is mentally slow. It is into this crumbling, dark world inhabited by the dead and dying that Molly is given a diary on her thirteenth birthday, May 20, 1869 and told to write about her dead parents and brothers so that she will remember them.
Molly, an independent sort, determines that she will write what she wishes. Unlettered, but remarkably bright, Molly begins a diary of her life as a ghost girl living in a world inhabited by ghosts. At one point she writes that she cannot see her shadow on the ground. Molly has discovered a secret cubbyhole within the walls, and it is here that she retreats to write, think, and observe the world around her.
Molly's Coming of Age
Molly's early writings are those of an unsophisticated, uneducated teenager, nearly devoid of punctuation and unfettered by rules of spelling yet filled with remarkable insights. As she gains a formal education, her writing style and language change to fit her growing knowledge base. A rope of historical accuracy runs throughout. Killing hogs and grinding meat for sausage, drawing water from the stream when the well freezes, and burial customs are just a few of the socio-historical references which bring vitality to this elegantly rendered story.
Molly's Coming of Age
Molly's early writings are those of an unsophisticated, uneducated teenager, nearly devoid of punctuation and unfettered by rules of spelling yet filled with remarkable insights. As she gains a formal education, her writing style and language change to fit her growing knowledge base. A rope of historical accuracy runs throughout. Killing hogs and grinding meat for sausage, drawing water from the stream when the well freezes, and burial customs are just a few of the socio-historical references which bring vitality to this elegantly rendered story.
On Agate Hill is populated by a host of memorable characters. These include an Aunt trapped in her pre-Civil War past and a girls' school headmistress who cannot cope with the independent Molly. A mysterious stranger, dressed in black, comes into Molly's life and provides for her to attend Gatewood Academy for girls. Simon Black, for that is his name, was saved by her father during the war and was present at his death. Black weaves in and out of Molly's life for the next thirty years. She meets and marries Jacky Jarvis, "a mystical bluesman and healer living wild and free" (N&O essay) who represents the spirit and love of her son Josh. The characters bring humor and tragedy and truly inhabit the place and time created by Smith.
Therapy
Smith ends her essay by stating that "…writing itself is an inherently therapeutic activity. Simply to line up words one after another upon a page is to create some order where it did not exist, to give a recognizable shape to the sadness and chaos of our lives." That is what Smith did to relieve her grief. That is what Molly Petree accomplished in writing her fictional diary. We are all the richer for having read it.
While it is a story set in the South, it is not just a Southern story. It is a story of universal lessons and appeal. This is the best new novel I have read this year.
Therapy
Smith ends her essay by stating that "…writing itself is an inherently therapeutic activity. Simply to line up words one after another upon a page is to create some order where it did not exist, to give a recognizable shape to the sadness and chaos of our lives." That is what Smith did to relieve her grief. That is what Molly Petree accomplished in writing her fictional diary. We are all the richer for having read it.
While it is a story set in the South, it is not just a Southern story. It is a story of universal lessons and appeal. This is the best new novel I have read this year.
