Creatures Here Below

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Creatures Here Below (eBook) Pub. Date: 11/8/2011 Publisher: Agate Publishing
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Creatures Here Below Pub. Date: 11/8/2011 Publisher: Agate Publishing
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Creatures Here Below Pub. Date: 6/6/2012 Publisher: Gale Cengage Learning

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Overview

This powerful new novel by O. H. Bennett tells the story of a makeshift family struggling to stay together as life wears away at their bonds of blood and love. At the center of the family is Gail Neighbors, the hardworking single mother of two sons, Mason and Tyler. Mason, the older, grew up without knowing his father, a feckless gambler and womanizer. Tyler, the younger, sings in the church choir and enjoys a close relationship with his father, Dan, who left Gail a few years before still spends plenty of time at the house. To make ends meet, Gail has taken in two boarders: Annie, an elderly woman with a diminishing grip on reality, and Jackie, the 20-year-old single mother of baby Cole, who can't fully accept her overwhelming new responsibilities. Creatures Here Below renders with tremendous richness and care the realities of a black teenaged male whose life is taking a turn toward the worse.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

In his third novel, Bennett (The Lie) brings an African-American community to vivid life with strong and compelling characters and narrative themes to match—growing up, the struggles of parenthood and young adulthood, the responsibilities we all have to each other as people. Gail Neighbors is the single mother of two sons running a boardinghouse. The elder, Mason, is acting out, consumed with identity struggles surrounding his good-for-nothing father, Pony, while Tyler is on track, although Gail has unresolved issues with his father, Dan, a good man that she didn’t quite love. Her tenant Annie is an elderly woman who’s losing it; Jackie is a young mother struggling with the responsibilities of a newborn and the baby’s father, Perry, a privileged young white man. When Mason runs away from home, intent on hunting down his father in Washington, D.C., and killing him out of revenge for his abuse and neglect, he hitches a ride with drug dealer Ken Gamble and a mysterious young woman named Gina, with whom Mason gets involved, angering Gina’s estranged disabled boyfriend. Back home, Jackie contemplates giving up he baby to his daddy’s family until Gail steps in. Bennett handles the multiple plot lines with grace and skill, and readers will appreciate the subtle growth of the characters, as well as the diverse array of experience. (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews

A fragmented novel about family fragmentation. Bennett has no single focus here but tends to circle back to conflict within the family of Gail Neighbors. She runs a small boardinghouse in Indiana, so small, in fact, that she has only two tenants: Annie, who's showing signs of senility and dementia, and single-mother Jackie, who's trying to find a place to raise toddler Cole, though on occasion she still finds herself drawn back in to her previous party-loving lifestyle. Gail has two sons. Tyler, the younger, sings solos at church and generally leads an upright existence, while his older half brother, Mason Reed, is tormented by the abandonment of his father, Pony Reed, years before. At the age of 11 Mason has a brief, abortive encounter with his father, but a few years later he feels drawn in by the force field of his father's charisma. After his father essentially pimps for Mason in trying to arrange his son's first sexual encounter, Pony disappears again. Anguished and lost, Mason decides to go in search of him. His companions on this journey are Kenny Gamble, a drug addict and perhaps the least-likely person in the cosmos to be helpful to Mason, and his friend Gina. Meanwhile, back at the boardinghouse, Jackie faces the possibility of being forced to give up her beloved Cole. Bennett diligently anatomizes both the antagonisms and love relationships of single-family households, pushing well beyond formulas and racial stereotypes.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781932841626
Publisher: Agate Publishing
Publication date: 11/8/2011
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 451,451
Product dimensions: 6.10 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 0.90 (d)

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stsledge1024

Posted January 1, 2012

Great story! Highly recommended!

I absolutely loved this book! Very captivating! It is well-written, engaging, funny, sad and exciting. It captures very realistic and relatable insights into the characters' plights. The characters are so vividly descriptive that they come to life as you read, and the writer paints a panoramic view of their surroundings. A great book for all ages. I can't wait to read other books by this author.
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