Miss Jane

by Brad Watson

Overview

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction: Astonishing prose brings to life a forgotten woman and a lost world in a strange and bittersweet Southern pastoral.

Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South, in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America.

Now, drawing on the story of his own great-aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time and place: sex and marriage. From the highly erotic world of nature around her to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the country doctor who befriends her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, Miss Jane Chisolm and her world are anything but barren.

The potency and implacable cruelty of nature, as well as its beauty, is a trademark of Watson’s fiction. In Miss Jane, the author brings to life a hard, unromantic past that is tinged with the sadness of unattainable loves, yet shot through with a transcendent beauty. Jane Chisolm’s irrepressible vitality and generous spirit give her the strength to live her life as she pleases in spite of the limitations that others, and her own body, would place on her. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393241730
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/12/2016
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Brad Watson (1955–2020) was the National Book Award–shortlisted author of Last Days of the Dog Men, The Heaven of Mercury, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, and Miss Jane. Originally from Mississippi, at the time of his death he was a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Wyoming.

Hometown:

Wyoming

Date of Birth:

July 24, 1955

Place of Birth:

Meridian, Mississippi

Education:

Meridian Junior College; B.A., Mississippi State University, 1978; M.F.A., University of Alabama, 1985

Editorial Reviews

In his newest novel, Miss Jane, Watson's facility with upending expectations and upsetting the lines between all sorts of categories—good and bad, normal and abnormal, pride and shame, love and hate—is at its keenest and applied most carefully…Through [Dr. Thompson] and Jane's father, Watson expresses a tenderness that is one of the novel's finest achievements and may derive from being a father himself, from the hard-won knowledge that we are each of us limited. Yet the complexity and drama of Watson's gorgeous work here is life's as well: Sometimes physical realities expand us, sometimes trap; sometimes heroism lies in combating our helplessness, sometimes in accepting it. A writer of profound emotional depths, Watson does not lie to his reader, so neither does his Jane. She never stops longing for a wholeness she may never know, but she is determined that her citizenship in the world, however onerous, be dragged into the light and there be lived without apology or perfection or pity.

The New York Times Book Review - Amy Grace Loyd

05/02/2016
“Who can say what life will make of a body?” Watson (House of Mercury) asks in the affecting, nuanced story of a girl who “did not fear her own strangeness.” Jane, the youngest daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper, is born with a genital defect that renders her incontinent and incapable of having children. A local doctor takes an interest in Jane’s case—as well as her father’s home-brewed apple brandy—and becomes a lifelong advisor and confidant to the “prodigiously contemplative” girl. Jane is most comfortable in the woods around her house, though she does tentatively engage with the world, knowing full well that “she would always be the odd one, the one with the secret.” She indulges in a girlhood romance cautiously, unsure about what, if anything, to reveal about her condition. Jane is a great watcher, and the novel wonderfully conveys the amorous intensity with which she experiences nature’s fecundity, “the burst of salty liquid from a plump and ice-cold raw oyster, the soft skins of wild mushrooms... the tight and unopened bud of a flower blossom.” The story of Jane’s lonely, lovely life is more powerful because of its emotional reserve. With the exception of several stagey confrontations involving Jane’s older, coarser sister, Grace, Watson lets his ethereal heroine retain her quiet, dignified air of mystery. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"[The] complexity and drama of Watson’s gorgeous work here is life's as well: Sometimes physical realities expand us, sometimes trap; sometimes heroism lies in combating our helplessness, sometimes in accepting it. A writer of profound emotional depths, Watson does not lie to his reader, so neither does his Jane. She never stops longing for a wholeness she may never know, but she is determined that her citizenship in the world, however onerous, be dragged into the light and there be lived without apology or perfection or pity."

New York Times Book Review - Amy Grace Loyd

"A story worth telling even as it breaks your heart."

Chicago Review of Books - Amy Brady

"Jane's strange yet beautiful spirit possesses a haunting, anachronistic beauty. Miss Jane is a truly original novel with a character that readers will cherish. Watson has delivered a striking and unforgettable portrait."

Book Page

"Watson has done something extraordinary here. This is not grit-lit...But it is Southern literature, nevertheless: fresh, new, without cliché. Watson may be our best."

Alabama Writers' Forum - Don Noble

"An exceptionally well written book. The prose was beautiful and the novel had a gentleness about it...I loved this book for its simplicity and would highly recommend it."

Luxury Reading - Meredith Kelly

"One of the most spot-on, most poetic renderings of Southern vernacular this side of Charles Portis. In his hands, Miss Jane becomes an epic of a small survivor. As with fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, Watson's humble characters prevail because they endure."

Star News - Ben Steelman

"Watson infuses the story with curiosity, uncertainty, and, not unlike Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, a certain wildness…The book plays on the tongue like an oyster—first salty, then cold—before slipping away to be consumed and digested."

Washington Post - Aditi Sriram

"[Jane’s] fearless acceptance of what sets her apart is profoundly human, and her lifelong struggle to understand her place in the world reflects the intricate workings of our own mysterious hearts."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Gina Webb

★ 05/15/2016
National Book Award finalist Watson (The Heaven of Mercury) dedicates his second novel to his great-aunt Mary Ellis "Jane" Clay, who as reimagined here lived a full and admirable life despite a severe limitation: she was born in 1930s Mississippi with a genital defect that precluded sexual relations, putting her in the shadows as a woman. Yet from the first page Jane is presented as a fearless woman, a "dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty" who is kind, curious, and forthright and who outshines other characters, including the icy mother who rejects her and the shallow sister who wrecks her own life. From the beginning, Jane has a special friend in Dr. Eldred Thompson, who delivers her and remains a staunch defender, trying to find appropriate medical help and visiting with her often. At the end, he says of his peacocks, "I like to think they really exist just because they are oddly beautiful," and Jane, too, need not justify her existence; she forgets, as do we, that her life has been compromised in any way. VERDICT As Watson arcs through the story of Jane's life in sensitive, beautifully precise prose, we are both absorbed and humbled. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal

2016-05-04
A woman born in rural Mississippi with a life-altering birth defect must learn to live on her own terms.Western writer Watson (The Heaven of Mercury, 2002, etc.) composes a lyrical portrait of a woman based on his great-aunt, who was the subject of plenty of rumors in her own life. His fictional subject is Jane Chisolm, an otherwise normal child born with vaginal agenesis, a condition in which her sexual anatomy fails to develop. Because this is in the early years of the 20th century amid the poverty of rural Mississippi, there's little to be done to improve the child's condition. Her father is a drunk and her mother emotionally absent, so Jane is largely left in the care of her tomboy sister, Grace. Because her condition causes incontinence, Jane is isolated for much of her childhood. The only person who comes to truly care about her is her doctor, Eldred Thompson, who believes that Miss Jane Chisolm is special indeed. "Just as the way you are denies you some things, it also gives you license that others may not have," he tells her. "In my opinion you live on a higher moral ground. I mean to say you are a good person." Watson's writing is dry as kindling, but in reducing his aunt's story to its most primary elements, the author also captures the simple things that bring his character joy—the delight she experiences at a community dance or a picnic with the kindly doctor are all tiny moments of tenderness in a life largely marked by isolation. If the novel has a flaw, it's a lack of traditional drama. Jane approaches life with quiet determination, so her acceptance of her own limitations ultimately becomes a strength and not a weakness. A well-written portrait of a person whose rich inner life outstrips the limits of her body.

Kirkus Reviews