EDISTO

by Padgett Powell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1984

Coming-of-age in Edisto on the South Carolina coast--as narrated by very precocious Simons Manigault, the twelve-year-old son of ""the Duchess"" (a.k.a. ""The Doctor,"" as in professorial Ph.D.) and her estranged lawyer-husband, ""The Progenitor."" Living with the Duchess and steadfast servant Theenie in a pagoda-shaped abandoned model beach-house, Simons goes on truancy sprees, hangs out at a black nightclub, and does his ""Boy Act"" whenever the Duchess entertains a puffy gentleman-friend. Then, however, a nameless, youngish process-server appears at the door one day; and immediately, somewhat inexplicably, he becomes a taciturn yet commanding father-surrogate--dubbed ""Taurus"" by the mesmerized Simons. (Theenie, meanwhile, instantly claims this seemingly white man as ""her lost heroin grandbaby out of her bad-jazz-singer crazyass daughter."") Taurus fits in with magical ease among Simons' hard-won black friends. He takes Simons to see the Ali/Frazier fight on closed-circuit TV (""Five thousand fire-code violators yelling, elbowing, stomping, craning, holding their heads when they can't stand it""); he arranges a half-disappointing, half-stirring double date for the two of them--with Simons remaining in the dark about the power of sex. (""So pussy is the big nightclub reaper. . . What the hell can that stuff be, for God's sake?"") Taurus' laid-back example--due to his part-black ancestry?--even seems to bring an improvement in Simons' custody-weekends with The Progenitor, with inklings of a parental reconciliation. But then, in a familiar blast of Oedipal disillusionment, Simons (implausibly naive all of a sudden) realizes that Taurus has been shacking up with the Duchess. And even worse, somehow, the family reunion involves a relocation to Hilton Head--as Simons leaves behind his beloved ""backwater of blacks,"" instead becoming a ""good gentry tyke."" First-novelist Powell can't quite maintain the novel-length credibility of young Simons' often-beguiling narration--which is sometimes too adult (hip jokes about bisexuality) or too cutely naive (not knowing what ""masturbate"" means). The coming-of-age trauma is shaky, too, with Taurus more stagey than convincing in the Mr. Fixit role. But, vignette by vignette, there is strong, amused, observant talent here--especially in the glimpses of displaced Southern gentry and the tributes to wary, slightly romanticized black Carolinians. (""The thing you can't do with Negro ladies fishing is expect them to care very much about immediate success, theirs or yours."")

Pub Date: April 1, 1984

ISBN: 0374531684

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION