Black Mountain Breakdown

Smith's character Crystal Spangler is many things, but boring is not one of them. My first reading of this story, I felt a lot like the reviewers here who didn't like the book. The strange thing was that, try as I might, I couldn't forget about it, and went back to it again in the last few days. What is this story about, besides life in the Appalachians and the locals who inhabit it? It's about a circle that's sometimes clear and sometimes fuzzy that is nevertheless complete. Agnes and Crystal are best friends for life, but we see from the very beginning that big, frumpy Agnes is more well grounded and stronger than her pretty blond, blue-eyed friend who is given to overreacting to her father's dark poetry readings and need to be taken care of by others. Early on, Agnes is a sort of surrogate mother for her. Crystal's father is a heavy smoking alcoholic who has withdrawn into his own space, dependent on both Crystal and his wife Lorena's attention as he slowly chooses to slip away from life. The three Spangler children are effected by him and Lorena's co-dependant enabling in different ways. Jules is bitter, angry, and prefers men to women, ashamed of his family and home. Sykes is flighty and given to following any direction the wind blows in, but he calms down eventually. Crystal is a lot like Sykes, but she isn't as strong because she is raped by an uncle in her junior year of high school, and then, having blocked the entire incident from her mind, goes home to find her father dead. Crystal will become a floater: months after the blocked out assault and Grant Spangler's death, Crystal will break up with her steady boyfriend Roger Lee, but doesn't know just why. My guess is that she feels he's too closely tied with both the conscious and unconscious incidents. She will begin a somewhat remote and intimately charged relationship with a local bad boy who eventually leaves her for country stardom in Nashville. Constantly needing something to hold onto (like she held onto her daddy's robe upon finding him dead and having a nervous breakdown), she discovers Jesus, then she discovers random male partners. Crystal is empty and just doesn't care. She drifts like a leaf on the wind, always desperate for something to hold onto, constantly anxiety ridden and sometimes lost in a world of hallucinations. She takes up with a hippie radical who ends up hanging himself and has another nervous breakdown. She returns to the Appalachians and becomes a school teacher, one of the few times she is finally together and admirable, because she genuinely cares about her students. There's just one problem with Crystal; every time things are going half-well, she finds a way to screw it up. A phone call from Jules, her hippie brother boyfriend telling her she's doomed. These things all stick in her mind. We also see Agnes's point of view through this all, sometimes jealous, but mostly knowing all along that Crystal lets other people put ideas in her

I loved this book.............it just touched me and stayed with me for weeks. She never writes below a five star book!

I have read all of Lee Smith books and highly recommend all of them. My favorite is Fair and Tender Ladies.

I am from Richlands, VA, the little town neighboring Lee Smith's hometown of Grundy. This was the first book that I read of Lee's, and it inspired me to read the others. They are all wonderful books. It seems like I can actually hear the voices of her characters coming right off the pages at me. I guess it's just because I've actually known people like them. The Appalachian dialect and culture are captured simply, yet eloquently, the way they should be. I am a writer of Southern-Appalachian fiction myself, not published yet, but I hope to eventually. Lee Smith has been a real inspiration for me to continue my own works. I reccomend this book or any of her others to anyone, not just the ones who hail from a rural background. They're sure to give a greater appreciation of Appalachian people and culture, and maybe even ourselves. Thanks very much.

I cannot begin to describe what a powerful and touching book this is. Lee Smith tapped into memories of my childhood in Dickenson County, Virginia with uncanny insight. Anyone rooted in this area should run to get this book. Anyone who wants to know anything about mountain life should run to get this book. Lee Smith is truly a diamond out of the coal county. Read with with Ralph Stanley on the CD. This may give you a brief glimpse of what heaven should be like.