Come Back, Lolly Ray

Part of the "Voices of the South" series published by Louisiana State University, "Come Back Lolly Ray" is an elegantly-crafted psychological exploration of the secrets, hopes, failures and sterility of small-town Southern life in the 1950s. The author, Beverly Lowry, writes with extraordinary precision and care; she creates both mental and physical landscapes so precisely etched and meticulously envisioned that the reader often will take pause to reflect on the numerous possibilities engendered by these emotional and environmental landscapes. This novel deserves a very wide audience.Darwing on several established literary traditions, Ms. Lowry uses a central character (Lolly Ray Lasswell) to permit us to examine the texture of life in the ironically-named small town of Eunola. Reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" and of William Faulkner's Southern charcterizations, "Come Back Lolly Ray" mercilessly dissects the lives of the citizens of this emotionally barren city. Lolly Ray, virginal and untouchable, comes to represent, unwillingly and unknowingly, the ultimate symbol of white Southern purity. Her "abandonment" of an unspoken compact with the town propels the plot of the novel. Her parents, Frank and Lucille, symbolize the terrible tensions and unresolved conflicts not only particular to the white South in the 1950s but to unfulfilling marriages regardless of time or place. Other characters, whether they be the town abortionist or the village idiot, the elegant-gone-to-seed cotton aristocrat or the slightly-touched matriarch living in isolation with happy abandon, are sketched with evocative detail and unusual empathy.Above all else, however, "Come Back Lolly Ray" is a writer's novel. Now a professor at George Mason University, Beverly Lowry demonstraters, on every page, a profound respect for the written word. Lush with visual and emotional imagery, her novel requires patience. For those who can afford a provocative and disturbing view of small-town life and who do not feel the need to rush through a novel whose themes have been explored countless times in our national literature, "Come Back Lolly Ray" will remain in their memories long after having read the book.