Secret Harmonies

I was transported by this story of Reba, the musically gifted daughter of a musically gifted chicken farmer. Yes, the setting is rough; the towns are small, the people are poor, but there is huge beauty in this small setting. So many plot elements affected me; her early years singing in church while stoned on hash, the story of her pregnancy, her painful relationship with her lonely brother, her self-expiating string of affairs with married men. Reba's lovers see her as a naive poor girl, easy pickings, not important. She's exploited in a painfully real way, seduced as much by their privilege as by their sexual advances. Novels that include an examination of the American class structure make me uncomfortable. I think that's the point.But this isn't polemic; it's a lovely and realistic story. The peripheral characters, mostly her family members, are sketched in all their weird beauty; a sister with Down's syndrome who writes a poetic epic, her lonely brother, barely able to master his own desire for Reba, her absent father, her mechanical mother. I don't know anything about musical theory, about scales and chords, but this novel actually communicated how the world is percieved by the musically oriented. This novel is beautifully-written without ever becoming self-consciously poetic. Every word in here works.