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The normal and the horrible come together in this story about the poor. Living in poverty isn't easy, but it can be honorable. There is despair in this book, but there is hope as well. This book moved me and I can't praise it enough.
Earlene, on the other hand, whose family has the most tenuous of footholds in the middle class, lives in a ranch house, one of whose bedrooms is "pine-paneled. Patronizing terms like "rednecks" or "hillbillies" as applied to this novel are entirely beside the point, a way to disparage what is uncomfortable to read. Right from the outset, the details of class are quickly established: the turquoise-blue mobile home ("one of them old ones") of the Beans, with its littered yard, resembles a submarine and its Christmas lights stay up all year. The first is that of Earlene Pomerleau, who lives across an oft-disputed right-of-way from one of the abodes of the Beans, a clan whose family members struggle to make a living (logging, textile mills) and whose public assaults (drunkenness, fights, illegitimate children) on middle class values are a source of fascination to Earlene even as a child. "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" is first and foremost a novel about class and money. Beal brings home to Earlene a discarded cuckoo clock decorated with pinecones. Beal can't make a living, can't even afford to keep his truck driver's license renewed because, as he says, "Takes money to make money." As he contemplates his inability to provide even the barest necessities for his children, the baby screams for milk.Even though "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" describes a grinding rural New England poverty from which it is impossible, it would seem, to ever escape, there are scenes of tenderness and love. Then there is Beal Bean, to whom Earlene is drawn, despite every warning her God-fearing Gram, a presence in both life and death, has ever delivered.
Thus, Roberta Bean, another powerfully drawn character, leaves a bag of skinned rabbit on a neighbor's door as a kindly gesture. Chute is no sentimentalist, although she shapes Rubie's character with more complexity (his dyslexia, his ties to his children) as the novel progresses. It is told in two voices. It is clear that the sorrows of the Beans are not contemptible but tragic. the real kind." The second voice is the omniscient voice of the narrator detailing the lives of various Bean family members, including Rubie Bean, whose frightening capacity for violence against women and against authority figures is established early. He remains a volatile figure from beginning to end, and even when he disappears from the novel for a time, his logging rig "heaped with mossy wood" sits waiting in the yard. (It at first terrifies the neighbor). And Rubie, unable to sleep for fear of death, keeps the woodstove going deep into the cold Maine night.
This novel tells the story of the Bean family, a poverty-stricken, incestuous, ever-breedingclan of Maine folks who have always been there. A girl is watching mold grow on all sorts of hosts inher closet - fruits, donuts, etc. It tells of the horror and rage of people and their plight. The book is very hard-hitting and powerful.One incredible scene really got to me. This is how she got pleasure. It should tell you a lot aboutthe characters in this book.
Some dropped out, and were never heard from again. Ms Chute writes what she knows, her life, and for one I neither condemn nor otherwise judge. I read from cover to cover. Seems like the characters changed names or characterazations between the beginning and the end. We would call this a "blog" today. However, it is not a page-turner.
The author should concentrate on a few main characters from beginning to end. On content, the book flies. Some appeared in a different guise. I recommend that you read the second chapter twice or three times, before going on. Just to get to know the names of the characters and such. The message, the atmosphere and the characters would not suffer if some of the chaff was cut.In other words, the book is a great start for a beginning writer, but the book is in need of a good editor and an organized re-write.
But go ahead and buy it and read it anyway.
It succeeds because of those things. I truly don't believe Chute would categorize her book that way at all.
The episodic plot. The population of characters.
I loved everything about this book. I did find it amusing reading the critique, here, from one of Chute's friends.
The brilliant writing. I agree with another reviewer that it has something in common with the Grapes of Wrath.
I see it as an extremely well written portrait of a class of society; written without one iota of prejudice pro or con; written without any moralizing or any higher purpose than story itself.
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