Cementville: A Novel, by Paulette Livers
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Cementville: A Novel, by Paulette Livers
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Cementville has a breathtaking set up: 1969. A small Kentucky town, known only for its excellent bourbon and passable cement, direct from the factory that gives the town its name. The favored local sons of Cementville’s most prominent families all joined the National Guard hoping to avoid the draft and the killing fields of Vietnam. They were sent to combat anyway, and seven boys were killed in a single, horrific ambush.The novel opens as the coffins are making their way home, along with one remaining survivor, the now-maimed town quarterback recently rescued from a Vietnamese prison camp. Yet the return of the bodies sets off something inside of the town itself —a sense of violence, a political reality, a gnawing unease with the future — and soon, new bodies start turning up around town, pushing the families of Cementville into further alienation and grief.
Cementville: A Novel, by Paulette Livers- Amazon Sales Rank: #2819009 in Books
- Brand: Livers, Paulette
- Published on: 2015-03-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.90" h x .90" w x 5.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
From Booklist Cementville is the story of a small Kentucky town in 1969, facing the return of the bodies of a group of local young men killed together in a firefight in Vietnam. The young men come from all kinds of families: the prominent Slidell family, the ne’er-do-well Ferguson clan, the solid Goins family. As scattered members of the town come home to pay their respects, their collective grief cracks open the walls of their reserve, allowing them to know each other as never before. Cementville is not strongly plot-driven, and the murder-mystery element introduced halfway through feels incidental. What is central and valuable is the depiction of a specific and near-forgotten way of life. Through her strongly drawn characters, Livers portrays a community drawing on its traditional strengths—kindness, respect, and practicality—to support each other through the very new challenges presented by war, trauma, and suspicion. This novel will be enjoyed by fans of Marilynne Robinson and of lyrical novels that depict the awesome inner struggles and resources of seemingly everyday people. --Lynn Weber
Review "With nods to not only Dickens but Nathaniel Hawthorne and Shirley Jackson too, Livers asserts the novel’s far-reaching intentions via her deployment of ornate, high-powered language. The thought-provoking debut wears its literary aspirations like a velvet funeral gown, calling attention to the grim legacies of combat and the changing realities of small-town U.S.A. As another bloody American entanglement staggers to a close, Cementville makes it clear that the consequences of warfare reverberate much further than on battlefields, for civilians as well as soldiers." —Atlanta Journal Constitution“1969 is often remembered as the summer of love, of Abbey Road and the flight to the moon. This book is about the realities of that time and by extension the realities we still live with. Unflinching and clear, and beautifully written, Cementville manages to be what good books always are: a window into the true world, exhilarating and inspiring even as it faces into the dark.” —Richard Bausch"Cementville gave me everything I want in a novel. The place and time period come alive on the page, the characters are as real as all the people I know best, and I'm still thinking about them and their stories even though I finished the book several days ago. This is just simply a beautiful novel, and it could only be written by someone with a very large heart. I'll be recommending it to everyone. Paulette Livers has made me feel that special thrill that I've never gotten from anything but great fiction." —Steve Yarbrough, The Realm of Last Chances“Paulette Livers is the real thing -a blazing talent with a fierce intelligence and a big heart, big enough to encompass a horrible tragedy and the inner life of an entire community. She has written a brilliant and deeply compassionate study of grief, violence, loneliness, and love. And her language sings. This is a stunning debut —a perfect novel with deep implications for our own time.” —Lee Smith, Guests on Earth“Cementville is a tremendous debut novel. How Paulette Livers is able to maintain her light touch while taking on the era of the Vietnam War —with its seismic worldwide effects— is nothing short of genius. With its beautiful, wounded characters, its startling insights into their private hearts, and frequent flashes of humor, this book is one of the best novels I've read in a long while.” —Christine Sneed, Little Known Facts“Paulette Livers paints a compelling portrait of a small Kentucky town, with its tragedies, pleasures, and crimes, with its fallen heroes, its agoraphobics, and its young lovers. Her prose crackles as it traces the uneasy lives of the folks of Cementville.” —Bonnie Jo Campbell, bestselling author of Once Upon a River“What is central and valuable is the depiction of a specific and near-forgotten way of life. Through her strongly drawn characters, Livers depicts a community drawing on its traditional strengths—kindness, respect, and practicality—to support each other through the very new challenges presented by war, trauma, and suspicion. This novel will be enjoyed by fans of Marilynne Robinson and of lyrical novels that depict the awesome inner struggles and resources of seemingly everyday people.” —Booklist“Long, lyrical chapters explore the wounds wrought on those left bereft…Livers uses each chapter to explore a different facet of war and its aftermath.” —Publishers Weekly“The arrival of dead soldiers from Vietnam in 1969 upturns and rewires the lives in a small Kentucky town. An earnest and sober portrait of the homefront.” —Kirkus“[a] gently paced evocation of a nearly forgotten time and place.” —Elle“..Cementville could be any American town in 1969. The novel is a moving representation of the nation’s psychological state in that time of turmoil.” ——Real Simple
About the Author Paulette Livers is a Kentucky transplant to Chicago via Atlanta and Boulder, where she recently completed the MFA at the University of Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Southwest Review, The Dos Passos Review, Spring Gun Press, and elsewhere, and can be heard at the audio-journal Bound Off. Livers was awarded the 2012 Meyerson Prize for Fiction (for material from Cementville), and received Honorable Mention for the Red Hen Press Short Story Award (also for material from Cementville). This is her first novel.
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. A novel of great depth and beauty By Joseph P. Lawrence In the summer of 1969, a small town in Kentucky was traumatized after the decimation of its National Guard unit in Vietnam. The story was a remarkable one that received a lot of attention over the years. The facts are known. But only in the fictionalized account can one gain a real sense for the enormity of what happened, proving the correctness of Aristotle's adage that poetry reveals deeper layers of truth than history. By taking a prosperous town of 5,800 people and recasting it as a town of 1,000, by placing a large (and extraordinarily ugly) cement factory in the middle of the distilleries that gave the town its official designation as the "Bourbon Capital of the World," by moving the surrounding knob land (complete with its more Appalachian culture) in closer to the town, what Paulette Livers achieves is far more than a fictionalized version of an old story: instead, she has laid bare the "heart of darkness" in which the town was incubated. She shows, for instance, the consequences for the local psyche of mixing a portion of austere Presbyterianism with a larger portion of austere Catholicism and an even larger portion of contemporary nihilism, with its cult of money. The poor are demonized, not only insofar as their desperate lives prove frightening to others, but insofar as the futility of their lot transforms some of them into actual demons. It is in this context that communism (or anything that would concede anything to those so undeserving) appeared as the ultimate evil. Even so, what will count for local color comes almost exclusively from the poor: farmers who still plow behind a mule, farmhouses that have neither running water nor telephones. And even as late as 1969, the clammy closeness of a past not past: ghosts of Confederate raiders riding through the hills. This is a community geared for war - that is yet undone by its reality. The book is dark. But what makes it a great book is its lyricism. At times, it positively sings, reminding us that it is beauty that renders truth bearable. Thus the key role of the Vietnamese war bride who recites a new poem every evening for the wounded warrior who brought her to this strange land - or the father who sings a new song every evening for his daughter - or, the true hero of the book, the little girl who has assigned herself the task of chronicling the bleak and savage summer. Cementville serves as a reminder that not so long ago, before the Malling of America commenced with full force, there were places, close to the land and close to the past, that still stood outside the regime of the merely comfortable, carrying within themselves the full and awful divide between heaven and hell that makes human beings the sublimely and frighteningly free beings that we are. Faulkner would have been well pleased.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. A Great Novel By A Customer I could use the usual cliches like "a stunning debut" or "an instant classic," but the simple fact is that this is a truly great work of American fiction. The characters are complex, fully realized beings whose struggles and fears will resonate with anyone who has lived through the turmoil of rapidly changing times. And as in most great American fiction, the setting is as much a character as the humans who populate it. If you like Sherwood Anderson, Eudora Welty or the Ohio novels of Dawn Powell, you'll love this book. Livers clearly has an ear for local rhythms and an eye that misses no important detail. Her writing is rich, vivid and a pleasure to savor. I highly recommend this debut novel, and look forward to more from Paulette Livers in the future.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. A perfect read! By DS A thoughtful story of one small town in the south and how it faced a time of great upheaval and unrest. I was moved and compelled by the premise - the bodies of fallen soldiers being returned home to their families - but what kept me reading were the fascinating characters. Each chapter we meet and re-meet various members of the town, of the central families of Cementville - and its exciting to see how they all fit together. The plot holds genuine twists and shocks --not every character makes it out of the story alive - and for me this novel offered the perfect reading experience. HIGHLY Recommended.
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