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Trees figure quite intensely in the short stories of
Christine Lincoln, compiled under the title SAP RISING. And these are not sappy stories,
either. They are stories that absolutely reverberate with the passions and intense dreams
and desires of the people who inhabit them. There is magic in nature and in the natural
instincts of those who live within it, and Lincoln wastes not one superfluous word in
executing the perfect storytelling that makes SAP RISING a quick and provocative read.
For those who know today's South, it is, in many places, completely similar to its
historical antecedent --- hot, rural, backwoods in some parts, particularly urbane in
others, intensely spiritual and housing a community of people who hope for something
better. It was that way when Robert Johnson sang about it, and it's that way when
Christine Lincoln writes about it. The lives of the African-Americans of her mind's
creation balance on the precipice that bridges the life force that promotes positive
upward mobility and the life force that, despite its best intentions, only manages to drag
one downward into a spiral of guilt and misjudgment. Lincoln tries to surpass the negative
possibilities by arming her characters with strengths far beyond those of mere mortals.
Many writers attempt to build worlds around their characters --- Faulkner was successful,
so was Tolkein. But there are many who are not able to fully construct a three-dimensional
planet in which their writings take shape. Christine Lincoln, in the tradition of so many
other hardscrabble Southern writers, manages to do them one better. Her world is void of
defining boundaries --- there is no name to her town, no one personality that overwhelms
it. Instead, Boag and Wheat and Scoogie and their friends and families and neighbors exist
inside a bubble that contains their flights of fancy and the things that help them find
new ways of living.
A young boy hears stories from a beautiful stranger and he is transformed. A young
abandoned child marks off her territory with a thin skein of invisibility. Not one
character manages to hold on to his or her former self after exemplary circumstances
introduce them to new ways of being. And so it goes --- they change and thus the world
changes with them. Christine Lincoln keeps up with the movement of this personal globe
with the kind of insight and wit that would make Truman Capote proud. SAP RISING
introduces us to a rising star of contemporary fiction.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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