by Vicky Dickson
Some writers can’t tell a story. Their prose is beautiful; their characterizations and descriptions, dead on. But the plots they come up with are weak or nonexistent. Some storytellers, meanwhile, focus so much on plot that their characters seem forced, leaving you wondering whether they’d actually ever do the things the story requires them to do.
So it’s a rare treat to come upon an author who excels at every aspect of storytelling, with plots that keep you guessing, descriptions that are unexpected and apt and characters who leave you enthralled – to come upon a writer like Lee Smith.
Smith grew up in a storytelling family, with a mother she describes as “one of those Southern women who can – and did – make a story out of thin air,†so perhaps that helps explain her considerable talent. Her natural curiosity about the people around her undoubtedly also played a part: As a child, Smith liked to spend her time watching the shoppers in her father’s Grundy, Va., dime store through a peephole in the ceiling. Across the street, she had another window into the details of the lives of others from a desk she had in her grandfather’s office, where he served as county treasurer for 55 years.
Smith wrote her first novel at the age of 8 on her mother’s stationery, and has been writing ever since. She’s published 16 books while also raising a family and working as a reporter, a high school teacher and then a professor at N.C. State. She says that “the process of writing itself continues to be essential to me. It’s how I live my life.†Smith prizes the way that writing requires her to notice what’s going on around her, and the way that writing a sentence creates order out of the chaos that is real life. Not least, she values the way that writing surprises her: “No matter how long you’ve been writing, you still don’t know what’s gonna pop out.â€
For a great overview of what’s popped out for Lee Smith over the years, look to Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, an anthology of 14 of the author’s best stories, that was just released in paperback. The stories focus on people of different ages and walks of life, though they tend to feature women who are struggling, in various ways, to get out of the boxes society wants to put them in.
“I am drawn to a certain kind of main character,†Smith says, one who’s not afraid to claim her own. “She’s gonna find her own voice.†And readers will delight in the various ways she finds it.
Given that the stories were written at different points in Smith’s career, they provide insight into how the stages in a writer’s life affect her writing choices. Long-married readers will recognize that one of the collection’s most affecting stories, “Stevie and Mama,†would not have been written by a 30-year-old. (Smith says she wanted “Stevie and Mama†to be the collection’s title, but her publicists balked, fearing that, “Anyone who’s ever read The New Yorker would never pick up a book called Stevie and Mama†(though it’s hard to imagine any New Yorker reader not loving that story about an aging rock musician and the spunky, smart woman he’s married to).
“House Tour†is another story inspired by years of marriage – and by the time the “red hat†ladies unexpectedly descended upon Smith in her Hillsborough home, resulting in a tale that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and poignant. Then there’s “Tongues of Fire,†the story of a 13-year-old girl whose struggles with her father’s nervous breakdown, her mother’s sense of propriety and her own sense of self brings readers vividly back to their own adolescent insecurities.
The collection features 11 more examples of the virtuosity that has earned Lee Smith awards and accolades throughout her career. You’ll savor every word.
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Hearing them read by the author herself just adds to the pleasure of Lee Smith’s stories, so don’t miss the opportunity to catch Smith at one of her local readings this month. She’ll be at Flyleaf at 7 p.m. on June 8 and McIntyre’s at 2 p.m. on June 11.
Those venues will host another Hillsborough author, Craig Nova, whose acclaimed, newly expanded memoir, Brook Trout and the Writing Life: The Intermingling of Fishing and Writing in a Novelist’s Life, has just been released. Come see Nova at Flyleaf at 7 p.m. today (June 2) or McIntyre’s at 11 a.m. on June 11.
Nova and Smith are both featured in 27 Views of Hillsborough, along with Allan Gurganus, Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle, David Payne and other prominent local writers. That book received the Gold IPPY Award for Best Anthology at the Independent Publishers Book Awards ceremony in New York on May 24. Congratulations to the writers and their publisher, Eno Publishers.
Fans of young adult author Sarah Dessen have a special treat in store June 20, when Dessen and Dessen Racing both come to Flyleaf. Be there at 7 p.m. to hear the Chapel Hill native read from and sign her new book, What Happened to Goodbye – and check out the author’s racecars!