Her brother Skeetah’s relationship with his prized pit- bull terrier, China, provides much of the novel’s narrative energy. Her first person, present- tense narration gives rise to the book’s mix of urgent action and deep reflection. In particular, the characters shine through.

Ward is largely successful in bringing together these disparate concerns into a coherent narrative. This is a big story about the disaster that struck New Orleans and the plight of America’s black underclass, but it is told through confined, personal tales of a few children salvaging what they can from their grim surroundings. Esch’s physical life revolves around scavenging, play, and rough sex, but her head is full of thoughts of tender love and Greek mythology. The language is Southern black street- talk, but laced with heavy use of elaborate simile and allusions to heady literature.

As well as setting out the novel’s underlying sense of hope, this epigraph also suggests the language and style in which the tale is told.įor you see, Ward’s novel presents an intriguing mash- up of reference points. ‘We on our backs staring at the stars above, Talking about what we going to be when we grow up, I said what you wanna be? She said, Alive.’ Lyrics from Outkast’s Aquemini album run alongside the Biblical words in the book’s preface. The brothers’ hopes rely on winning money from dog fights and dreams of basketball scholarships. Esch is highly literate and streetwise, but her future already looks bleak: she is pregnant, alone with her thoughts, and doesn’t know where to turn. We see their efforts in fighting for themselves, and, when they can, caring for each other. They live a raw existence feeding off scraps in their poverty- stricken community. The children have been dealt tough cards from on- high. But even the hurricane’s threat offers little more than a menacing backdrop: the novel starts with the disaster 10 days away, and the siblings have concerns far more immediate. The all- powerful Hurricane Katrina is fast approaching the Mississippi Gulf town of Bois Sauvage, where our narrator, fifteen- year- old Esch, lives with her alcoholic father and three brothers. As you might expect, so follows a tale imbued with Biblical myth taking in life, death, suffering, and dashed with occasional light. With these words from Deuteronomy 32:39, Jesmyn Ward begins her highly impressive US National Book Award-winning novel Salvage the Bones. ‘I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is there any can deliver out of my hand’. Jim Morphy casts a critical eye over Salvage the Bones the latest novel from Jesmyn Ward.

Salvage the bones review