Sarah Jane by James SallisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
All stories are ghost stories, about things lost, people, memories, home, passion, youth, about things struggling to be seen, to be accepted by the living...
James Sallis’s SARAH JANE is a masterpiece of spare yet poetic prose, a character study that zags when you expect it to zig, existential noir. Sarah Jane narrates her own story, her journey from troubled teen, through a tour of duty in the Middle East, a runaway bride, eventually, almost accidentally, becoming a small town sheriff. Along the way she makes observations about life and experiences, some sad, some funny, some enlightening.
Points on a line can never approach the experience itself.
For every gain you make, there’s slippage somewhere else. Sometimes the slippage is bigger than the gain.
Commentary on modern day America.
...from simpler times when, mistakenly or not, we understood the American dream to be collaborative rather than competitive.
But it’s what Sarah Jane doesn’t tell us, what Sallis alludes to but does not reveal, that makes this such a good novel. There is violence running through the story, behind all the events, and we are never sure who is responsible. One murder in particular, seemingly random, possibly not, makes you question every opinion you have developed about Sarah Jane. The ending is ambiguous and that, and the magnetic, hypnotic writing, begs a reread...
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