The Silver Star: A Novel by Jeannette Walls is my first encounter with this gifted author. Overall I found the book exquisite, well-written, several interesting and challenging themes, and some excellent characters.
However, although the book moved well in some sections it badly dragged in others. It is marketed to adults, not to kids, but I think middle school and older would enjoy it and probably find the characters familiar. We all know people like Bean and her sister Liz. I hope most of us don’t have a mother like theirs, feckless, all too ready to run and to blame everyone else for everything. Sadly most of us have known someone like Jerry Maddox, the foreman at the mill who employs Bean and Liz to get back at their uncle and to demonstrate his absolute power.
The story plays out against the backdrop of integration in a small Virginia town, where the white star football player would rather lose than to throw to a black receiver, where Jerry Maddox feels free to slap and fondle the employees on his shift, where Liz and Bean’s Uncle Tinsley lives in a decaying mansion, managing on what is left from his inheritance. The integration plot line is barely sketched in. It is not the focus of the novel, simply background, which is fine since the story revolves around Bean.
The most interesting character is Bean’s mother, a loose and immature actress and singer wannabe who has never acted in a movie or recorded a song. Yet she sees herself as the victim of her hometown and her family while she chases the next new thing. Bean loves her but learns all too well how erratic and unstable her mother is, and how even her children aren’t motivation to act responsibly and grow up.
Overall this is excellent. I don’t know that I want to read the other books by Jeannette Walls as they share similar themes of children overcoming adult bullying and parental neglect. I’ll choose a happy story any day.
