Something Rich and Strange audiobook

“Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.”― Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American WestIn Something Rich and Strange, a collection of thirty-two previously published and two new short stories, Ron Rash demonstrates this sixth sense, this sense of place, to shiveringly acute degree. His place is the mountains and valleys of southwestern North Carolina, the heart of Appalachia. Rash's stories span generations, from the Civil War through the Depression, the Vietnam War to the war in Iraq. Each story is sloped and slanted and ridged by the land, dense with fog, wet with rain, seeping with humidity. Caution must be taken when entering the sheltering cool of the North Carolina woods, where menacing creatures lurk: snakes and bears and men with shotguns; just as caution must be taken when entering a Rash story: sorrow, violence and madness wait in the shadows. In this Appalachian Garden of Eden, good battles with evil. A pawn-shop owner finds his brother and sister-in-law huddled beneath blankets in an unheated trailer in “Back of Beyond.” Their son and his meth-addicted friends have taken over their farmhouse, selling off bits and pieces of the parents’ lives to support their habit. In “Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven”Jody and Lauren have planned their escape from their childhood home for years: college, jobs, marriage will save them. But Jody, home from his first year of university, finds Lauren has succumbed to the siren song of meth. Can he save her? An arsonist in “Burning Bright” is a thoughtful and considerate lover, offering a widow in her sixties a chance at new love. In the collection's opening story, “Hard Times,” hunger during the Depression is outsized by a man’s pride and compassion has an expiration date.Madness lingers, driving characters to moments of inexplicable violence, as in “Night Hawks,” where a former sixth-grade teacher finds shelter in the midnight to six a.m. shift at the radio station. “Into the Gorge,” old-timer Jesse, out harvesting ginseng on federal land—land that used to belong to his family—encounters a forest ranger and in a heartbeat, things take a disastrous turn.Women are often vulnerable in Rash's wild mountains, but the Confederate soldier in “Lincolnites” is no match against a knitting needle, and a runaway trusty doesn’t get very far once he meets a young, angelic farmwife in “The Trusty.” Yes, it’s true. There are few moments of redemption in Something Rich and Strange. In “Three A.M. and the Stars Were Out,” one of the most tender of the collection, a vet and a farmer, both in their eighties, help a cow birth a breached calf. It is a poignant moment in a long-standing friendship, recalling the deep bonds author Kent Haruf—another who wrote with such a profound sense of place—created between his characters. But this tenderness is rare. If you’ve read any Ron Rash, you have some idea of what to expect. His eye is unflinching, he bores down to his characters’ tender cores and splits them open, exposing pink flesh and pumping blood or putrid decay to the warm, humid, North Carolina night. Rash’s writing is marvelous and his mastery of the short story breathtaking. He wrings full stories with astonishing economy of plot—many are mere pages long—yet each is rendered in vivid detail. You have the sense that you are eavesdropping into these lives, seeing, hearing, smelling Rash’s world before the characters walk away, leaving you wondering what might become of their Shakespearean-tragic lives.

Ron Rash is too good to miss. If you aren’t familiar with his name, you must read a story or two, just so that you know his style, his subject. He writes about the Carolina Blue Ridge Mountain section of the Appalachians and his subjects are the wide range of mostly forgotten folks who live there, out of common view. We recognize them—their needs, resentments, their motivations—instantly though we wouldn’t claim to be them.This is a collection of thirty-two stories culled from earlier works plus two new ones at the very end, “Outlaws” and “Shiloh,” that have not been previously collected. One of my favorite stories, “Three A.M. and the Stars are Out,” is reprinted here from an earlier collection, Nothing Gold Can Stay. It tells of a retired veterinarian who still gets calls from his old customers and he still goes to help out. His wife is dead four months and he sometimes forgets she’s not there to answer back when a newspaper article prompts his comment.The time frame in Rash’s stories stretch from the Civil War to today. Another favorite story is the first in this collection, called “Hard Times,” about depression-era Appalachian life. A farmer with a bitter and disagreeable wife discovers eggs are missing from his Bantam’s nest and resolves to catch the culprit.Back-country superstitions and ways brought down from olden times play a part in the lives of people. “The Corpse Bird” features an owl who brings bad tidings, and a college-educated man visits a Pentacostal church to be cured in “Chemistry.” The scourge of drug abuse features in several stories, as naturally told as though it were endemic. Rash polishes his stories until there is not a word too many nor out of place. He has also written novels, one of which is due out as a feature film in February 2015, starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, called Serena. It looks as though it is shot on location in the Appalachian range, but in fact it was shot in Prague, Czech Republic and Denmark. Though the film does not garner high marks yet, I think we’d agree it probably isn’t the actors' fault. Probably read the book first so you won’t be disappointed.

I'm glad I'm not a writer. Reading Ron Rash would make me give up. Not since Flannery O'Connor has someone been able to invoke a sense of place with such deceptively simple prose. Amazing.

Ron Rash is often billed as a “Southern” or an “Appalachian” writer, and it’s true that he writes from the heart of a place and its people, but this should not confine him, any more than Faulkner is confined by Mississippi or Hemingway by Upper Michigan. It’s not a box, then, but an open window into his work and world. True, he chooses to live in Western North Carolina where he grew up and now works, teaching at Western Carolina University, but his is very much a contemporary American writer.He is a the author of five prizewinning novels, including Serena and One Foot in Eden, and four collections of poetry as well as five collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and Chemistry and Other Stories. This opus collection of his short fiction (his favorite form) is drawn from all of the short fiction.He brings his poet’s eyes to the images of his people and place and his native ears to the language of that locale. One of the best tales, “Into the Gorge” opens with his description: “His great-aunt had been born on this land, lived on it eight decades, and knew it as well as she knew her husband and children. That was what she’d always claimed, and could tell you to the week when the first dogwood blossom would brighten the ridge, the first blackberry darken and swell enough to harvest.” This story moves from the aunt’s demise in the woods to a simple yet wild story of Jesse’s misfortune when hunting ginseng. It is one of the most plotted of his stories and one of the most troubling.Typically, Ron Rash writes what we might term slice-of-life fiction, where the story seems to happen with the same absence of form that life itself. He has declared that he locates character and place and then tries to stay out of the way of the story. And so they often end as they start in the middle of circumstance. But the characters, the dialogue, and the images are so vivid they hold you close. It’s like stopping in a local dinner, sipping your coffee, and overhearing the talk and watching the faces of those sitting in the next booth.The time frame ranges from depression times up to the most modern. “Hard Times” opens with Jacob and Edna on their farm surrounded by the poverty of neighbors. It’s a beautiful story and one of the most tender. Ron Rash’s writing resonates with our lives.- See more at: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-...

This is my first exposure to Ron Rash's writing. He may end up being one of my favorite authors. I am a fan of well done short stories and he certainly has the gift. I can relate to the time lines of many of these stories and the ambiance of the small town South. My Dad's family is from rural Tennessee. I found this collection of Ron Rash's work engaging. I have his novel "One Foot In Eden" up as my next read.

I'd not read this author before but I was on one of my periodical searches for... well, 'new blood', I guess... and gravitated toward this short story collection on a hunch. I do have my go-to preferences when it comes to genres and fields of study - but I'm always reminding myself to branch out, esp. when I'm already feeling a sort of pull toward a different avenue. So I read this volume, even though, on a certain level, it wouldn't be the kind of thing that would normally attract me: stories of the Appalachian area. Wikipedia tells us that this area "stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia" but, from what I'm remembering now, these tales appear to focus on centrally connected Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina... and the various types of people in these states. These are very much stories of garden variety people; those leading ordinary lives... people below the middle-class. In an often-lyrical manner, Ron Rash writes invitingly about these folk; he has a succinct, immediately engaging (not particularly showy or intellectually layered) writing style and an almost unerring ability in his focus on the minutiae of unnoticed lives. His range of characters and their particular worlds is impressive. We're more or less in the present day here but peppered throughout are long-ago stories (such as 'Lincolnites', 'Return', 'Dead Confederates' and 'Shiloh') with a Civil War (or other war) backdrop; maybe five or six of these among the 34 total. Published in 2014, this collection seems aimed at stirring up a new audience for the author. It pulls from a few previous collections, adding a few pieces not included in book form before. Though short story collections (as we all know) can be a mixed bag, I don't really think there's a clunker in this bunch - even if I felt a few of the stories had less-than-satisfying conclusions or seemed wanting when it came to overall purpose. What's even nicer is that many of the stories - almost all of which are on the very-short side - come with a feeling of fullness, the kind often found in novels. For the most part, in brief periods of time, we pretty much learn all we need to know about these situations, in the way we would if we were reading much longer works. Rash has been compared to Flannery O'Connor - but that's a stretch, and the two probably shouldn't be side to side just because they're both Southern writers. FO'C has a kind of fiery passion that's not on display here; Rash is more of a dispassionate observer. He's interested more in the mechanics of average survivors and underdogs, not the depth of the deeply flawed or grotesque. Avoiding the stereotypical, Rash (or so I sense) is more Harper Lee than Harry Crews or even Faulkner. Certain standouts here (like the stunning opener, 'Hard Times') are genuinely gripping. Surprisingly, a few pieces (like 'A Sort of Miracle' and 'Love and Pain in the New South') are rather hilarious - but he's generally not that comic; those are just welcome surprises. Rash can also successfully work his way through certain tension and suspense (as found in 'Where the Map Ends', 'Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven', 'The Corpse Bird' and 'The Woman at the Pond'). If you're looking for incisive stories of the human condition, there's a whole big batch of them right here. 

Only reason I didn't give this 5 stars was because of a few of the historical stories I had a hard time getting into. But that's just me. This is a fantastic group of stories. I'm so glad my buddy John Boden turned me onto Ron Rash. He's like a tame Ketchum meets a hardcore Raymond Carver. Get into it!

Author Ron Rash, it seems, is a mountain boy. Some of his marvelous stories are set during the Civil War, some in the Depression, and some as recently as yesterday, or perhaps this morning. The commonality is the setting in Appalachia, mostly North Carolina. I am always leery of reading short stories in collections. Each story seems to fade as I move on, too quickly, to the next one. That wasn’t a problem this time. This collection is held together, gracefully, by its fealty to region. As I savored each story, I immersed myself a little more deeply in these mountains, finding people to remember, bookmarking stories to return to. The experience was made even richer by narrator Christian Baskous. After spending memorable days with the audio version of Something Rich and Strange, I began reading about Ron Rash. The most telling detail I turned up is that he is a professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies – not of English or Creative Writing. Characters live mostly hardscrabble lives, yet never merely ordinary ones. Rash’s people often seem to straddle a line between modern America and ancient traditions as rock solid as the mountains themselves. A recurring dilemma for characters is conflict between remaining true to people with their shared roots and moving on to a different, potentially better life. A woman goes to community college, and her husband lashes out, knowing she’s moving beyond him (“Falling Star”). A boy goes away to college, and his equally smart girl friend remains behind, only to become ruined by a meth addiction ("Those Who are Dead are Only Now Forgiven”). Education was often a wedge, but it was sometimes rejected in favor of old loyalties. Sometimes the stories were essentially snapshots. In “Twenty-Six Days,” a waitress and college custodian await the return of their daughter from a tour in Afghanistan. Their fear for her safety is palpable. In “Three A.M. and the Stars were Out,” Rash paints a word picture of two old Vietnam veterans, one a farmer and the other a veterinarian, both widowers. A cow gives birth, but that’s about the only action. Wars are prominent, sometimes in the forefront, sometimes as subtext. They all make appearances – Civil War (in which mountain loyalties were divided), WWI, WWII, Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan.Each short work manifests a dazzling talent for creating characters who are genuine, with hopes and limitations. While they are often bound by geography, their heartbreaks and uncertainties are true to the human experience. Thirty-four stories. An embarrassment of riches. Pun intended.

SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGERon RashShort stories are not my typical reading choice, but I would read anything by one of my very favorite authors, Ron Rash.Ron Rash is a master craftsman with an artistry surrounding the Carolina Blue Ridge mountain section of Appalachia. This same artistry encompasses the exquisite beauty of the landscape and the almost sixth sense of his ability to portray the heart and soul of the people and the land. He has captured me as a icon in his craft and majesty of ordinary people and their lives, some good, some bad.This is a book of previously published thirty short stories that are uncanny in their ability to inhabit your soul in such short vignettes.

‘Something Rich and Strange’ was my first experience of reading Ron Rash, and what an experience it was. This collection of short stories from the heart of Appalachia just bowled me over. The stories are short, but the characters are well developed and everything is delivered with such feeling. It took about ten minutes to read a story and then thirty minutes to think about that story. Isn’t that what reading should be about sometimes?