Flat out admission: I don't think I've ever read a book set in or about Louisiana that I didn't like. And this is no exception. So I went back to my reasons for reading 50 states posting to make sure that I just didn't gush about how charming the patios is, how likable the characters.
Tiger Island, the home town in the story, is in the DNA of the Colette and T-Bub. Not just that the are related to a large percentage of the population, but the cuisine, economy, geography and history of the area are passed down to them genetically. This is the story of Colette's struggle to decide whether or not she belongs to the "tribe."
When she flirts with a man from Texas and eventually leaves on the train to go to California, she is trying to grow beyond her origins. She wants prosperity and excitement, two things that she believes Tiger Island cannot deliver. T-Bub is the personification of the Island and is comfortable in himself and his position there. He will do anything for Colette, even divorcing her, in order to find a way to make her happy.
The book was written pre-Katrina so the events it portrays are centered in the boom and bust of coastal oil production. This cycle of having jobs and folding money shows Cajun culture as rowdy roadhouses with drums of steaming crayfish and hot under the collar locals itching for a fight. T-Bub's dual urge to dance the two-step and defend his honor (the influence of the Napoleonic code in Louisiana) drives Colette to distraction. She decides he is unambitious, low class and too interested in other women. And then when the economy cools, so do the lusts and tempers.
They're young, relatively newly married. I went to a wedding yesterday for two "kids" from the town -- the bride still finishing up school and the husband newly graduated but working in a fast food joint (given the current bad economy) and saw T-Bub and Colette at the altar. No amount of prenuptial counseling can prepare for lack of work, aging and ill parents, and figuring out who you are as you grow up with someone who you loved at a younger age.
Colette turns into a very likable woman the more Cajun she becomes. The descriptions of her hunting nutria, entering a shooting contest in the seediest of back-bayou bars, and setting up a shrimping business are the best description of place seeping into character development and plot advancement.
Gautreaux not only has an ear for native language, he also has the knack to use local idioms outside of dialogue to depict the place: when T-Bub is going shrimping, Gautreaux describes the approaching storm as "the sky looked like the underside of a skillet with flames of lightning licking along its bottom." You can see the roux browning.
By the time I reached chapter 20, I felt the characters had already passed the denouement and reading through five more chapters of disaster besetting Colette and T-Bub was too much. I also felt the last chapter was too smug, bringing them back to their former prosperity. I was not looking for closure, but an indication that they now could live together in a never-ending cycle of challenges. Their difficulties were not Herculean nor like the trials of Job: it was life and they learned how to live it together, for the better. This did not entitle them to live happily ever after but to feel supported in their community and secure in their identity with families, neighbors and home town.
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I wasn't able to navigate the internet version of "reserve" on this from our local library so I picked up another book by the author at our local library. He's an excellent story teller and definitely captures a sense of place. In fact, in The Clearing, the place is really the driver of the plot, with the characters, interesting as they are, almost superfluous. This one takes place when a lumber concern buys out a large cypress Swamp ( Tiger Island is nearby) and proceeds to harvest all of the timber. The weather and the hazards of the location, bugs, storms, alligators eating people, play heavily into the plot as does the inevitable intrusion of evil ( Italian mobsters).The main characters ( two brothers from Pittsburgh) have to battle both, and their own inner troubles, to survive in an unlovely environment. I'm not sure after reading this that I'd want to catch the first slow train out to spend time in a Louisiana swamp but this year's slackers theme of going to each state is certainly met by reading Tim Gautreaux.
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