THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 10, 1995 TAG: 9505100047
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY AUDREY KNOTH
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
WHEN IS A LIE necessary? Janice Daugharty explores that question in her intriguing novel ``Necessary Lies'' (HarperCollins, $20), showing how layers of falsehoods about family history peel away after a church-going girl doesn't speak the truth.
The story, set in rural Georgia, centers on 17-year-old Cliffie Flowers. She's the fifth of 10 children born to an impoverished couple, Pappy and Maude Ocain. She's considered the most attractive and promising member of a family that has never graduated a child from high school. There's even been talk of Cliffie's attending college.
Writes Daugharty: ``Cliffie . . . possessed the best of their traits, the worst traits, she liked to think, almost refined out in her. She knew she must protect herself, must guard against those undesirable traits that could flourish and overtake her. All of them had a tendency toward stout hips and legs. So far, Cliffie's were nicely rounded.''
Cliffie believes herself to be in love with the local troublemaker, Roy Harris. For years, Pappy Ocain has warned Cliffie against even speaking to Roy. At the book's opening, she is pregnant by him. She's dreaming of marrying him and leaving with him in three days for Fort Bragg.
Unable to contain her secret, Cliffie tells her minister that she is carrying a child. Word soon spreads to Pappy Ocain, who is known for having had a violent temper before finding religion some years back. There's a ``rumor about Pappy Ocain's shooting off his own finger - his trigger finger - to keep from killing again after he got saved.''
When Pappy learns his most cherished youngster is pregnant, he confronts the preacher with a gun. Cliffie remains silent about who the baby's father is, telling ``a lie by neglect of truth, a necessary lie to protect Roy Harris. But it was only a three-day lie.''
Her father shoots into the air, rather than at the minister. But events explode into violence later, when Roy Harris sets a fatal fire and Cliffie takes the blame. After her case goes to court, Cliffie discovers the ``necessary lies'' that her family lived with for decades.
Telling more of the story would divulge too much about events that Daugharty skillfully weaves to a climax. But it's important to note the author's fine writing, which makes the novel a worthy piece of literature as well as a good plot.
Daugharty, who grew up on a Georgia farm, is unflinching in her portrayal of rural poverty. In this passage, she describes the Flowers family's run-down kitchen with painful clarity. At the same time, though, she suggests that its decrepitude results not from Maude's laziness but from the surfeit of work she's coped with as the mother of 10:
``The . . . floor sloped to the kerosene stove, reeking of grease and spattered with eggs and cornmeal, grits in shiny patches for roaches to feed on - Maude's scouring bouts had kept merging with mealtimes, till she'd given it up. The rust-streaked refrigerator was buckled in on one side from impact with the backdoor, in constant swing, but like Maude, it never ceased humming, seating, enduring the pilfering of grubby hands.''
Daugharty has written 23 books in the past 10 years. Her reputation has grown recently with her short-story collection, ``Going Through the Change,'' for which she received the PEN/Faulkner award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. If she continues to present work of the caliber of ``Necessary Lies,'' her writing career should blossom. MEMO: Audrey Knoth is a free-lance writer and executive director of public
relations at Goldman & Associates in Norfolk.
ILLUSTRATION: Janice Daugharty is a Pulitzer Prize nominee for a short-story
collection.
by CNB