Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Centuries of June

Read on for your chance to win a free copy!

When Lisa of TLC Book Tours offered me a slot on the tour for Centuries of June, by Keith Donohue, I thought the excerpt sounded pretty strange.  Reading the entire novel did nothing to disabuse me of this notion; it is without a doubt one of the strangest books I have ever read.

The narrator, a man (unnamed until the last chapter) wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and falls, sustaining a gash to the head.  He then spends the rest of the early morning in the company of a strange man who reminds him of his father, and seven women who first attempt to kill the narrator, and then sit down (we’re still in the bathroom here) and tell her life story.

Murder Mysteries and Myths

The chapters alternate:  one is a bathroom scene, which gets more and more crowded as each of the seven the women come forward to tell her tale; and then we hear the tale itself, usually told in first person.  The chapters highlighting the women’s stories are by far the most compelliing parts of the book, spanning several centuries of history, veins of myth, and genres.  One regales the listeners with a shipwreck tale; one recounts her life as a slave in New Orleans; another stories of mining gold in the West; another about baseball fever in Pittsburgh in the early twentieth century, and so on.

Each woman’s story is fascinating, well-researched, carefully told, and absorbing enough to stand on its own.  But the stitching of the novel–the scenes with the narrator, the strange man who seems to be his father, and all the women gathered in the bathroom are so strange and unbelievable that the book can be hard to get through in places. There is a slight twist–or rather, a tying up of loose ends–at the conclusion where the reader comes to understand the purpose of the evening, but I found it unsatisfying.  I think I almost would have preferred for the women’s chapters to stand alone as a book of short stories.  The author seems to have wanted to experiment with as many types of stories as he could and mashed them together, forcing them to fit into a larger narrative structure that’s bursting at the seams.  It may not work as a traditional ‘novel,’ but then, nothing about this book is traditional.

In Short

In short, you won’t be bored if you pick up Centuries of June.  You may be confused, dissatisfied, you may raise your eyebrows or scoff aloud, but it’s definitely an interesting and unpredictable ride.

To take a leaf out of Kit’s book and play with some personification … If Centuries of June were at a cocktail party she would be dressed to kill in some kind of backless red number when everyone else was playing it safe with a boring little black dress.  She’d be slamming down shots of tequila and cracking jokes while everyone else drank champagne and made small talk.  Everyone would be pointing and staring, but most of them would secretly be wishing they could talk to her.  That’s the kind of book this is:  crazy, unconventional, and unapologetic.  So if that’s your literary cup of tea, drink up.

Check out what other reviewers are saying here.

To Win

To win your very own copy of Centuries of June, justclick here. [Contest closed on Thursday, July 14 at midnight.]  Good luck!