“All Aunt Hagar’s Children”
by Edward P. Jones
Published: August 2006
ISBN: 0060853514

(Updated: September 15, 2007.)

From the Publisher…

Edward P. Jones, a prodigy of the short story, returns to the form that first won him praise in this new collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Here he turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them in the city, people who in Jones’s masterful hands emerge as fully human and morally complex. With the legacy of slavery just a stone’s throw behind them and the future uncertain, Jones’s cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

If I were to base my comments on my initial reactions to this book, they would be full of my own frustrations. And my biggest one would have been so easily addressed with the addition of a simple date — at the beginning of this collection — to contextualize these stories. This was not the case. And by the time the first date appeared in the text, I was reading the last of the stories and had sort of decided on my own that these all took place around the same time and around 1930 or so. This simple context makes all the difference in my reading, particularly given that this is indeed a collection of stories and given that all of the stories are full of an amazing, timeless humanity.

Frustrations aside… what a lovely snapshot these stories are. And… what a beautiful portrait the collection makes. Complicated, complex humanity so wonderfully and easily expressed in all of its roundness. Edward P. Jones has to be a lovely, loving, honest man to have been able to write this. Really. I’m sure you’ll see what I mean what that on reading the book which falls at 4 out of 5 hearts on my scale. (This might have been a 5 if the context had been laid out up front but who knows?)