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Sap Rising
In this spare and mesmerizing debut, Christine Lincoln takes us inside the hearts and minds of African Americans whose lives unfold against a vividly evoked rural community. As they navigate between old and new, between youth and responsibility, they find themselves choosing between the comforts of what they trust without question and the fearsome excitements of what they might come to know.
One young man’s world is both expanded and contracted by stories he hears from a beautiful stranger. Another stumbles across his mother having an affair with his uncle. An intense friendship forms between one woman afraid she will turn out like everyone else and one afraid she won’t. Lincoln’s down-to-earth voice, saturated with the manner and details of the South, brings her characters to life with a remarkably light touch and an extraordinary depth of emotion. In Sap Rising , she proves herself one of those writers whose work transcends its own rich particularity to speak with clarity to the most fundamental elements of the human experience.
One young man’s world is both expanded and contracted by stories he hears from a beautiful stranger. Another stumbles across his mother having an affair with his uncle. An intense friendship forms between one woman afraid she will turn out like everyone else and one afraid she won’t. Lincoln’s down-to-earth voice, saturated with the manner and details of the South, brings her characters to life with a remarkably light touch and an extraordinary depth of emotion. In Sap Rising , she proves herself one of those writers whose work transcends its own rich particularity to speak with clarity to the most fundamental elements of the human experience.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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80 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 6, 2011
Phenomenal. I don't know why it took me over a decade to read this collection of beautiful stories. I had assumed that not being African American would prevent me from relating in such a powerful way. Christine has a way of making her characters feel familiar to me, incarnations of someone I've been or am yet to be. Her characters, in the brief time allotted them (I so want to know more about them!), open themselves up for introduction to strangers, to educate, to inspire, to move. I think the quiet celebration of womanness and the joys and frustrations that arise when trying to interpret that term for ourselves is what I took the most from these interwoven tales. I definitely recommend!
January 5, 2018
Comments on the short stories making up Sap Rising - The characters were very believable. The stories were equally so. The writer told an amazing amount of story in very few pages. There was basically no hope or happiness in any of the stories; and together collectively, it was a rather depressing read. The endings were abrupt. It was like looking at something interesting, and having a door slammed in your face before you could learn the outcome. Two stars.
January 29, 2021
A collection of intertwined short stories about the Black denizens of a small town, seemingly in Maryland, by Baltimore author Christine Lincoln. The town is called Grandville, though it is, of course, anything but. However, it's home, and it's hard to leave. It's hard for newcomers to adapt, too. There's classism and colorism, but they are still a community.
"A Hook Will Sometimes Keep You" centers on a daughter of the town whose mother brought her back home from the city where the baby born and then left again by the time the child was two. Little Pontella stayed with her aunt Loretta on the family's inherited property. The daughter reflects on how she felt invisible without her mother until she had her own child.
In "Acorn Pipes," there's a hypocritical funeral for a husband and father, a drunk who couldn't bring home his wages and ignored his wife and four daughters. One of them says straightforwardly to Pontella's Aunt Loretta, paying a condolence call: "Our daddy was a drinkin' man, Miss Loretta. A gamblin' man, too."
Like her character, Lincoln doesn't shy away from the rough relationships between the people who live in Grandville, but she shows the beauty there too: the "going-home" songs of the funeral, the big sky, the cold river, the beauty of a father and son working the fields together. There's something to be said for a place having a hold on people because their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived on and farmed the same land.
"A Hook Will Sometimes Keep You" centers on a daughter of the town whose mother brought her back home from the city where the baby born and then left again by the time the child was two. Little Pontella stayed with her aunt Loretta on the family's inherited property. The daughter reflects on how she felt invisible without her mother until she had her own child.
In "Acorn Pipes," there's a hypocritical funeral for a husband and father, a drunk who couldn't bring home his wages and ignored his wife and four daughters. One of them says straightforwardly to Pontella's Aunt Loretta, paying a condolence call: "Our daddy was a drinkin' man, Miss Loretta. A gamblin' man, too."
Like her character, Lincoln doesn't shy away from the rough relationships between the people who live in Grandville, but she shows the beauty there too: the "going-home" songs of the funeral, the big sky, the cold river, the beauty of a father and son working the fields together. There's something to be said for a place having a hold on people because their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived on and farmed the same land.
March 9, 2024
Didn't read. Had nearly zero interest.
April 3, 2021
Collection of stories, some related. There were some “man bashing” stories that I did not like at all but some very nice friendship stories.
Why in the world did I read this twice? 2002, 2006
Why in the world did I read this twice? 2002, 2006
March 1, 2017
"Sap Rising" is a spare but elegant collection of interconnected chapters/short stories. Each chapter's narrator has its own voice and piece of the story. The author's storytelling is masterful and beautiful.
January 21, 2009
I have to confess, I barely knew what this book was about when I picked it up. I did, however, know enough about the author to have had this book loitering around my reading list for years. Christine Lincoln was born and raised in inner city Baltimore, and graduated from Washington College in Maryland at the age of 34. For those of you not familiar with the area, here's what this means: Christine Lincoln is black, and grew up poor, and then she did some serious bootstrap-pulling, enrolled in a lauded private liberal arts college in a bucolic little town on the Chesapeake Bay known for churning out great writers, and snagged the school's most prestigious writing award. Knowing all this, I didn't care what Sap Rising was about. What I wanted to know was the story of this woman's journey. I wanted a memoir. I didn't get one.
Don't get me wrong, this is a really lovely book. It is a novel built from interconnected stories told from the various points of view of the adults and children living (or surviving, more aptly) in a small town in southern Maryland. From the first page, you can see why even the rich bitches of Washington College had no choice but to show some respect. The prose is a sparse and fragile filigree of emotions and shattered dreams. It's beautiful. But beyond the lyrical accomplishment, I couldn't help but feel like the author was keeping her characters at arm's length instead of allowing her own strength to fuel them.
As far as I can tell, Lincoln has not published any other books. And that's a shame, because I'd still love to read about that journey.
Don't get me wrong, this is a really lovely book. It is a novel built from interconnected stories told from the various points of view of the adults and children living (or surviving, more aptly) in a small town in southern Maryland. From the first page, you can see why even the rich bitches of Washington College had no choice but to show some respect. The prose is a sparse and fragile filigree of emotions and shattered dreams. It's beautiful. But beyond the lyrical accomplishment, I couldn't help but feel like the author was keeping her characters at arm's length instead of allowing her own strength to fuel them.
As far as I can tell, Lincoln has not published any other books. And that's a shame, because I'd still love to read about that journey.
October 20, 2009
Christine Lincolns debut novel, Sap Rising, is rooted in the mystical, rural Grandville where the tales of its townspeople are captured in 12 intertwining short stories. The sagas are told from varying viewpoints: fathers, grandmothers, young boys, nosey neighbors, teenaged girls, etc. and are rooted in themes of self-discovery, escapism, and hope.
All of the stories are symbolic and appealing, but a few that really struck this reviewer were the title story, Sap Rising and A Very Close Conspiracy. In Sap Rising, we meet a very restless young woman, Ebbie Pinder, who runs away from the mediocrity of life as a homemaker in Grandville to the bright lights of the big city. She returns home alone and with her child, Pontella, in Like Dove Wings and Pontellas plight is recounted in A Hook Will Sometimes Keep You. In A Very Close Conspiracy, we meet the town drunk, Hiron Fuller, who retraces his life, loves, and views as a black man as he succumbs to a fatal injury.
The author demonstrates her depth and range of character development by taking the reader deep inside the psyches of Hiron, a man worn down by racism and poverty, the self-doubting Pontella who was abandoned by her mother, Ebbie, and the painful episodes of Boags and Cinnys coming-of-age transformation. She paints a picture of the human condition and adds insight and emotion into each story. Ms. Lincoln is a great storyteller with a style akin to J. California Coopers yet distinctively her own. She has made her mark with a successful debut I am looking forward to her next release.
All of the stories are symbolic and appealing, but a few that really struck this reviewer were the title story, Sap Rising and A Very Close Conspiracy. In Sap Rising, we meet a very restless young woman, Ebbie Pinder, who runs away from the mediocrity of life as a homemaker in Grandville to the bright lights of the big city. She returns home alone and with her child, Pontella, in Like Dove Wings and Pontellas plight is recounted in A Hook Will Sometimes Keep You. In A Very Close Conspiracy, we meet the town drunk, Hiron Fuller, who retraces his life, loves, and views as a black man as he succumbs to a fatal injury.
The author demonstrates her depth and range of character development by taking the reader deep inside the psyches of Hiron, a man worn down by racism and poverty, the self-doubting Pontella who was abandoned by her mother, Ebbie, and the painful episodes of Boags and Cinnys coming-of-age transformation. She paints a picture of the human condition and adds insight and emotion into each story. Ms. Lincoln is a great storyteller with a style akin to J. California Coopers yet distinctively her own. She has made her mark with a successful debut I am looking forward to her next release.
March 15, 2016
Christine Lincoln crafts characters and voices in Sap Rising with a poet's attention to precisely the right word and detail. And so through these absorbing stories an entire rural southern community (Grandville) springs to life. Its featured inhabitants (Sonny, Aunt Loretta, and Pontella come to my mind) will linger in your mind and heart. I'm hoping the author will read this and her future works in audio editions.
June 29, 2007
The reviews for this book of short stories were quite promising. It was a Christmas gift to which I looked forward to reading. But I found the writing juvenile. But the jury is still out - I think I am going to re-read it and give it another chance. To be continued...
April 30, 2008
This author won my college's most prestiguous writing award a few years before I attended, so naturally, I delved through her book. Her writing transcends the mundane and gives true voice to these oft-overlooked characters. Deeply moving.
May 11, 2009
Good read! Marvelous writer!
February 26, 2010
With each story she brings to life such remarkable characters while capturing truth and reality in her work.
February 27, 2013
Great short stories with curious endings.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews