Name: The Ancient Hours
ISBN: 9781612198644

Michael Bible

In Harmony, North Carolina, the earth is soaked in blood. Lynchings and hangings; mobs and vigilante justice. But all of that is just whispers of history, lost to time. The summer of 2000 was different. Iggy in the Baptist church. Twenty-five people dead. This, Harmony couldn't forget. Told in a kaleidescope of timelines and voices, Michael Bible takes the reader through all of the dimensions of one tragedy. The victims and witnesses, perpetrators and condemned comingle and evolve as the passage of time works its way through their lives.

The Ancient Hours

Emily

This book is one that is best consumed without knowing too much beyond the blurb on the back of the book, so I would encourage you to read the book first and THEN come back to the reviews. 

I think this is one of those books that you’ll keep thinking back on frequently. The way Bible weaves together all these different narratives & the way they are all interconnected and yet spun out from each other through one tragedy is stunning. Bible’s writing doesn’t turn anybody into a hero or a villain and instead focuses on the deep pain & tragedies (and also the fleeting moments of joy) of their lives to help the reader gain a better understanding of the characters. 

I love the way Bible explores evangelicalism, modern-day existential despair, mental illness, homophobia, apathy from our leaders, and the environmental crisis. His writing draws attention to the way these topics underline and contribute to inter-community violence/home-grown terrorism/etc and how shootings/bombings/burnings are becoming entirely too commonplace in America, and especially the American South. 

One of my only qualms with this book is the way female characters are treated. They are never fully fleshed into their own characters that get to tell their own stories relating to the church fire in the way that the men are. They are used as devices to help the male characters realize their own epiphanies about life. Even in the chapter that is supposed to be about Cleo really isn’t about Cleo & how she sees herself. (view spoiler)[I was hoping for Cleo’s chapter to focus in on her feelings about her relationship with Iggy and any feelings she might have about how someone she (presumably) loved could have done such a horrible thing. Instead, it seemed like that chapter was used as a short few pages to quickly wrap up what happened to her (complete with domestic abuse, because *of course* it was) and to explain how she played into Farber’s story to make his realization about life seem more profound.  (hide spoiler)]
I really wish Bible would have delved into her and Trudy’s chapter’s more & given them a bit more agency in telling their own stories and let them have some of the epiphanies about life themselves.

Otherwise, this was a fantastic book, and, as a southerner myself, I appreciated the way Bible writes so truthfully about the mundanity, the beauty, and the pain of living in a little podunk southern town.

The Ancient Hours

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