A spare touching story of an unexpected marriage, told in alternately chapters by Ruby and Jack. We learn in the opening sentences that Ruby has died young from lung cancer. She came from a well-to-do family, Jack was a tenant farmer 20 years older. Their voices are strong and distinct and the life they share is filled with tenderness and a connection which baffles many.

I'm in the middle of a fun project. I was combing my bookcases looking for books I no longer want to give shelf space. I have realized two things. First, I still have tons of books that look great that I've never read. I need to read from my own shelves. Second, I missed reviewing so many books. So, today I am going back and recording them. If you are not me, the reviews from this project may not be helpful because this is such a personal project. But, my GoodReads is primarily for me and I would love as complete a look at my reading life as possible.

Until I started this little project, I had forgotten how much I loved Kaye Gibbons. I've got to read her again. I wonder if her works hold up.

I would give this lovely little book 3.5/5 stars. It is told in alternating chapters, in the voices of Jack Stokes and then his wife, Ruby. We find out early on that Ruby is dying of lung cancer, and then their back stories, as told by these two characters, fill in the rest of this short novel.

It starts out. "She hasn't been dead four months and I've already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze. I even ate the green peas. Used to I wouldn't turn my hand over for green peas."

The book flows well, and the great love expressed by Jack for Ruby is quite beautiful. He speaks in colloquial English, as he is from an uneducated rural background. Ruby was raised in a more middle-class background, and her chapters flow a little differently. This is a love story, filled with grit, humor and honesty.

Harsh dialect and intense characterizations. I really truly wanted to give it 3 stars for the carved and at times intrepid voices but the entire life pictures drawn were too bleak and against any logical love or spousal core affections and common sense protections of each other. So I just cannot.

I loved her "Charms" novel and a few others of her prose materials, even the shorty ones I have read previous to this one- but now I am finding the ignorance and abuse factors just dominant. And not in a learning way, IMHO.

It's a slice of life. Thank God, despite some true meanies I have met along the way- not mine. All the joy you could get from this story would fit into a touch DNA sample with room left over.

Life is short and far too precious. Others grab the irony and humor out of this set of relationships. I just find them incredibly sad. Wasteful. And the entire perceptive quality of the prose was cored to the negative.