Why read A Year Without Months?

Book cover of A Year Without Months

Book description

This collection of fourteen essays by Charles Dodd White-praised by Silas House as "one of the best prose stylists of Appalachian literature"-explores the boundaries of family, loss, masculinity, and place. Contemplating the suicides of his father, uncle, and son, White meditates on what it means to go on when seemingly…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Year Without Months as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jane Harrington

Author

This is not a work of fiction but a memoir by a novelist, an unflinching portrait of generations of a family ever at the brink. It reads almost as vignettes, exquisitely crafted and somehow soothing even in their brutal honesty. Poignantly rendered pieces of the author’s life reflect aspects of Appalachian culture that can often come across as stereotyping, but the personal nature of this work combined with Dodd White’s skilled pen makes it an authentic view into struggles endemic to the region. He bravely writes of suicides in his family, most heartbreakingly that of his son. Until I read…

From Jane's list on transporting readers to the Appalachian Mountains.