FRIDAY CALLS

A debut literary novel tells the
interlocking stories of the denizens of a North Carolina town.

In the South in the 1950s, there
aren’t any bars. The rich drink at their clubs or one another’s homes. The poor
sip at drink houses. Harry Davis runs a beverage distributor in Winston-Salem,
though he also oversees an illegal sports-betting operation with his friend Syd
Siddon. One of Harry’s employees, Evelina Starlight “Big Rise” Peak—so called
because she is the largest woman anyone has ever seen—is a former prostitute
and Social Security check thief. Her younger brother, the simple but sensitive Homer
Kenny, works for everybody: “Kenny is the fellow who is there if anyone needs
anything—The Master of the Job, the Errand, the Task. He works for many people,
does many things, knows more than they think he does and keeps his mouth shut.”
Benjamin Franklin “Bo” Winphrie runs a drink house, sells drugs, and thinks
enough of himself to adopt the first name of rock star Bo Diddley. After a
fight about money, Kenny shoots Bo in the drink house while across town one of Harry’s
well-to-do clients accidentally drives his car onto the railroad tracks and is
hit by a train. These two events send shock waves throughout the town,
destabilizing the usual way of things in Winston-Salem and bringing its
communities—rich and poor, black and white—into unexpected collisions. Glenn’s
prose is full of color and motion, as here, during Bo’s murder: “The form of Bo
stops moving and yanks like being startled, jerking to the right, a pulling
back away like un-huh, no, no you don’t, and then Bo’s chin comes up and down
like a fast nod and then he cat-dances back to the bar counter and slumps a
little bit, but stays more due north than not.” The book’s cast is large and
the narrative hops between characters every few pages, though readers will
eventually get to know everyone and can mostly keep track of them. At nearly 300
pages, it’s a long, dense, and meandering tale, but there is plenty about the
author’s sprawling yarn to keep readers entertained.

A lyrical Southern tale of rippling
effects.