Review for Serena

Serena by Ron Rash
Publisher: Ecco, An Imprint of Harper-Collins Publishers
Summery
[Back Cover]

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains—but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband’s life in the wilderness.

Together Serena and George ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of their favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage begins to unravel, and the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.

Introduction:

When one signs up for a literature class in college, they must be aware that they are going to read a number of different kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, ones that make you think, and ones that make you want to forget. Yeah, there’s quite a variety. This book, Serena, is the first novel my class was assigned. We have been covering Southern Gothic Literature, and this book definitely fits in that category. There are a few reasons why the teacher chose this book, I think. One is that it’s set in North Carolina, which is the state where I live. The second reason is probably because the author came to my college a year before to speak and sign books. My English teacher at the time required my entire class to go to this author talk by Ron Rash. He spoke on growing up in North Carolina, and about his many short stories. He even read one to the audience, and while I found the whole talk interesting, that little sample of his work convinced me that his writing wasn’t something that would interest me. I probably saw Serena on his book table afterwards, but it didn’t leave an impression on me. None of the books seemed to be anything I’d read actually. When my literature teacher told us we’d be reading this, I was kind of surprised to find out that I knew of the author.

Characters:

The main characters are the Pembertons. They are two lumber company owners who come to North Carolina to cut down the trees in the mountains. (I’ve been to these mountains before, and I really don’t know why anyone would want to cut down the forests there. They are beautiful.) Anyway, Serena and George Pemberton are newly married when they come to the camp, and their arrival starts a string of killings and murders. While Pemberton seems to be a tough man who isn’t afraid to shed blood, Serena is cold and ruthless. My literature teacher describes her as very practical, and I do have to agree. If anyone gets in Serena’s way, or does something she doesn’t like, she won’t mess around, and she’ll have them killed. That stops anyone from coming around and bothering her again, for sure. She is what I have dubbed “murder-happy.” One little mistake and she’d do away with anyone. No one is an exception; any one of the characters could be her next target. Her husband seems very similar to her, but in a way, he is more human. The man feels some of these murders are unnecessary, and when Serena has her sights on Pemberton’s illegitimate child and its mother, Pemberton starts to feel sort of protective for the child. I had a feeling Pemberton would have been a better man if he never had met Serena. She influenced him in almost every aspect, and as some of my classmates have said, “She’s the one who seems to wear the pants in the family.” I’m not too sure about that statement, it did seem that Serena swayed Pemberton on many issues, but I don’t know if she was the dominating one in their marriage. It’s more like they shared everything equally.

There’s also a man named Galloway and his future-telling mother. They both become prominent in the story, and are feared almost as much as the Pembertons. Galloway is a very threatening character, of the kind you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, or anywhere else for that matter.

Of the good characters, there’s Rachel and her son, Jacob, who is also Pemberton’s son. Rachel goes through a very rough time, from the moment her father is killed, to the time she has to start running for her son’s life. She’s a hard working girl, and doesn’t wallow in self pity, though she has many reasons to. The other good characters in this story are the Sherriff McDowell, who I would say is the hero of the story. I was rooting for Rachel, Jacob, and McDowell through the whole thing. I didn’t want to see anything happen to the baby, or to his mother. A few of the other characters mentioned, but not main characters, were Joe Vaughn, who is a friend of Rachel’s, and the lumber crew.

My Thoughts:

This is one of the few books told from the point of view of the villains. I’ve wondered why there weren’t more stories that give us that point of view, but after reading this, I can honestly say I don’t like it. I want a book told from the hero’s perspective and with a battle between good and evil. I’ll be looking through my To-Be-Read stack for something that I know will be like that. I need a story about a hero after reading Serena. This book has been compared to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Serena’s character to that of Lady Macbeth. I do see the similarities of the two stories, and the main difference between the two leading ladies is Lady Macbeth’s guilt about her wrong-doings. Serena never regrets anything. If her killing ways weren’t enough to make you dislike her, then maybe it’s her lack of personality. In telling my family about this book and Serena, I’ve described her as “an evil, cardboard cutout”. She has no personality, she falls flat, and the way she spoke really distracted me. It didn’t sound natural, and seemed more forced than the voices of the other characters. In the author interview at the end of the book, I found out that Ron Rash stated he had Serena talk in a “loose iambic pentameter.” So, that’s what was wrong! I really don’t think he should have done that, because it was a source of irritation for me.

Another thing about this story was the writing. Many reviews I read on Goodreads say how great Ron Rash’s writing is, and I guess it’s not bad, since this book was nominated for a Pen/Faulker Award, but a few sentences confused me. I found the way he worded some of them hard to understand, since the punctuation was weirdly used, so I had to unravel the meaning sometimes. Other times he didn’t even use quotation marks for dialogue, but had it the same as the narration. I’d read the paragraph, and not know one sentence is actually one of the characters talking, until I got to the “So-and-so said.” I don’t understand why he so loosely used the quotation marks, or why he didn’t always put different characters’ dialogue on separate lines instead of in the same paragraph. Some of these are rules that are stressed in grammar lessons, but for some reason Ron Rash seemed to ignore them whenever he felt like it.

The biggest gripe for me, however, was the way Serena’s evil deeds went unpunished. That woman gets away with murder, and becomes very successful because of it. No one can touch her, and the only one who tries dies for it. I just think that in fiction, good should be rewarded and evil should be punished. Even if the bad guys do get away with their schemes for a while, there should be a resolution at the end where good finally triumphs. It may be realistic for people like Serena to get away with their deeds in real life, but in a book, I think there should be hope and justice. Isn’t that why we read books? To escape from real life? To learn a valuable lessen, maybe? This book holds nothing like that. Unless the whole reason  for it is to try to make readers despise the main character and shock us by showing her get rewards for her ways. Maybe I’m just over sensitive. What do you think?

There’s also a movie coming out eventually. It starts Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as George and Serena Pemberton. I personally don’t want to see this movie, but it will be interesting to see how it is received.

Warnings:

This isn’t a book written for teens, but adults. It’s very mature in places. There are quite a large number of scenes with sexual content, violent deaths happen often, though many of them only the aftermath is shown, and there’s also swearing. It actually isn’t as bad as Across the Universe is with the inappropriate content, but it’s mostly just the story I have a problem with.

My Age Rating: 16 and up.  

~CYA!