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The Cutting Season, by Attica Locke
Jan. 27th, 2020 12:50 pmAttica Locke's second novel, The Cutting Season, is so fascinatingly layered that I keep turning it over and over in my mind and considering it from different angles. It's a complex, ambitious mystery that's also a detailed, multifaceted, and messy portrait of the South (particularly rural Louisiana) and its past and present.
The book's protagonist is Caren Gray, the general manager of Belle Vie, a former Southern plantation that's since been turned into a cultural exhibit, offering tours, employing historical reenactors, staging plays, and hosting weddings and other large-scale events. Caren is black, and she has a tangled, intense relationship with Belle Vie, which has been not only her workplace but her home. Not only was she raised there--her mother was the cook for the Clancy family, who own Belle Vie--but her whole known family history stems from there, with one of her ancestors, Jason, having been held in slavery at Belle Vie and worked there after the war as paid labor. (Locke neatly skewers the very popular white narrative of slaves who refused to leave their "masters"--one such sentimental, cringey proclamation of loyalty concludes the Gone With the Wind-style play routinely staged at Belle Vie. Jason's reasons were much more complex: he waited at Belle Vie because it was the last place his wife, sold away by the then-owners of the plantation, would know to look for him.) Belle Vie is, all at the same time, a beautiful place, the site of historical atrocities, a landmark romanticized by a racist culture, a valued piece of black communal history, Caren's past and present home, her livelihood, her family lineage.
It was during the Thompson-Delacroix wedding, Caren's first week on the job, that a cottonmouth, measuring the length of a Cadillac, fell some twenty feet from a live oak on the front lawn, landing like a coil of rope in the lap of the bride's future mother-in-law. It only briefly stopped the ceremony, this being Louisiana after all. Within minutes, an off-duty sheriff's deputy on the groom's side found a 12-gauge in the groundskeeper's shed and shot the thing dead, and after, one of the cater-waiters was kind enough to hose down the grass. The bride and groom moved on to their vows, staying on schedule for a planned kiss at sunset, the mighty Mississippi blowing a breeze through the line of stately, hundred-year-old trees. The uninvited guest certainly made for lively dinner conversation at the reception in the main hall. By the time the servers made their fourth round with bottles of imported champagne, several men, including prim little Father Haliwell, were lining up to have their pictures taken with the viper, before somebody from parish services finally came to haul the carcass away.
Still, she took it as a sign.
A reminder, really, that Belle Vie, its beauty, was not to be trusted.
It's a phenomenally rich location, both symbolically and in terms of the varied lives, stories, and interpretations that intersect there, and Locke absolutely makes the most of it. I would have read an entire novel just about Caren awkwardly trying to negotiate a life that involves preserving her own history at the cost of routinely prettying it up for outside (white) consumption. She's a terrific character, sympathetic even when she's not always likable, and she's constantly being forced to make high-pressure decisions with huge stakes.
Old Belle Vie was a sugar plantation, farming cane, and there's still a cane field on the property, leased out to a company called Groveland; just outside of the usual tourist view, there are migrant workers cutting cane, living out the history Belle Vie only acknowledges. One of the migrant workers, Inés Avalo, is found murdered on the Belle Vie grounds, killed with a cane knife stolen from one of Belle Vie's preserved slave cabins. Her death serves as a catalyst for Locke's examination of character, history, and politics in action, but I think Locke does a reasonably good job of imbuing Inés with personhood and history in her own right. We see a number of people who mourn her, find out some of her own complicated personal history, see her ethical concerns and her fears. Her death, once we understand the full story, ultimately comes as a cruelly unfair interruption of her life story, and that makes her feel all the more real.
However, the actual solving of the mystery doesn't generally feel like the novel's focus. Instead, Locke is interested in the way crimes can crack communities open and bring up surprises. Caren suddenly has to grapple up-close with her ambiguous relationship as "management," neither fully confided in by her superiors nor fully accepted by her staff. She becomes more involved with the investigation than she intends to, and that's partly because she discovers a loyalty she has to her employee Donovan, whom she's never particularly liked; Donovan winds up targeted early on by the police, who are happy to wrestle a plea bargain out of him and call it a day. Caren, who was almost a lawyer, finds she can't let that go--even when her defense of Donovan, or even her accuracy in interviews, is construed by the police as obstruction, something that threatens her directly. And then there's the lingering specter of Jason's death, which turns out to have more mystery attached to it than Caren ever knew. (Locke is definitely interested in which stories get told, who tells them, and what winds up vanishing into little-known historical records vs. what gets popularized; the theme shows up repeatedly in interesting ways that I won't spoil.)
In the midst of all this, we also learn that Raymond Clancy, Caren's boss, is gearing up to move into politics, and he may sacrifice Belle Vie in the process. He certainly intends to run on his family's good reputation with the local black community, profiting directly off his father's genuine--but not uncomplicated--antiracist efforts, particularly in fostering school integration; Raymond himself never really does anything in that area beyond, of course, frequently reminding Caren what his family has done for hers. There are a lot of ways of grappling with history, Locke seems to imply, but Raymond's is the worst: he wants the glory without the guilt, the credit without the responsibility, and above all else, he doesn't want to have to think about it. He sees only the present and future--or, more specifically, only his present and future.
Caren serves as his opposite number, a woman inextricably tied up in history and responsibility. (To the point where part of her answer might be cutting a few cords.) She's not innocent where other people are guilty; rather, she's not invested in claiming innocence, where other characters in the novel often are. She does not inconsiderable harm, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for selfish ones, but she's aware of it and works to deal with it, internally and externally, and her ideas about how to best do that change gradually as the novel goes on.
All in all, this is a really fascinating novel, full of complex characterization, beautiful prose, resonant themes, and a well-evoked sense of place (spatial and temporal) that affects everything and everyone. I keep coming up with additional bits I want to mention (Caren's complicated relationship with her ex and daughter, for example), but this review is already unwieldy enough. In short: highly recommended. Locke is one of the best and most interesting contemporary crime authors.
The book's protagonist is Caren Gray, the general manager of Belle Vie, a former Southern plantation that's since been turned into a cultural exhibit, offering tours, employing historical reenactors, staging plays, and hosting weddings and other large-scale events. Caren is black, and she has a tangled, intense relationship with Belle Vie, which has been not only her workplace but her home. Not only was she raised there--her mother was the cook for the Clancy family, who own Belle Vie--but her whole known family history stems from there, with one of her ancestors, Jason, having been held in slavery at Belle Vie and worked there after the war as paid labor. (Locke neatly skewers the very popular white narrative of slaves who refused to leave their "masters"--one such sentimental, cringey proclamation of loyalty concludes the Gone With the Wind-style play routinely staged at Belle Vie. Jason's reasons were much more complex: he waited at Belle Vie because it was the last place his wife, sold away by the then-owners of the plantation, would know to look for him.) Belle Vie is, all at the same time, a beautiful place, the site of historical atrocities, a landmark romanticized by a racist culture, a valued piece of black communal history, Caren's past and present home, her livelihood, her family lineage.
It was during the Thompson-Delacroix wedding, Caren's first week on the job, that a cottonmouth, measuring the length of a Cadillac, fell some twenty feet from a live oak on the front lawn, landing like a coil of rope in the lap of the bride's future mother-in-law. It only briefly stopped the ceremony, this being Louisiana after all. Within minutes, an off-duty sheriff's deputy on the groom's side found a 12-gauge in the groundskeeper's shed and shot the thing dead, and after, one of the cater-waiters was kind enough to hose down the grass. The bride and groom moved on to their vows, staying on schedule for a planned kiss at sunset, the mighty Mississippi blowing a breeze through the line of stately, hundred-year-old trees. The uninvited guest certainly made for lively dinner conversation at the reception in the main hall. By the time the servers made their fourth round with bottles of imported champagne, several men, including prim little Father Haliwell, were lining up to have their pictures taken with the viper, before somebody from parish services finally came to haul the carcass away.
Still, she took it as a sign.
A reminder, really, that Belle Vie, its beauty, was not to be trusted.
It's a phenomenally rich location, both symbolically and in terms of the varied lives, stories, and interpretations that intersect there, and Locke absolutely makes the most of it. I would have read an entire novel just about Caren awkwardly trying to negotiate a life that involves preserving her own history at the cost of routinely prettying it up for outside (white) consumption. She's a terrific character, sympathetic even when she's not always likable, and she's constantly being forced to make high-pressure decisions with huge stakes.
Old Belle Vie was a sugar plantation, farming cane, and there's still a cane field on the property, leased out to a company called Groveland; just outside of the usual tourist view, there are migrant workers cutting cane, living out the history Belle Vie only acknowledges. One of the migrant workers, Inés Avalo, is found murdered on the Belle Vie grounds, killed with a cane knife stolen from one of Belle Vie's preserved slave cabins. Her death serves as a catalyst for Locke's examination of character, history, and politics in action, but I think Locke does a reasonably good job of imbuing Inés with personhood and history in her own right. We see a number of people who mourn her, find out some of her own complicated personal history, see her ethical concerns and her fears. Her death, once we understand the full story, ultimately comes as a cruelly unfair interruption of her life story, and that makes her feel all the more real.
However, the actual solving of the mystery doesn't generally feel like the novel's focus. Instead, Locke is interested in the way crimes can crack communities open and bring up surprises. Caren suddenly has to grapple up-close with her ambiguous relationship as "management," neither fully confided in by her superiors nor fully accepted by her staff. She becomes more involved with the investigation than she intends to, and that's partly because she discovers a loyalty she has to her employee Donovan, whom she's never particularly liked; Donovan winds up targeted early on by the police, who are happy to wrestle a plea bargain out of him and call it a day. Caren, who was almost a lawyer, finds she can't let that go--even when her defense of Donovan, or even her accuracy in interviews, is construed by the police as obstruction, something that threatens her directly. And then there's the lingering specter of Jason's death, which turns out to have more mystery attached to it than Caren ever knew. (Locke is definitely interested in which stories get told, who tells them, and what winds up vanishing into little-known historical records vs. what gets popularized; the theme shows up repeatedly in interesting ways that I won't spoil.)
In the midst of all this, we also learn that Raymond Clancy, Caren's boss, is gearing up to move into politics, and he may sacrifice Belle Vie in the process. He certainly intends to run on his family's good reputation with the local black community, profiting directly off his father's genuine--but not uncomplicated--antiracist efforts, particularly in fostering school integration; Raymond himself never really does anything in that area beyond, of course, frequently reminding Caren what his family has done for hers. There are a lot of ways of grappling with history, Locke seems to imply, but Raymond's is the worst: he wants the glory without the guilt, the credit without the responsibility, and above all else, he doesn't want to have to think about it. He sees only the present and future--or, more specifically, only his present and future.
Caren serves as his opposite number, a woman inextricably tied up in history and responsibility. (To the point where part of her answer might be cutting a few cords.) She's not innocent where other people are guilty; rather, she's not invested in claiming innocence, where other characters in the novel often are. She does not inconsiderable harm, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for selfish ones, but she's aware of it and works to deal with it, internally and externally, and her ideas about how to best do that change gradually as the novel goes on.
All in all, this is a really fascinating novel, full of complex characterization, beautiful prose, resonant themes, and a well-evoked sense of place (spatial and temporal) that affects everything and everyone. I keep coming up with additional bits I want to mention (Caren's complicated relationship with her ex and daughter, for example), but this review is already unwieldy enough. In short: highly recommended. Locke is one of the best and most interesting contemporary crime authors.