When Liv and Autis buy an old plantation house on Wadmalaw Island, they believe they have purchased their dream house. Soon, however, they discover that they may have purchased more than they bargained for. Liv hears voices in the basement and soon the couple finds slave graves at the edge of the water. Their problems begin to escalate when Liv begins to share a physical relationship with one of the spirits in the basement, and a black panther begins stalking their land and attacking their friends. As Liv and her new friend Bambi begin to piece together the history of the plantation by talking to a local basket weaver named Sweetgrass Weaver, the truth about the spirits and Liv's ancestry begins to come to life. Will Autis and Liv flee Maxton Manor as so many other have before them or will they be able to find a way to pacify the spirits and live safely and happily in their new home? Find out by reading Bart Bare's third novel, Wadmalaw: A Ghost Story.
Review
This is the second novel I have read by Bart Bare. The first, Girl: A Novel, I didn't care for. Wadmalaw is a much better story, one I was actually interested in, but I still find the writing leaves a lot to be desired. Bart Bare would benefit greatly from a qualified editor. The constant grammatical errors and typos throughout the book are distracting and make the book look unprofessional. While much of the writing is acceptable or even good, there are a number of places where the writing is too flowery, giving the impression that the writer is trying too hard. I also found the author's attempt at dialect for the character Bambi to be poor. I was surprised that a Southern writer would write Southern dialect that was so overdone and stereotypical. Finally, I felt like there were several aspects of the story that were unnecessary. First, while I understand that character development is important, I didn't really see how Bambi's backstory was important to the story. I also felt like her indignation over Liv's apparent tryst with the ghost of Mongo Maxton was absolutely ridiculous, especially in light of her own past, and that Liv's subsequent guilt over being unfaithful to her husband was equally absurd, a fact that, thankfully, Autis seemed to agree with. Finally, I thought the neighbor that had been possessed by Brutus Maxton should have been cut from the novel entirely. That part of the story was not developed well enough to really add to the story and disrupted the flow of the main story. Personally, I was a bit bothered by the incestuous relationships in the novel. Perhaps that was common on slave plantations, and I am just simply unaware, but I really felt that it was unnecessary to have this aspect to the novel. Why was important that Camille and Mongo be related, especially as closely related as half-brother and sister? Certainly it was common for slave masters to raped female slaves and, as a result, have mixed children who remained on the planation as slaves, but I would think those relationships were known, though not talked about, and that any incest would be avoided. In the novel, it seemed that Camille and Mongo had no problem with it, which I found strange and unbelievable. All in all, the strong storyline of Wadmalaw was damaged by poor writing and editing, making what could have been a great novel mediocre at best.
References
Bare, B. (2011). Wadmalaw: A ghost story. Vilas, NC: Canterbury House
Publishing.
[Photograph of book cover]. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.tower.com/
wadmalaw-ghost-story-bart-bare-paperback/wapi/117485300
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