Neighbors Hold Unusual Burials in “The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush” https://ift.tt/W9iPzYH
In the most fitting of circumstances, on the day I began Susan Gregg Gilmore’s The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, a book that begins with a funeral for the titular character’s leg, I, too, conducted an odd funeral. It was for one of the backyard birds my dog had long held as an enemy (and, that day, decided to move upon). This, combined with the regional similarities of my own rural Tennessee setting reflected within Gilmore’s book, made the novel engaging from the opening chapter. In truth, though, regardless of whether one might know the Gilmore’s rural world intimately or not, The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush is an easy book to feel a kinship with because of its warmth — full of love, hope, kindness, and community.
At the opening, we meet Leonard Bush, a boy who has recently lost one of his legs due to an infection. He’s determined to give it a “proper goodbye.” So, with the help of his family and friends (and his mama’s food and church hymns), he buries it at the family’s hilltop cemetery. Whereas funerals generally serve as a means of closure, for Leonard and his community, this leg burial sparks something else entirely.
Neighbors begin delivering items — a slingshot, a letter, and more — for Leonard to bury, with the hope that they can be rid of the pains, guilt, and suffering they carry within themselves. The setup quite smartly reminds us that burying a problem doesn’t make that problem really go away.
While Leonard is the protagonist of the novel, there are a number of characters we meet along his journey. June, Leonard’s superstitious and church-going mama, is easy to root for. The same can be said for Emmett, Leonard’s distant but loving father. There are also a number of Leonard’s peers who give the book an added layer of depth. Azalea, Leonard’s crush and friend who is tough and loving, lives in a situation at home far from the safeness Leonard experiences at his own. Little Henry, lost and, in many ways, the kind of human who seems maybe too good for this world, might just be my favorite character in the novel, and his story, entailing a recently-dead mother, is the one that I find myself thinking about the most. I won’t spoil what he needs buried and what all he draws upon, but the Little Henry moments are some of the book’s best.
The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush isn’t a doorstopper of a book. In fact, it clocks in at just under 300 pages. However, there is a grandness to Gilmore’s novel. The story is large in how it depicts the community. The place is alive with the river, hills, trees, and cows. Plus, in addition to the characters I’ve already mentioned that showcase most of the book’s love, there is a rascally preacher and his poor-intentioned wife, a horrible boyfriend, bullies, an abusive father, and snarky church ladies. Even with all of these characters, the book is deeply intimate. We feel the moments Gilmore paints because the world and its inhabitants seem so complex and so true.
While Gilmore explores a number of weighty subjects such as death, family disagreements, assault, grief, and judgement, the book balances this heaviness with eccentricities that provide humor. For example, Emmett’s relationship with a certain showy brand of religion leads to one of the funniest lines in the book: “Don’t start quoting Scripture. I’m trying to eat.” And June’s tendency to get lost in her cleaning gives this: “June loved a clean house, but Leonard had never seen her work so hard to rid it of something no one could see. By the time she was done, the house reeked of bleach. Leonard felt woozy-headed. His throat burned. When he complained, June opened the windows and told him to hush.”
As the days of summer draw to an end, you might be looking for one last novel to get lost in on those late evenings on the porch — under the shade, with the crickets chirping and the birds singing. Here it is: Susan Gregg Gilmore’s The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush.
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