Reviewed by John David Harding
Sion Dayson's debut novel, As a River, signals the arrival of a significant new voice in literary fiction. Shades of preeminent forbearers texture her prose, among them Morrison's lyricism, Baldwin's social consciousness, and Adichie's ear for dialogue. Similar to Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, As a River treats the reader kindly, forgoing linguistic acrobatics in a distilled prose that's reminiscent of poetry. While lyrical novels might falter where story and plot are concerned, As a River tracks steadily, slicing through troubled waters bubbling up from the past.
Reckoning with the ways we hide from our pain, Dayson's novel depicts two time periods in the life of Greer Michaels, an African American man from the fictional Bannen, Georgia. In this small, segregated southern town, Greer as a young man discovers first love at the river's edge—with a white girl, who dazzles and troubles him—only to have it painfully ripped away. Compounding his anxiety is his silent, emotionally distant mother, Elizabeth, who feeds and shelters Greer but does not nourish his soul. He has questions: What happened to his father? Why is his mother so sad? And why can't anyone talk about their pain?
Fatherless, motherless, and loveless, Greer leaves Bannen, expatriating first to Europe and then to Africa. But returning to Georgia in 1977, Greer finds an even bigger mess than the one he left behind, one unresolved by time and distance. "There's a lot that needs fixing around here," he thinks, referring to his childhood home, but also to his mother, himself, Bannen, and the United States.
Throughout his childhood, Greer bears the brunt of his mother's bottled up anguish. After one too many times of hearing her refrain, "I don't want to talk about it," Greer's frustration overflows. "There are things I want, Mama," he says. "Don't you see I'm suffocating here? . . . I can't stay cooped up in here, never saying anything, never being able to ask anything." Eventually, alienation between mother and son becomes too much to abide, and Greer decides to investigate the matter on his own. What he learns about his past so disturbs him that he flees on a ship that carries him across the Atlantic to France. In Paris and in Ghana, Greer makes a life that is more fulfilling, diverse, and beautiful than he could have ever imagined. This new life, however, is disrupted when Greer receives word that his mother has fallen gravely ill. Out of a sense of obligation, he returns home to help her face this illness and to find some answers.
Where the past is concerned, Elizabeth remains tight-lipped, and for good reason. Although she holds the key to Greer's questions about his lineage, her stories prove too painful to articulate. Through flashback, we learn that Elizabeth experienced terrible loss owing to the power of Bannen's Sicama River. Not long before this tragedy, she was a talented gospel singer who could move congregants into a state of religious ecstasy through the power of her voice. But on a fateful day, when she witnesses the drowning death of her true love, Major, the music in her life comes to a halt:
She didn't know what became of Major's body, where that horrible parade had ended. The preacher could have dumped him at the fork of the road, or neighbors might have seen fit to bury him with care under the red clay now hard from winter's approach, but the story for her had already stopped; suspended at the river, forever the grave and memorial, where before it had been the site of their love, fast and deep.
The Sicama River, also known as Snake Creek, is a place of love and loss, creation and destruction, both a barrier and a conveyance. It plays a decisive role in the lives of Elizabeth and Greer, and also Ceiley, a young girl whom Greer befriends upon his return to Bannen. Greer and Ceiley share much in common; she too comes from uncertain origins. Her mother claims that Ceiley was immaculately conceived, but it is later revealed to be yet another tale told to hide a painful truth. Greer mentors Ceiley, telling her about the people and places he's seen around the world: "Women who could carry anything on their head, from large pails of water to long stalks of wheat. Men who wore dresses and bundles of cloth like beehives on top. Churches with a thousand spires, paintings made of sand." When Ceiley attempts to emulate Greer by running away, Greer helps her through this rite of passage, teaching her a lesson in courage, one he needs to hear himself. "There are things to learn here," he says, referring to Bannen. "You can't spend your whole life trying to start over. There's no use pining after things that are no longer green."
In much of this artfully conceived novel, both shifts in time and changes in narrative voice are well executed. At other points, readers may notice the artist's hand at work, nudging them awake from the fictional dream. For example, one of the novel's antagonists is Elizabeth's one-time employer, a white judge named Jefferson Thomas. Of course, the name inverts that of the US president and the notorious slaveholder, whose abhorrent conduct is paralleled in the novel. Rendered thus, the allusion receives too fine a point, overstated instead of organic. Elsewhere, Ceiley trips on the sidewalk, skinning her knees and sending the birdcage she is carrying crashing to the ground. In turn, the cage breaks open, and her pet bird flies free, predictably foreshadowing Ceiley's attempt to free herself from Bannen. Most notably, a plot twist central to Greer's exodus from Bannen—the details of which I will not spoil here—seems manufactured rather than of a piece with an otherwise crystalline plot.
Far from diminishing the novel's overall achievements, these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Bringing to bear Dayson's considerable gifts as a storyteller, the story of Greer's struggle to understand his place in the world rings clear and true. I can only hope that As a River is the first of many novels yet to come. I plan to be first in line to read the next.