The Distance from the Heart of Things by Ashley Warlick

From the Publisher

Meet Mavis Black, whose confidently intimate voice invites readers into the eccentric world of her large southern family. Coming home from college to her grandfather's prosperous Carolina vineyard, Mavis takes the measure of the emotional distance she has traveled from the people closest to her heart: her dreamy mother, her practical aunt, her bewildered boyfriend, her prodigal uncle - and most of all Punk, her grandfather, who plans to make Mavis his sole heir. Told with warmth, wit, and brio, Warlick's first novel rejoices in womanhood and the strength of loving ties. As New York Newsday said of Warlick, "Her literary talents, not to mention her prospects, are immense."

Publishers Weekly

The youngest winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, 23-year-old Warlick shows a gift for fluent, lilting language in a first novel that celebrates a young woman's emotional deepening during a summer with her sweetly oddball family. Mavis Black comes home to lush, rural Edisto, S.C., from Appalachian State, where she has been sent by her grandfather, Punk, to get a bookkeeping degree so that she can help run his thriving vineyards. The big June event is Aunt Hazel's wedding to Sal Arceldi, a "divorced Mormon I-talian,'' nuptials entailing a merger between Punk's grapes and Sal's winery. With romance in the air, Mavis frets about Harris, the lover she has left behind. She is also plagued by nearly incestuous feelings for her hard-drinking, reckless, mean-as-a-snake Uncle Owen, only four years older than she, and her adored companion since childhood. Soon after Mavis's arrival, Owen flees to Saudi Arabia, leaving one old girlfriend who flaunts the fact that she doesn't wear underwear, and one new teenage conquest, who may be pregnant. Mavis and these two women drive to visit Harris, dressed as a knight for a "Renaissance Faire"; Hazel returns solo and disillusioned from her honeymoon; while Punk, dying of cancer, tries to save the merger with Sal. Warlick gets the Southern atmosphere just right: the heavy, drugged summer days, the rampant kudzu and the quaint family rituals. But Mavis has a tendency to speak in platitudes and to invest everything with cosmic significance. And the dreamily introspective prose, meant to reveal the protagonist's sensibility, is often overwrought, so heavily portentous and cloying that it undermines what would otherwise be an appealing tale about the bonds of family and the responsibilities of love. Author tour. (Apr.)

School Library Journal

YACollege experiences change a person. Mavis Black learns this lesson too well as she returns to her grandfather's vineyards in South Carolina after graduation from Appalachia State College in North Carolina. Eccentric family members bring humor and pathos to the story. Grandpa Punk has plans for Mavis as he has had since she was born. Aunt Hazel lives for her wedding, the pivotal event in the story. Mavis's mother still longs for her first and only true love, who died just prior to Mavis's birth. Uncle Owen is a wild, rebellious young man unable or unwilling to tame his tumultuous nature. Mavis is a likable young woman, trying to be the best she can and to understand herself in the process. Small-town life is vividly portrayed with real people tied to their land. The writing is smooth; the characters are unique and individual; the setting is alive and vivid. YAs yearning for freedom and distance from parental and societal ties will find this book well worth reading. They are sure to find much here to laugh about, think about, and cry about.Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA

Kirkus Reviews

A richly textured but slow-moving southern family story from first-novelist Warlick, who, at 23, is the youngest recipient ever of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship.

After four years of college, financed by the beloved and difficult grandfather she calls "Punk," Mavis Black returns home to South Carolina to be the bookkeeper at Punk's vineyards. Although her college was in a neighboring state, Mavis has not been home in two years. She had a life—and boyfriend—in her college town, but she knows that doesn't completely account for her absence. Returning now, she has much to figure out, including how to find her place again among the people who've always meant everything to her: her reclusive mama; her grandmother, Miss Pauline; Owen, her wild uncle, who's only six years older than Mavis and has always been more like a brother; and, finally and inevitably, Punk, the grand patriarch who's always kept everything going. And plenty is going on, including an extravagant wedding for Mavis's 33-year-old aunt, Hazel, major changes at the vineyard, and Owen's carousing, which results, eventually, in his disappearing from town altogether. Warlick writes evocatively about South Carolina, the vineyards, "the smell of rotten peaches in the sun," and the Edisto River threading its way though the countryside. And—excepting the shadowy Mama—she has created characters of depth and real presence. But for all the plotlines, including the question of Owen's whereabouts and Mavis's on-again, off-again boyfriend Harris, there is nothing that truly carries the story forward. The trouble lies partly in Mavis's narrative habit of telling too much at times while at others—as if coyly—telling not nearly enough. At end, most of the unresolved questions remain unsolved, and, as we'd been kept distant from the heart of things, we're left with glimmers of a powerful story.

Like the river: lovely and languid, but just as winding and elusive too.

What People Are Saying

Lee K. Abbott
Lordy, to get this good, Ashley Warlick has obviously made a pact with every sweet-talking devil in hell.

Robert Olmstead
Ashley Warlick is a new and singular voice of audacious, wilfull prose, glittering, a writer who signifies and sanctifies its pure light and sweet music of words. Mark my words: this is the advent of a writer in full stride, full power of motion.

Gail Godwin
Ashley Warlick's talent is an occasion for rejoicing. The voice of The Distance from the Heart of Things is as fresh and needed as rain after a draught. It's both full of grace and packed on every page with a visceral wisdom. An unexpected joy.

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