Alison's Automotive Repair Manual
- Book Review,
by Brad Barkley
Amazon.com
Alison lives in a small West Virginia town with her sister and brother-in-law. As Alison's Automotive Repair Manual opens, her main occupation is mourning her husband, who died in an accident two years ago. Her sister, her friends, and her former boss at the community college have all grown weary of her grief, and beg her to move on. But Alison is paralyzed, maybe partially because she wasn't all that crazy about her husband in the first place. One day she discovers a disintegrating 1976 Corvette in her sister's garage and finally thinks of something she'd like to do: repair the Vette. Alison knows nothing about cars, but pegs away at her project anyhow, knowing all the while that "the whole thing was folly." Meanwhile, we follow her healing, her new love for a munitions expert named Max, her sister's quest to get pregnant, and the (literal) exposure of the town's secret history. While Alison is an appealingly complex character, forever stumbling into gaffes, the book is a little too neat, with its themes, goals, and love interests laid out tidily in the first 40 pages. But fans of quirky Southerners such as Jill McCorkle will find a sympathetic new voice here. --Claire Dederer
From Publishers Weekly
Automotive repair doubles as grief therapy in Barkley's quirky, emotionally resonant third novel (after Money, Love) set in a small town in West Virginia, where a newly widowed young woman tries to delay putting her life back together. Alison Durst is the witty, 30-ish protagonist who's become a semipermanent guest of her sister Sarah and brother-in-law Bill ever since her husband died in an accident. She's already spent two years in mourning, and in spite of Sarah and Bill's pleas that she get on with it, Alison makes yet another bid to prolong her suspended state: she's going to rebuild her brother-in-law's broken-down Corvette, and then she'll leave. Of course, she knows nothing about cars. Sparks really start to fly, however, when Max Kesler, the owner of a one-man munitions company, comes to help her with the project. Their initial dates are as explosive as they are funny, with Alison accompanying Max while he blows up a silo and then scopes out the hotel that may be his next target. Barkley spends a bit too much time on Max's father, a compulsive liar whose habit is beginning to interfere with Max's relationship with Alison. This subplot slows the romantic momentum, but the combination of Barkley's understated comic style and well-calibrated dialogue is more than enough to overcome the misstep. The icing on the cake is the author's touching portrayal of smalltown life in West Virginia.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Barkley is back (after Money, Love), and he has a winner. Almost two years after her husband's accidental death, Alison Durst's life is at a standstill. Her house is empty, her teaching job is on hold, and she's still living with her sister and brother-in-law in their small West Virginia town. A moldering 1976 Corvette in the garage seems to be the way out of this "rest stop." Armed with the Haynes Automotive Repair Manual (quoted between book chapters), Alison endeavors to restore the car, which results in life-changing implications for all around her. With car repair as metaphor, we learn much about forgiveness and hope; the differences among facts, lies, and truth; and the grand importance of how and with whom our life journeys are made. Barkley steers this one straight into our hearts. Highly recommended for most fiction collections.Rebecca Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland HeightsCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
,USA Today,
" 'A' is for Alison's Automotive Repair Manual . . . a funny, fast, and Zen-freee read."
Review
"What a love of a book it is!... I will be talking about it for years."
,Boston Herald,
"An enriching fable . . . Heartwarming."
Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls
"Beguiling and utterly original, Alison's Automotive Repair Manual is a modern ffable of love and community."
Sunday Gazette-Mail [Charleston, WV]
"It's a measure of Barkley's talent that he has fashioned something so delicate from distributors, dynamite, and grief."
Wilmington Star-News [NC]
"A delightful, bittersweet romantic comedy that handles well on curves and can sstop on a dime."
BookPage
"A funny, poignant and life-affirming by-the-book restoration of the soul."
Time Out NY
"Barkley has assembled a plot that slides as smoothly as a well-oiled piston."
Library Journal
"Barkley is back and he has a winner.... Barkley steers this one straight into oour hearts." (starred)
Review
"What a love of a book it is!... I will be talking about it for years."
Book Description
A widow in her mid-thirties, Alison has been mourning for two years. Now living in small town West Virginia with her sister Sarah and brother-in-law Bill, Alison is unable to move on with her life. Finally, she promises Sarah and Bill that she will start over---once she restores the abandoned, nearly ruined 1976 Corvette she found rusting in the garage and immediately loved. Unfortunately, Alison doesn't know the first thing about cars, and the fact that the townspeople (with the exception of a cute demolition man) find a woman messing with automotive parts bewildering doesn't help.
With beautiful frankness and surprising hilarity, Brad Barkley tells of a gutsy woman's attempts to overcome loss, and fit into a close-knit community, in a triumphant look at grief, love, loss, and moving on.
From the Back Cover
Praise for Alison's Automotive Repair Manual
"Underline this writer as one whose work needs to be on your shelf. You will be much the better for it." ---Mississippi Clarion-Ledger
"It will remind readers of the best of Eudora Welty. . . . Delightful." ---Richmond Times-Dispatch
"An enriching fable . . . Heartwarming." ---Boston Herald
"Beguiling and utterly original, Alison's Automotive Repair Manual is a modern fable of love and community." ---Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls
About the Author
Brad Barkley, a native of North Carolina, is the author of the novel, Money, Love, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Book Sense 76 choice. Money, Love was named one of the best books of 2000 by the Washington Post and Library Journal. Barkley was named as one of the "Newcomers of 2002: Breakthrough Writers You Need to Know" by Book magazine. He is also the author of a story collection, Circle View. His short fiction has appeared in more than two dozen magazines, including the Southern Review, the Georgia Review, Oxford American, the Greensboro Review, Glimmer Train, Book magazine, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, which has twice awarded him the Emily Balch Prize for Best Fiction. His work was anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2002 and again in 2003. A story collection, Another Perfect Catastrophe, is his next book, also published by St. Martin's Press. He has won four Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Brad Barkley teaches creative writing at Frostburg State University. He lives in western Maryland with his wife, Mary, and two children.
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