Archive - August 16, 2015

Landfall By Ellen Urbani (Guatemala 1991-92) Forest Avenue Press August 29, 2015 304 Pages $15.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) • I haven’t read Ellen Urbani’s 2006 memoir, When I Was Elena, but I will certainly do so now after having lived in the world of her stunning debut novel, Landfall. Urbani is an extraordinary writer with an exceptional gift for entering the consciousness of both black and white characters in America’s South.  In Landfall, she vividly portrays the milieu in which they live, comparing, contrasting and showing how culturally entwined the two races are.  She knows her contemporary southern life inside and out, and depicts its people in language imbued with the rich vernacular of place. “He was as country as cornflakes,” she says of a character. “You be stuck on that boy like hair on a biscuit,” a girl teases. “Girl, them boys ain’t . . .