Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar
By Ron A. Austen
Paperback 172 pages, Southeast Missouri State Univ Press; (October 1, 2019)
Reviewed by Tammie Bob
May, 2020
Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar is the kind of book that makes being on the FAW Literature Awards Committee delightful (and if you're not, you should definitely consider joining us!) I opened this book with the odd title last September, not expecting to find much of interest, and was quickly pulled into a gritty neighborhood of North St. Louis through the exuberant language of its narrator, the nine-year old Avery Colt. Through linked short stories, I followed an ever-maturing Avery through young manhood, in a series of misadventures through which he tries to make sense of the adult world, which often makes no sense at all.
Avery despairs at his "weakness", that he is "soft as pudding," although that's the very quality that will likely save him. He's constantly failing at "manly" tasks like unclogging toilets, drowning possums, or by feeling horror at the robbery of a beaten man while others laugh with assumed power. He listens to the dubious advice of a colorful assortment of elders; every so often he gets advice worth listening to. This St. Louis community is closely knit, a sharply drawn cast of parents, siblings, aunties and uncles, parents, grandparents, and their current and former lovers, teachers and friends, with everybody in everybody else's business.
The writing in these stories is impressive, poetically playing with language rhythms, metaphor, and forms, and even with print and fonts. Some of the text is hand-written notes from one character to another, or lists, or recipes; here and there is a drawing. The author never goes for the obvious plot twists and events really move along, so this very literary book is also a page-turner.
As Avery Colt survives and matures, he turns from a frightened boy who wants to be cool into a young man willing to help, to turn a harsh history of cumulative losses into strength. The transformation is not dramatic, but it feels real and satisfying.
Threaded through this book is an adult Avery looking back, making sense of what he learned growing up. "I couldn't articulate it back then," he writes, "but I was beginning to learn how anxiety could hijack the circuitry in my brain and redraw the world in wobbling, surreal lines." A little later, he captures how well anxiety can be mixed with nostalgia, a sense of place, an a child's remembered voice:
Folks loved the corner store. But I used to hate it so bad. Granddad and Grandma always put me to work sweeping ashes out of the smoker, washing grit out of collard greens, sponging pig's blood off the butcher's table. I didn't understand that years later, after the corner store was nothing but weeks and rubble, I'd still smell ancient charcoal smoke on my skin, feel grit under my fingernails, see my palms stained with blood, and succumb to a crippling grief, the kind that closes over you like wings, eclipses the best days.
At its heart, this is a book about family and community: Avery's namesake who was in the drug trade, his grandmother and her recipes that can't be duplicated by ingredients alone, a granddad known "for handing out good, country-ass whoopings" and a mother and sister who fight so hard only a "soft" son could bring them together.
I read many of the seventy-something books submitted for the Literature Award this year, and forgot most of them soon after I closed them. Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar has stuck with me these many months, and was a favorite of the committee as well. This gem of a book, above all is a great read.
About the Author Ron A. Austin holds a MFA from the U. of Missouri-St. Louis and is a 2016 Regional Arts Commission Fellow.
