Goliath
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
When Percy Harding, Goliath's most important citizen, is discovered dead by the railroad tracks outside town one perfect autumn afternoon, no one can quite believe it's really happened. Percy, the president of the town's world-renowned furniture company, had seemed invincible. Only Rosamond Rogers, Percy's secretary, may have had a glimpse of how and why this great man has fallen, and that glimpse tugs at her, urges her to find out more.
Percy isn't the first person to leave Rosamond: everybody seems to, from her husband, Hatley, who walked out on her years ago; to her complicated daughter Agnes, whose girlhood bedroom was papered with maps of the places she wanted to escape to. The town itself is Rosamond's anchor, but it is beginning to quiver with the possibility of change. The high school girls are writing suicide poetry. The town's young, lumbering sidewalk preacher is courting Rosamond's daughter. A troubled teenaged boy plans to burn Main Street to the ground. And the furniture factory itself—the very soul of Goliath—threatens to close.
In the wake of the town's undoing, Rosamond seeks to reunite the grief-shaken community. Goliath, a story of loss and love, of forgiveness and letting go, is a lyrical swoon of a novel by an exceptionally talented newcomer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Percy Harding, the head of the furniture factory that sustains Goliath, N.C., is found dead, an apparent suicide, the little town is launched into uncertainty. Woodring (Springtime on Mars) explores the effects of the man's death on his secretary, Rosamond Rogers; on Vincent Bailey, the 14-year-old who discovered his body; and on the townspeople who grapple in other ways as the factory closes and the burg begins to die. Although the dramatic start is engaging (the first sentence ends with Vincent's discovery of Percy's body), all the characters are defined solely by this supposedly transformative tragedy, making the upheavals hard to believe. Harding as emotional soul and economic center of the town strains credulity, and characters gesture theatrically as opposed to living convincingly. When a grieving Rosamond becomes obsessed with putting on a townwide parade, the sense of portentous artificiality grows even stronger. Woodring does effectively convey the sense of a washed-up, dying place, and there are moments of insight, but overall her second novel assumes an air of quiet importance without earning it.
