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Audiobook (abridged)5 hours
Ava's Man
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin' a national bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he's writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family's table through the worst of the Great Depression; a moonshiner who drank exactly one pint for every gallon he sold; an unregenerate brawler, who could sit for hours with a baby in the crook of his arm.
In telling Charlie's story, Bragg conjures up the backwoods hamlets of Georgia and Alabama in the years when the roads were still dirt and real men never cussed in front of ladies. A masterly family chronicle and a human portrait so vivid you can smell the cornbread and whiskey, Ava's Man is unforgettable.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
In telling Charlie's story, Bragg conjures up the backwoods hamlets of Georgia and Alabama in the years when the roads were still dirt and real men never cussed in front of ladies. A masterly family chronicle and a human portrait so vivid you can smell the cornbread and whiskey, Ava's Man is unforgettable.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Reviews for Ava's Man
Rating: 4.226025251141553 out of 5 stars
4/5
219 ratings18 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bragg at his very best. I chased lightning bugs around a few men like his grandpa Charlie when I was much younger, but their species is almost extinct from what I can tell. I'm glad Charlie has a grandson who could so eloquently capture him so future generations will have some chance to know his kind--even if it is only on paper. Make a fresh batch of biscuits and settle in for a terrific read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a really amazing book it made me think of my grandparents and how they grew up
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A wonderful tribute to a loving father read by his Grandson the author.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is the most beautifully told memoir I have ever experienced. I have read the book several times but have never experienced it in this way. Audio books rad by their authors are an unusual treat. I cannot recommend this one highly enough. His best book by far.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart felt story. If I hadn't read "All's over but the Shoutin " first I probably would have given it a 5 star. "All's over but the Shoutin " is the better work.
It's difficult to reach back in time, recent times particularly - times almost remembered. My parents grew up in Alabama during the great depression. I was talking to my father not long before he died at 81. He spoke a little of the hardness, but he was overcome by misery by the memories of the boys - black boys - who were his friends. He started crying as he told me they were so hungry they were eating worms.
It would take thousands of such stories to tell the misery of the depression. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This former Pulitzer prize winning writer (now somewhat disgraced after a scandal!) wrote about his life and his poor mother who lived a hard miserable life in the mountains, a book called "All Over But The Shouting". One character in that book stood out, his moonshine maker grandfather, a movie-ready character if there ever was one! This book is about him, his life, and how the world was changing all around him.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In this fine companion piece to “All Over But the Shoutin’,” Rick Bragg continues to explore the history and times of his family, this time concentrating on the grandfather who died before Bragg’s birth – “for which I will never forgive him.”
Charlie Bundrum was a descendant of French Hugenots, “men who had starved across the water, came to the foothills to farm, log hardwoods and pine, strip-mine granite, make whiskey, raise kids, hunt deer, breed hunting and fighting dogs, preach, curse and brawl.” And he himself did several of those things, with a determination and honesty and grit, looming large in the family history.
But “Ava’s Man” is the history of more than one family. It is the history of a region – the Georgia-Alabama border country – and of the hard times that just got harder during the Great Depression, which came early and stayed late in those piney-woods.
Always loving, always lyrical, even when describing fistfights, feuds, and occasional brushes with the law, “Ava’s Man” sings a uniquely American song; one whose chords will resonate with the reader long after the book is closed. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I highly recommend this bookIn a beautifully touching manner, Bragg traces the life of his maternal grandfather.Bragg never knew Charlie Bundrum...but through family and community history , he paintsan authentic picture of this much loved Appalachian man.The audio was garnish to his story and made the tale compelling to continue.5* and a favoriteA special thanks to the bookworm challenge and Koren's shelf
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nostalgic about Charlie Bundrum, an all-beloved family- and handyman living in the South during the great depression. Not without faults, but revered by everyone. Worked as carpenter, (bootleg) whisky-maker, and fisherman. A bygone time that was not long ago.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I fell in love with Rick Bragg's writing after reading All Over but the Shouting. In it the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist wrote about his childhood in the rural hills of Alabama. In Ava’s Man he takes readers back there to tell the story of Charlie, his grandfather. From the first pages I was completely captivated. His style of writing clicks so beautifully for me. He's writing nonfiction, but he's doing in an in a way that weaves a beautiful tale of the depression era South. You feel like you're there on the riverbank next to Charlie setting trout lines. We follow Charlie and his wife Ava and their many children from one tiny Alabama and Georgia town to another. You feel the heartbreak when a child is sick, you hammer nails into roofs in the southern heat, and you sip moonshine when the day is done. By the time you finish you have as much admiration for Bragg's grandfather as he did himself. Charlie was a different class of man. He raised a family not because it was his job, but because it was his passion and his love.BOTTOM LINE: The incredible thing about Bragg’s work is that he makes an ordinary man extraordinary. He makes the reader fall in love with Charlie by unfolding his life through the eyes of his children and neighbors. Charlie was a legend in his community because he was a good man who everyone loved and in the hands of a talented writer that’s all the story you need. “It didn’t strike the travelers as unusual to see such a large cemetery around such a tiny church, not everybody kneels, but everybody dies.”
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I liked this book a lot - you don't need to be from the south to enjoy the stories and get a real picture of what life was like for these folks. I found the dialect a bit much at times (the dropped "g's" were rather annoying - "gettin' and grinnin' and pickin' and peelin'") and towards the end the story got a bit long, but it was definitely a labor of love about someone who was larger than life that the author sadly never got to know, and that really transcended the story.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was born in July of 1959 and so was Rick Bragg and just a day apart. I was raised in the North, in an urban setting, by working class parents, far removed from Bragg’s upbringing, living in the Deep South, dirt poor, struggling to survive with a mostly absent father. Despite these differences, I feel my only key advantage is that I knew my paternal grandfather and had the immense satisfaction of enjoying his strong presence for over thirty years. Bragg’s grandfather, Charlie Bundrun, died a few years before Rick was born. This is Charlie’s story and what a wonderful tale it is.Charlie was everything a working, family man should be: faithful, loving and protective. He was a capable carpenter, roofer, mechanic. He fished and hunted and when times were lean he ran a still. He had his flaws too. He liked to drink and fight but he was not a mean drunk. He told great stories and danced up a storm. He also doted on his many children. This is Bragg’s second memoir and the first was dedicated to his mother. A perfect ode to a man he never knew and I had the added pleasure of getting to reminisce about my own “bigger than life” Grandpa, as I followed Charlie’s journey.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After rediscovering my love for Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird', I now have a keen craving for any literature, fact or fiction, that brings to life the history of the Deep South. The strong and eccentric characters, the lazy heat, delectable food and lyrical accents. Pulling up a list of recommendations here on Librarything, I wasn't really expecting to find another Mockingbird or Harper Lee, but by happy chance that's just what I got!Rick Bragg's writing has the same colourful detail, warm nostalgia and dry wit of my favourite novel, and just like Harper Lee's masterpiece, the characters are lifelike and sympathetic because they are based on real people. 'Ava's Man' is a story of the Deep South (or the South that once was, during the Depression) and Bragg's own family history. Ava's man is his grandfather, the handsome man on the cover but also the rail thin figure in overalls on the flyleaf, holding an oversized catfish by the mouth. The author never got to meet his fabled grandfather, his mother's father, for which he claims he will never forgive him. After spending a whole day jotting down reminiscences at a family reunion in Alabama, this is the real man that Rick Bragg got to know posthumously - 'since I never really had a grandfather, I decided to make me one'. Charlie and Ava's life, and just the fact that they survived with seven of their eight children, is incredible. It sounds like a cliche now, but Charlie really was just a working man, a roofer who ran a still as a sideline, and Ava was his tough and voluble wife, who would sit by and make sure her children ate first before feeding herself. They moved back and forth between Alabama and Georgia many times before Charlie finally died in Alabama, and that is where most of the family settled and stayed afterwards. There is humour in their history - from the various strays that Charlie would 'adopt' to the beating that Ava once gave a woman named Blackie Lee for hanging her silk stockings on the line - and also sadness, but always a sense of family, love and security.Rick Bragg spins a personal yarn about his beloved grandather, who rightly deserves a book, but likker, commodity cheese and cornbread aside, this could be about any family who stayed together and set down roots for generation after generation to call home.If this is the 'good part' that Rick Bragg missed from his first book, I'm definitely going to have to read 'Shoutin' to fill in the blanks. Beautiful.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ava's man was Bragg's maternal grandfather who passed away before Rick was born into poverty. Like William Faulkner, Bragg writes of the poor American South with such vivid descriptions that you feel as though you are walking along a hot, dusty path in a depression era back woods, spiting tobacco and drinking moon shine as your caloused hands and achy back trudge along yet one more soul depleting day.Like Pat Conroy, Bragg captures the essence of an abusive father who simply won't let go of the booze and the demons.Life was hard, mean and nasty and wore Bragg's family down to a pulp. Bragg's admiration for his grandfather shone through.This is the second book of his that I've read and I'll continue to learn of Bragg's saga. It is wonderful to read such clear, crisp images. This guy can write!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In this second book about his heritage, Rick Bragg uses family stories to capture the nature and personal history of his Maternal Grandfather. Not as potent a work as "Shoutin'", but important in understanding his Mother's resilience.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rick Bragg's best. Not that the others aren't great. This is the best of the best.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5great look at the hard life of rural Alabama during the depression and moonshining days.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bragg is one of the best new Southern writers. He captures both the essence and feel of the story along with presenting a wonderfully objective and personal balance.