Review: Sometimes your dreams end up in your own back yard...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 11, 2012
I'm trying not to give five-star reviews any more. Those should be life-changing. But J. F. Smith's "Falling off the face of the earth" is a wonderful book, don't get me wrong.  It is full of people who you grow to care about; it is full of ideas that make you think; it is a love story that involves a community, not just two people.James Montgomery has returned to his small-town Georgia roots to recover.  His glittering career in NYC has crashed and burned, and he has suffered a hideous personal loss. No wonder he seeks solace in the red Georgia clay.As James begins to settle into what he sees as a temporary recovery period in his career, he begins to re-learn all of the unhappy truths that made his adolescence in Lawter, Georgia so painful. He begins to look more closely at the people he knew and the place he fled, and gradually comes to understand that there's more to small-town life than he might have supposed.  Don't get me wrong--there's plenty of pain still, but pain is part of life no matter where you live. This book is all about being gay in America--but not ONLY about being gay.Kevin, Roddy, Bea, Lindsey, Jerry, Carrie-Ann, Cory, Jesus, Stefanie, Ian--these are the characters you'll meet, and whose humanity and flawed goodness will touch you, even as they begin to shape James's world and thaw the frozen emotions in his heart.  While unusually long, this book didn't feel long to me; and if the editing isn't as sleek as I might like it, it never interfered with my appreciation of the solid core that makes this book an enormously satisfying read.