Learning from McBride

“Does the Egg Man bring the Son of Man his eggs?”

“He yet brings him his eggs.”

“How does he like his eggs?”

“Who?”

“Son of Man. How do he like his eggs?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

“I don’t know him,” Nate said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Miggy said. “He knows you.”

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

I checked this book out from the library, but I want to have my own copy. I’ll be buying one soon.

This tiny quotation ends a chapter. It ends that chapter with a mystery as one character knows something that neither readers nor another character knows. Not reading on, especially given the context the rest of the chapter provides, feels impossible to me.

The context consists of Miggy sharing information about her job and eating a slice of pie, which could be catastrophically boring but in McBride’s narrative isn’t. Part of the reason it isn’t boring is because of earlier characterization and who is at stake. But even if the chapter stood alone it would include characters’ reactions to each other. Those reactions provide tension. The dialogue also characterizes, and it reflects tensions between characters, but much of it is long paragraphs of Miggy describing her workplace. Those descriptions matter to readers because of earlier work McBride has done, but also because of the setting as she shares those descriptions and how Miggy uses an element of it: the pie. Finally, the description is interesting because she has reasons to not give it. She’s in favor of how the information she’s presenting might be used, but wary of being the source of it and explicitly presents it in a way she feels will give her deniability. This also adds to the tension. She’s presenting a plan for a rescue. (I’ll avoid spoilers by saying no more.)

There is much more to say about this chapter and this book: the way dialogue characterizes, the implications of names characters give themselves and that characters give each other, how backstories can contain mysteries and move the plot, and how chapters can be structured to hook reads as much as first lines. I highly recommend The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store as a novel but also as a textbook on fiction writing.