‘Carolina Hall Girls’
— Melissa Mesku
We’re freshmen, the word dangerous and exciting, like driving a car for the first time.
‘Carolina Hall Girls,’ a novel excerpt, appeared earlier this summer as a Story of the Week at Narrative Magazine. I recently had the pleasure of hearing its author, Lina Patton, read it to a crowd. It’s a compelling piece to hear aloud—the language is intimate and evocative. The heat of the South. The sweetness of late youth. The naive ambitions of the “girls,” and their trepidations, their contrivances. All are delicate yet palpable in Patton’s cadence and careful crafting of scene. When I heard this piece aloud, I felt its fluttering heart. All I wanted was to get my hands on the book from which it was excerpted.
Alas, the novel is still in progress. Patton was gracious enough, however, to permit me to read it in draft form. Now that I’ve read the work in full, I can say unequivocally that its strength holds throughout. The coming novel should be a highly anticipated debut.