Ask Me Nothing Carol Fox Books
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Underneath the surface of a small Central Texas town, where people know each other and adhere to the old values of hard work and neighborliness, a dark secret life flows silently. People congregate at an old-time country store and at their churches, but are not immune to the modern complications of divorce and remarriage—and murder.
Carla, a petite pretty girl, is one of three sisters in a poor but respectable family. Unlike her passionate, acting-out younger sister, she never gives her parents a moment’s trouble. Nor is she like her self-sacrificing older sister, June. Carla harbors a strong work ethic, a fierce ambition, and a powerful sex drive—with a creative flair. Her high school sweetheart, Leroy, can never forget Carla, even after his dreams are shattered. And Ray, a big man with a big heart, succumbs to a shocking web of deceit.
Jim, a man whose taciturn exterior hides his preoccupation with a personal tragedy, captains the Search and Rescue horse team, called to the small Central Texas town of Graylor to search for the body of a missing man. But Bill, the deputy sheriff in charge of the investigation, resents any outside interference. He is embroiled in the competing claims of his current and former wives, and his son Jeffrey seems headed in the wrong direction.
How will all these lives intersect? How do ordinary people change when a brutal murder severs the ties of kinship, love, and loyalty?
Set to the rhythms of nature—sowing, growing, harvesting—in a rural landscape that still retains a few wild places, the book poses the question Is a sociopath born or made, is it nature or nurture—or a combination of the two?
Ask Me Nothing Carol Fox Books
This first novel by Carol Fox uses prose as spare as a dry Texas summer. Her rural setting is populated by ordinary people, amidst whom two murders occur. But unlike most crime procedurals, the focus is not on “who dunnit,” but rather on how and why the crimes happened, and their impact on the survivors and their small communities.Structurally, the author ties together three narrative arcs: two in real time, and one developing chronologically over 14 years. One real-time narrative focuses on Bill, a local deputy sheriff, first encountered as he “hitched up his belt, dragged down by the weight of the Glock, but it wouldn’t stay above his protruding belly.” But rather than being treated as a cartoonish figure, the deputy is portrayed as a caring figure dedicated to public service and, as the book develops, to saving his teenage son Jeff from adolescent torpor in the aftermath of divorce.
The second real-time narrative concerns Jim, a “rangy man, who looked as though he’d been born on horseback,” who heads a team of mounted searchers looking for the body of the second victim. Jim and his team are portrayed in a somewhat stylized manner consistent with Western conventions, but Jim’s character, and the back story of his motivation for searching, are revealed in the course of the narrative, which serves to humanize him. An effective subplot centers on the interaction of Jim, Bill and Jeff during the search, grounded by a mutual love of horses.
The third narrative focuses on Carla and her development. Carla’s character is firmly established in the opening chapter as she kicks the legs out from under her baby sister and contrives, successfully, to shift blame to her other sister. Ms. Fox then shows how Carla’s intelligence, drive for self-improvement, use of sex as power, and total lack of empathy and remorse enable her to manipulate her lovers while becoming a highly- proficient trauma nurse with a chillingly clinical interest in “all the different ways the human body could be injured or compromised.” In the Texas parlance, Carla is a true “stem-winder,” rather like Scarlett O’Hara’s character as adapted by Annie Proulx.
Throughout the novel, the author cuts back and forth through time and setting, which is an effective means of moving her plot lines forward. The three narrative arcs skillfully intersect in a deliberately understated and almost anti-climactic fashion. Ms. Fox thankfully resists the rookie temptations of resolving plot lines by cataclysmic endings and deus ex machina devices. Rather, you can see it all coming, and the remainder of the novel shifts to a forward focus on the survivors and the parents, sisters, children, friends and neighbors with whom Ms. Fox has populated her book along the way. There is also a moving meditation by Jim on the nature of murder – individual and large-scale – and motivations – personal, political and commercial - that puts the crime in perspective.
This is a novel set in a very small place: rural Central Texas. And it is very much of the place. There is extensive taxonomic detail: a car does not simply pass cows in a pasture; rather they are identified as “two Brangus, a Charolais cross, and the last a reddish one.” There are rich (sometimes overly so) descriptions of sunsets, crops, livestock, trees, birds and landscape used to mark the shifting of scenes and locations. Beer joints, pickups, horse trailers and feed stores are prominently featured, and food and beer are central props in many scenes. But overall, the use of detail is effective and works to root the characters to the place, although some repetitive descriptions (such as the tree line marking the edge of the San Sebastian River) prove irritating.
It should also be noted that there is no profanity or gratuitous violence in this novel – a remarkable departure from current books and films where f-bombs and exploding cars and bodies are so pervasive as to be meaningless. But the novel is not prudish: Carla’s sex scenes are focused and steamy and show the source of her power over men. And in the manner of “True Grit,” the dialogue is somewhat stiff and sanitized – it works, but sounds a little higher brow than what actually gets spoken, and omits colorful colloquialisms that one might expect in a rural setting – particularly a Texas one.
But all in all, Ask Me Nothing is a well-crafted and gripping first novel, with a unique tone and feel, that cries out for a sequel. We want to hear more from this very small space, and the people who inhabit it.
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Ask Me Nothing Carol Fox Books Reviews
You start by wondering how these disparate characters and stories can possibly be tied together by something other than place and then watch as the stories unfold into a complex analysis of family and a sociopath's manipulations. Great character development and you just can feel the countryside. Our book club read it and everyone was enthusiastically discussing it from several viewpoints. We all gave it five stars!
Carol Fox writes with precision and a sparseness that reflects the landscape in which her novel takes place. Carla is a fascinating character, an ambitious small-town girl with a terrific work ethic and sociopathic tendencies. Jim, who is divorced and struggles to maintain a relationship with his young son, is called upon to spearhead a search-and-rescue team searching for a missing man connected with Carla. Slowly, their lives intersect with explosive results. The Central Texas landscape and the routines of a small town provide the backdrop to this Gothic page-turner. This is a fine first novel from someone who knows that landscape — and small-town dynamics — intimately.
Carol Fox has written a Shakespearean tragedy to rival LEAR in this dark tale of a scheming femme fatale,
ASK ME NOTHING is relentless in its realism. As someone who lives in "Williamsville," I can tell you that the residents of "Graylor," "Oatville," and "Wirtz" will recognize every house, barn, cow, pasture, bird, and tuft of grass described in the story--and probably most of the characters too. Although one of Fox's story threads is hopeful, there is no happy ending. Life is what it is, and Fox portrays every horror and sorrow of it with a master hand. I was especially impressed by her descriptions of the Search and Rescue team and her knowledge of the medical scene. Where did she learn all those ways to kill people and should I watch my latte the next time I meet her at Starbucks?
In the beginning was the corpse, found by Search and Rescue on August 21, 2003, in a barn in rural Central Texas. Who is the corpse?
In August 1979, Carla, a little girl in the little town of Graylor, trips her baby sister as the baby takes her first step. Carla can’t be the corpse, however much the reader may come to want her to be, because the corpse is a man. So what does Carla have to do with the corpse? Every time a new man entered the story between 1979 and 2003, I wondered, “Is he the corpse? Will Carla kill him? If she kills him, will she get away with it?”
Much of the story is from Carla’s point of view, about her ambition and her dealings with men, any one of whom may turn out to be the corpse. But the wider story is about the culture Carla came out of, the community of small farms and towns in the fertile black dirt of Central Texas around the “San Sebastian” River northeast of Austin.
That river runs through the story, with its pastures and fields and cows and horses and rabbits and blue jays and red cardinals. The writer is a rancher in Central Texas, and a master of setting. She knows the people at the feed stores and churches and beer joints, who tell the wider story in daily gossip. And the reader sees the story from their point of view.
In the beginning Jim Bowman, the Search and Rescue man from Dallas, finds the corpse. At intervals throughout the novel, he observes the survivors as only an outsider can. And the reader observes them with him.
This first novel by Carol Fox uses prose as spare as a dry Texas summer. Her rural setting is populated by ordinary people, amidst whom two murders occur. But unlike most crime procedurals, the focus is not on “who dunnit,” but rather on how and why the crimes happened, and their impact on the survivors and their small communities.
Structurally, the author ties together three narrative arcs two in real time, and one developing chronologically over 14 years. One real-time narrative focuses on Bill, a local deputy sheriff, first encountered as he “hitched up his belt, dragged down by the weight of the Glock, but it wouldn’t stay above his protruding belly.” But rather than being treated as a cartoonish figure, the deputy is portrayed as a caring figure dedicated to public service and, as the book develops, to saving his teenage son Jeff from adolescent torpor in the aftermath of divorce.
The second real-time narrative concerns Jim, a “rangy man, who looked as though he’d been born on horseback,” who heads a team of mounted searchers looking for the body of the second victim. Jim and his team are portrayed in a somewhat stylized manner consistent with Western conventions, but Jim’s character, and the back story of his motivation for searching, are revealed in the course of the narrative, which serves to humanize him. An effective subplot centers on the interaction of Jim, Bill and Jeff during the search, grounded by a mutual love of horses.
The third narrative focuses on Carla and her development. Carla’s character is firmly established in the opening chapter as she kicks the legs out from under her baby sister and contrives, successfully, to shift blame to her other sister. Ms. Fox then shows how Carla’s intelligence, drive for self-improvement, use of sex as power, and total lack of empathy and remorse enable her to manipulate her lovers while becoming a highly- proficient trauma nurse with a chillingly clinical interest in “all the different ways the human body could be injured or compromised.” In the Texas parlance, Carla is a true “stem-winder,” rather like Scarlett O’Hara’s character as adapted by Annie Proulx.
Throughout the novel, the author cuts back and forth through time and setting, which is an effective means of moving her plot lines forward. The three narrative arcs skillfully intersect in a deliberately understated and almost anti-climactic fashion. Ms. Fox thankfully resists the rookie temptations of resolving plot lines by cataclysmic endings and deus ex machina devices. Rather, you can see it all coming, and the remainder of the novel shifts to a forward focus on the survivors and the parents, sisters, children, friends and neighbors with whom Ms. Fox has populated her book along the way. There is also a moving meditation by Jim on the nature of murder – individual and large-scale – and motivations – personal, political and commercial - that puts the crime in perspective.
This is a novel set in a very small place rural Central Texas. And it is very much of the place. There is extensive taxonomic detail a car does not simply pass cows in a pasture; rather they are identified as “two Brangus, a Charolais cross, and the last a reddish one.” There are rich (sometimes overly so) descriptions of sunsets, crops, livestock, trees, birds and landscape used to mark the shifting of scenes and locations. Beer joints, pickups, horse trailers and feed stores are prominently featured, and food and beer are central props in many scenes. But overall, the use of detail is effective and works to root the characters to the place, although some repetitive descriptions (such as the tree line marking the edge of the San Sebastian River) prove irritating.
It should also be noted that there is no profanity or gratuitous violence in this novel – a remarkable departure from current books and films where f-bombs and exploding cars and bodies are so pervasive as to be meaningless. But the novel is not prudish Carla’s sex scenes are focused and steamy and show the source of her power over men. And in the manner of “True Grit,” the dialogue is somewhat stiff and sanitized – it works, but sounds a little higher brow than what actually gets spoken, and omits colorful colloquialisms that one might expect in a rural setting – particularly a Texas one.
But all in all, Ask Me Nothing is a well-crafted and gripping first novel, with a unique tone and feel, that cries out for a sequel. We want to hear more from this very small space, and the people who inhabit it.
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