Book Review
Copyright (c) 1994, Steve Powers
All rights reserved


     Billy - Albert French (Viking, $19.00).

Once in a great while, out of the many books that an avid reader reads,
a novel will come along that burns itself into the mind with images that
are hard to shake. So it is with Billy. 

The final scenes of Albert French's first novel are almost a physical
slap in the face, so horrifyingly bleak are they. 

Told entirely in a regional, Mississippi dialect, Billy is based on a
true incident that happened nearly sixty years ago. The imagery is
powerful and evocative; it's not hard to see the hot, dusty town of
Banes, to feel the scorching summer sun of 1937 and to sense the utter
bleakness of the unrelenting poverty that saturates the
characters'lives. The setting, the framework only serves to emphasize
the shocking injustice of the climax of Billy. 

Billy is a ten-year old black boy who, with his friend Gumpy, has a
fateful encounter with two white girls who harass them, an encounter
that ends with Billy killing one of the girls with a pocket knife. 

Events move swiftly after this, with Billy standing trial as an adult
and being sentenced to die in the electric chair. The very last scene,
contrasting a young boy who only wants to go home to his mother with the
shocking image of the electric chair that awaits him is one of the most
heart-wrenching descriptions I have ever read. 

Read this novel carefully; the images may stay for a long time.