In her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, Ardor is a young woman unafraid to confront life head-on. Outspoken, frank, whimsical, and a tad narcissistic, she proceeds through her world with candor and zest. In Ardor, author James Ladd Thomas paints a coming-of-age tale through his comprehensive portrait of a young woman and the people who percolate through her life.
Much like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Ardor is a tightly connected series of vignettes that explores the interactions between Ardor and her many friends, lovers, and neighbors. They include Kenny, her brother who is killed in Iraq, as well as her best friend Tracey. Among her paramours are her roommate Wade; Lew, an art instructor boyfriend twenty years her senior; and Phaedra, her lesbian lover who also has a partner of her own. At the nursing home of her great-aunt Josie, she meets Buster, an eighty-two-year-old man who surprises her with his zest for life that is tempered with honesty and modesty.
The novelized story collection follows Ardor through her young adult years, age eighteen through twenty-three. Whether waitressing at a strip joint, fending off an amorous bartender, or schooling her classmates on the raw truth of men and women relationships, the precocious young Southerner torches anyone in her path with the world according to Ardor.
Despite her pretensions of worldly sophistication, her youthfulness shows through. As an eighteen-year-old young woman, Ardor believes the world revolves around her. Bit by bit, through the stories encountered in this book, Ardor begins to understand that one’s basic orientation toward the world is simply a choice. She learns to step away from her self-centeredness to become a little less arrogant and more critically aware of the certainties she seems to carry about her. She will learn to embrace her contradictions and absorb the ambivalence of the world.
Ultimately Ardor, for all her Deep South grit, must navigate an environment at odds with who she is and how she views the world. A free spirit and bohemian, she encounters a narrow and claustrophobic world that views change and inclusion as vile ideas. The story follows the smart and fearless young woman as she, like the rest of us, tries to understand herself and how she fits into the world.
-Kirkus Reviews
In Thomas’ debut coming-of-age novel, a liberal, headstrong girl lives her life in the conservative South.
Ardor is a young woman determined to live whatever way she pleases. As readers learn through various flashbacks, her childhood home broke when her father ran off with another woman, sending her mother into a series of vacant love affairs that distracted her from her children. The one bright spot in Ardor’s life was her beloved older brother, who served as both corrupter and protector, but even his presence is eventually snatched away. Ardor remains fierce, though, and doesn’t let tragedy stop her from going about her life. She’s well-liked and can make friends with relative ease. She makes lovers with relative ease, too. Ardor has had plenty of flings throughout her young life, causing many in her community to label her a slut, but she takes it all in stride. She never lets the watchful eyes of others stop her from doing what she wants, whether it’s kissing another woman in a committed relationship or sleeping with a married man. With such a long list of vices, it’s little wonder that she’s drawn to nonjudgmental people. Ardor is nonjudgmental herself—unless, of course, someone hurts her or happens to have a value system stricter than hers, in which case, nothing can stop her wrath. She’s not above chewing someone out or lighting a lawn on fire. Readers with a rigid value system may find Ardor’s attitude difficult to swallow at first, but if they can adjust, they’ll be rewarded with a realistic story about the joys and pains of growing up. Along the way, Ardor falls into a typical trap: failing to acknowledge her own judgmental tendencies. Still, it’s a human, realistic fault to have, especially for young people, which highlights the novel’s well-developed coming-of-age motif. Like many young people, Ardor knows everything and lives for the moment. For all the fun she has, however, her life remains quite empty. The vignettes that form the novel’s narrative are somewhat nonchronological, which draws attention to the haphazard, scattered history of lovers who meant nothing. Oddly enough, it’s in the moments she experiences loss that her life seems to hold the most water.
A thoughtful, realistic portrait of uncompromising femininity.
-San Francisco Book Review
Star Rating: 4 out of 5Composed of short vignettes depicting both momentous and everyday events in the life of a young Alabaman woman named Ardor, this is not your typical narrative. Rather than tell us a story about Ardor, Thomas offers the reader brief glimpses that, woven together, create an idea about Ardor. The story pieces act as a quilt, each piece providing a unique perspective. Though the pieces are disjointed and transitioning from one to another creates momentary confusion while the reader settles into the new time period, they fit snugly together to tell of a fascinating woman.Abandoned by her dad (though not without a fight) when she was a teenager, Ardor has unusual ideas about love. Fiercely anti-monogamous, she has various lovers throughout the book, though only two that are lasting. Wade is her boyfriend: steady and caring, but boring. Lew is her former professor who is in an open marriage. Ardor’s time with Lew is passionate, intense, and impossible to maintain. There is also an intriguing story about a lesbian relationship. However, after seeing the pair declare their love, we never see them together again.Ardor’s most endearing qualities come out in her interactions with friends and family. A few scenes taking place in a nursing home are particularly touching, and several beautiful moments are created when Ardor comforts friends who have been burned by love. Throughout the story, she is compassionate and loving, but she is never perfect. All of the characters are deeply flawed and therefore feel real. Even the characters that appear for only a minute are given personalities and quirks. With only one, unfortunately offensive, exception, all the characters are treated as unique, worthy people despite their differences.In telling a story about one woman, James Ladd Thomas has created an entire town filled with lovably imperfect people, and he has created a story about the importance of trying new things, making mistakes, being honest, and always growing.