Reading Virginia Hamilton is like being shot out of a cannon into the Milky Way. Sometimes just a phrase sends you off, an image or a scene, but invariably at the end of a book you marvel: look how high I've been just on words! Indeed such is the extraordinary quality of Miss Hamilton's imagination that her characters seem to have to go faster than other fictional characters just to keep up with her. They speed past, splintering time: M. C. Higgins (in the award-winning book of that name) swimming as if he were made of quicksilver; Arilla Sundown (in the book of the same title) guiding her sled at breakneck pace to the very edge of a precipice. And now [in Justice and Her Brothers] we have Justice on her bicycle, hurtling down Quinella Hill, faster and faster to the flat place at the bottom….
Justice is practicing to impress her twin borthers ("identicals," the family calls them) especially Thomas, the mean one who exercises some kind of secret power over Levi, the other identical. She's also practicing the art of catching garter snakes for The Great Snake Race that Thomas has called for the neighborhood boys…. But on the day of the race, Justice blows it—not only her bicycle performance but her snake catch. Although she has bagged the largest snake, it turns out the point of the contest is simply to catch the most snakes.
This is a free excerpt of 237 words. There are 450 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Hamilton, Virginia (Edith) 1936–: Critical Essay by Jean Fritz Access Pass.
