The real heroine of Lee Smith's new novel, her fourth, is not doom-ridden Crystal Renee Spangler…. The real heroine of "Black Mountain Breakdown" is the narrator's voice, which turns Miss Smith's story into a country music ballad or a Southern Appalachian breakdown, in the sense of the word that means a tune played for a noisy dance, as in "Pike County Breakdown."

It is a voice that rushes its story forward in the present tense….

It is a voice of many moods—from the delicate dreaminess of adolescence to the breathless cattiness of a smalltown gossip….

Perhaps most impressive: it is a voice that reveals unhesitantly every banal and tawdry detail about her slightly hickish characters without for a moment patronizing them. Thus Lorene Spangler is made to capture all the pretentious dreams she has for daughter by calling her Crystal Renee, "the prettiest name she could think...