When writers branch out

I picked up Kristin Gore's Sweet Jiminy this past weekend expecting a lighthearted romp similar to her first two books. Sammy's Hill and Sammy's House recounted the adventures of a young, neurotic political aide to a vice presidential candidate and offered an insider's view of the campaign trail made all the more juicy by the fact that the author's father was once vice president himself. Sweet Jiminy started out in the same vein, with the title character dropping out of law school and retreating to her grandmother's farm in Mississippi to do some soul searching about her future. While there, Jiminy discovers that she has an unexpected namesake, the deceased daughter of her grandmother's African-American maid, Lyn, and that the first Jiminy's death forty-five years earlier was violent and terrible.

"They hunted 'em," he said. "They hunted Jiminy and Edward and they got 'em. Ran Edward's car off the road and drug 'em out and shot 'em. Threw 'em in the river and burned their car. Don't know who, exactly--thing is, coulda been any of 'em. It coulda been all of 'em. That's the way things were."

It took a while to sink into Gore's signature prose, which is prone to a weird choppiness but worth it for the phrases that make you gasp out loud at their beauty and poignancy. Jiminy and Lyn's nephew, Bo, unravel the mystery of the long-ignored murders and try to sidestep the romance brewing between them. Gore takes us into the minds of everyone affected by the murders, including that of the murderers themselves.

For all that, though, Jiminy is not exactly a successful novel. Though the pacing is good and the mystery itself a compelling one, the book is too short by about a hundred pages, and a sense of time, place, and character is often glossed over because there's simply not enough room to deal with them.

But for all that, I think I appreciate Sweet Jiminy, all the same. I appreciate it because it's so dissimilar to Gore's previous works. It's flawed, but it's electrifying, too, to see her branching out into subject matter outside her immediate purview, taking risks with character and plot, embracing darker themes and going into the minds of characters whose life experiences are so different from her own. And it reminded me that it's hard to be formulaic when the formula keeps changing. I would have enjoyed another Sammy-like book, but I couldn't stop myself from marveling at how far Gore has come as a storyteller with Jiminy--and to get excited about where it is that she might go next.

What do you think? Do you like it when one of your favorite writers does something new? Do you find it interesting when authors branch out of their comfort zones, even if they're not successful? Or do you think they should stick with what they know they do well?