First published: 2000361 pages (paperback)
In the second half of the book, a girl tells Faunia this little story about a tamed crow:
"I was dumping some water and he made a beeline for the door and went out into the trees. Within minutes there were three or four crows that came. Surrounded him in the tree. And they were going nuts. Harassing him. Hitting him on the back. Screaming. Smacking into him and stuff. They were there within minutes. He doesn't have the right voice. He doesn't know the crow language. They don't like him out there. Eventually he came down to me, because I was out there. They would have killed him."
"That's what comes of being hand-raised," said Faunia. " That's what comes out of hanging around all his life with people like us. The human stain," she said, and without revulsion or contempt or condemnation. Not even with sadness. That's how it is - in her own dry way, this is all Faunia was telling the girl feeding the snake: we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here.
You could say it's a book about the extremes of life. What a determined will can make out of it and how an unfortunate beginning can ruin it. The first is true of Coleman Silk, whom we first meet as a 70-year-old, retired college professor; the second describes Faunia Farley's life, a 30-something-year-old illiterate cleaning woman at the very same College. Two apparently opposite characters that nevertheless come to a very deep understanding of each other. While Coleman looses all after he had gained everything in a long life of achievement, Faunia' s life practically ended even before it had really begun. Stripped of everything they once possessed, that's when they begin their short but intense affair. Which, of course, ends in disaster...
It's also a book about America. About racial issues and a public morality that is very eager to accuse and to righteously bring down those who transgress.
All in all it's a very mature book, probably not least because it is written from the point of view of someone who is, like Coleman, in his 70s. Large parts of the book digress from the main storyline (if there is one) to go back in time and explain how Coleman got to be who he became.
The Human Stain is definitely a very good book, but, because of its "literary" style, not always easy. The story is more or less irrelevant, it's the believability of the characters, it's the greater themes it deals with that make it a good book. Not only the main character, Coleman, is brilliantly portrayed but also the others, early abused Faunia Farley, her ex-husband Lester, who is a messed up Vietnam vet and Delphine Roux, the pretty and ambitious french professor, who wants to prove it to everyone and yet succumbs to her loneliness.
And yes, they made a movie out of it, but I haven't seen it.
