FICTION

KEEPER OF THE HOUSE by Rebecca T. Godwin (St. Martin’s: $19.95; 277 pp.) Minyon Manigault is only 14 when she is sent away from her family to work as a maid for Hazelhedge, a brothel in South Carolina. The year is 1929. Minyon’s experiences over the next four decades, and her complex relationship with Addie Fleming, Hazelhedge’s white madam (Minyon is black) is the subject of “Keeper of the House,” Godwin’s second novel.

Written in thick dialect with an extremely tight point of view, “Keeper of the House” is the kind of book that will alienate some readers. Here is Minyon after eight years at Hazelhedge: “I ain’t no girlfriend to these Hazelhedge hoes, not no sweetheart to some fine upstanding young man’s headed for New York City. . . . I’m not gone by whisper-touched, nor lip-licked, nor laid sweet upon. Ain’t gone be but one thing: keeper of this house.”

The various sections of this novel could almost, but not quite, stand on their own as set pieces, a quality which works against Godwin’s writing overall. Many readers may wish for a sort of literary spinal cord, a constant, unyielding conflict to give the rest of the story nourishment. The closest Godwin comes to this is the characterization of Minyon and Addie. Both of them, but especially Addie, are deep, enigmatic people, and watching their bizarre dependency on each other increase over the years is the most compelling aspect of this novel.