Perhaps that’s the real secret of the supercentenarians—how much of their lifespan is really beyond our control. Even if more of us are blessed with good genes, healthy lifestyles, and excellent medical care, it doesn’t mean we should expect longevity records to come crashing down. Robine looks a lot younger than his 71 years, and he often gets asked what his secret is. “I know the secret because Jeanne Calment told me it,” he usually responds. But the truth is that Calment—unlike other supercentenarians—never shared her longevity tips with Robine. She had no secret at all.
“The steamboat was the first American invention of world-shaking importance,” wrote historian James Thomas Flexner in 1944. In fact, he added, it “was one of those crucial inventions that change the whole cultural climate of the human race.”
Defined broadly as any vessel powered by a steam engine, the term “steamboat” is more often used to describe paddle wheel-propelled crafts that roamed the rivers of the United States, particularly the Mississippi, in the 19th century. An early prototype set sail in 1787, but it was only in 1807 that the first commercially successful steamboat made its debut. High-stakes—and sometimes deadly—steamboat races followed soon after.
"Y'all Eat Yet?" is a simple question, a call to gather, and a gentle nudge toward self-care: "This is a reminder to everybody to just slow down," Lambert says. "Take a weekend and go sit in a lawn chair and eat some deviled eggs and just have quality time. That's what this book is about."
On the surface, it's a Black southern gothic novel about a young woman learning to navigate life alone. But it's also a creepy ghost story with a sense of humor, a narrative about survival, and a strange tale of loss and grief sprinkled with sex, abuse, empathy, and a deep look at what it means to be dealt a rough hand at life from the very beginning.
That said, there's something that's very easy to declare about this novel: It's an incredible debut that announces the arrival of a unique voice in contemporary fiction.
At a time when the British education system is becoming suffocatingly narrow, with arts and music being dropped by schools, and our universities falling behind America in encouraging multidisciplinary studies, Once Upon a Prime is a joyous reminder of the way so much human creativity comes from joining the dots between seemingly disparate fields.