The problem I'm having is that the father is such a riveting (if loathesome) character, that whenever he disappears from the story for a bit, I'm just waiting for him to return. Not that the rest of characters are poorly drawn...but the father is the one I really want to watch, more than his daught...
Another short one, it seems like a year for that. 'Ellen Foster' is written in one of the most convincing young voices I've come across, and thank God early on you know there's a happy ending, because Ellen's life is rough. The novel goes back and forth between Ellen's present and the past two years...
3 1/2 starsInteresting style of telling, in the words of eleven-year-old Ellen. Her mother dies and her father is an unfit parent. She's knocked around from pillar to post until she finally finds a place where she is wanted and can enjoy being a kid.
"I have read two books a week for thirty years. I am satisfied that I know everything." So says Charlie Kate Birch, and she's not shy about sharing her knowledge, whether you want to hear it or not. Charlie Kate is an early-1900s North Carolina midwife, herbalist, and self-styled doctor (with no ...
some beautiful writing and nice stuff about being unusually gifted, fitting in, etc. But damn, shouldn't Ellen have learned how to use quotation marks by now?
This belongs to a genre that I'm not generally fond of, southern small-town stories of generational ties with eccentric characters; as the front cover blurb has it, "as invigorating as sarsaparilla and as soothing as lemon-balm tea". They always seem to feature women who are not only independent and...
Gibbons's novel, a novella, really, is the story of a southern woman's relationships and the profound effect she has on those close to her. Born to a privileged family, Ruby Pitt enters first a disastrous, then a profoundly loving marriage. Though these relationships move her squarely into the worki...
Charms is a family saga. The narrator, Margaret Birch tells of her mother, Sophia, her grandmother, Charlie Kate, her no-good father, her failed grandfather and a broad cast of characters that inhabit the southern towns of her upbringing. It oozes warmth. I was reminded of A Secret Life of Bees. The...
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