Kathleen C. (Woodchuck) reviewed on + 83 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
From Library Journal
This episodic novel, Gibbons's third, is set during the Depression in back-country Virginia and Kentucky. In 19 vignettes, Betty Davies Randolph reveals her childhood and her mother's life along Milk Farm Road. Gibbons, winner of several literary awards for her first novel Ellen Foster ( LJ 4/15/87), has captured magnificently the dailiness and sense of community of rural life--from midwives and WPA ballads to suicides and men gone wild. Southern, and full of the folk wisdom of generations, Gibbons's voice reveals life's truths: "Listen and hear what men call their wives. . . . It's easier without a mother at a borning. . . . The ears are the most important parts of a baby." Times are tough--Betty's father kills himself and is found upside down on his head in the river with "rocks on either side, like bookends"--but the women are amazingly resilient; they help each other survive. As an old woman, Betty dies in "her chair talking, chattering like a string-pull doll," but the reader is assured that the storytelling will go on through her daughter and "the sounds of the women talking." Recommended.
This was the second book I read of Kaye Gibbons and I enjoyed it very much. Ms. Gibbons has quite a grip on the Southern experience and depicts it well in this story. She also has a special gift for weaving the experiences of several generations reminding us we are created from many people's pasts and we are the foundation for many people's future.
This episodic novel, Gibbons's third, is set during the Depression in back-country Virginia and Kentucky. In 19 vignettes, Betty Davies Randolph reveals her childhood and her mother's life along Milk Farm Road. Gibbons, winner of several literary awards for her first novel Ellen Foster ( LJ 4/15/87), has captured magnificently the dailiness and sense of community of rural life--from midwives and WPA ballads to suicides and men gone wild. Southern, and full of the folk wisdom of generations, Gibbons's voice reveals life's truths: "Listen and hear what men call their wives. . . . It's easier without a mother at a borning. . . . The ears are the most important parts of a baby." Times are tough--Betty's father kills himself and is found upside down on his head in the river with "rocks on either side, like bookends"--but the women are amazingly resilient; they help each other survive. As an old woman, Betty dies in "her chair talking, chattering like a string-pull doll," but the reader is assured that the storytelling will go on through her daughter and "the sounds of the women talking." Recommended.
This was the second book I read of Kaye Gibbons and I enjoyed it very much. Ms. Gibbons has quite a grip on the Southern experience and depicts it well in this story. She also has a special gift for weaving the experiences of several generations reminding us we are created from many people's pasts and we are the foundation for many people's future.
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