The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

Set in the late 1930s, this is the story of the four Makioka sisters who are from an affluent family, originally successful merchants in Osaka.  The parents have passed away and the family's fortunes are somewhat in decline.  The two eldest are married (both the husbands have taken the Makioka name, which surprised me), and the two younger, in their mid- to late twenties, are still single.  Most of the story centers around the second sister, Sachiko, and her relationship with her two younger sisters, Yukiko and Taeko.  Yukiko is nearly thirty and the family is anxious to marry her off.  She's had several proposals, mostly men she hardly knew, but either she didn't like the man or the family has found something unsuitable about him.  The youngest, Taeko, has a suitor, but she seems more interested in a career than marrying.  Also, the family is traditional and would prefer she wait to marry until her older sister has a husband.

The story spans several years of the sisters' lives.  Much of the action involves Sachiko's attempts to find a suitable husband for Yukiko, but it's really a story about the day-to-day life of an upper-middle class family in the 1930s.  It's mostly a domestic novel, but there are more and more hints about the war to come.  Sachiko's family has neighbors who are a German family, and their children are playmates.  Eventually they move away and we learn from letters aspects of the coming war in Europe; also, towards the end of the book there are more and more mentions of the "China Incident" -- the second Sino-Japanese war that began in 1937.

I kept hearing that this book was a sort of Japanese version of Pride and Prejudice, but I honestly did not make that connection at all while reading it.  If I hadn't heard it earlier, I would never have compared the two.  In the beginning of the book, the only things they have in common is that they are about families with unmarried sisters trying to find husbands, and a backdrop of imminent war (though wars are barely mentioned in Jane Austen). Later, I did find that one of the Makioka sisters has a pretty strong resemblance to one of the Bennet sisters, but I won't say which one since I don't want to spoil it for anyone.  But I really couldn't find any other parallels between the plot nor the characters.  Sorry, no Japanese Mr. Darcy!

I liked learning about the minutia of daily life in Japan during the era, and I especially liked that it was by a Japanese writer contemporary to the time.  I lived in Japan for more than two years, but sadly, I've read very few books by actual Japanese writers, and none of their classics.  I thought the characters were really well developed and I got a lot of insight about what it must have been like in that time.  However, I couldn't help thinking that the Makioka family members were so wrapped up in their own domestic troubles they couldn't see the war looming ahead of them; I couldn't help wondering which of the characters would survive WWII and how life would change for them.  I'd really like to read a Japanese novel about life in Japan during the war, so if anyone could suggest one I'd love a recommendation.

This book counts as the third read for my TBR Pile 2013 Challenge; my 20th Century Classic for my Back to the Classics Challenge; my second read for the Chunkster Challenge; and my 24th book from my Classics Club Challenge.  

Two Alternate Reads from the TBR Challenge List

During the mini-break I took from blogging, I did not stop reading -- frankly, I can't NOT read.  As Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing."

Anyhow, whilst on my break, I was in need of some light entertainment to break up some of my heavier reads, including two books from my TBR shelf that happened to be alternates from my 2012 TBR Challenge.  It's been a few weeks since I read them, but I'm really anxious to post something so I can officially complete the challenge!!

First, I read The Provincial Lady in America by E. M. Delafield back in early October, mostly while waiting in an emergency room for treatment for an ear infection.  (It's a very quick read -- lots of white space on every page, HUGE margins. And charming illustrations!)

If you are not familiar with the Provincial Lady, this is sort of a 1930s version of Bridget Jones' Diary, but if Bridget were older and married, with two children, a husband, and a couple of servants in a small country house.  This is the third book in the series.  The first book is a thinly veiled account of her daily life; in the second, the Provincial Lady has had great success publishing the first book, and is spending more time in London, working on her writing and meeting the literati and all kinds of interesting people.

In this third volume, the Provincial Lady goes on a whirlwind literary tour of America, crossing the Atlantic in rough weather, meeting all kinds of people -- some pushy, some fawning, but mostly very nice.  It's fun to read her impressions of America, especially when she visits the Midwest, from which I hail.  However, this having been published in 1934, it's somewhat racist, and I found myself cringing when she refers to Negro porters and makes some very un-PC comments.  It wasn't quite as fresh and funny as the first book, but I definitely enjoyed it overall.  There are two more volumes about the PL, in which she visits the Soviets, and then the final volume, during WWII, which do sound interesting.  My library doesn't have a copy of the fourth book, but they do have the last one, which is good because it's out of print and used copies are horribly expensive.

The final book on my TBR Challenge Pile (well, excepting a book of short stories, on which I've given up) is another alternate read, Don't Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford.  I had three unread Mitfords on the TBR shelf, purchased and received after I read Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love with great delight.  However, it had been several years since I read the first pair of Mitfords, and that made it harder -- I remembered Fanny, the narrator, who's now older, but I'd almost completely forgotten all the rest of the characters.  Also, quite a bit of time has passed -- Fanny's now middle aged, (though naturally she hasn't changed a bit and can still fit into the same dress size); and two of her three sons are all grown up now.  The third is at prep school with her adopted son, child of her late cousin, the scandalous Linda Radlett.

Set in the late 1950s, Fanny's been leading a quiet life as the wife of an Oxford don when her life is turned upside down by the news that her husband Alfred has been appointed the Ambassador to France!!   Suddenly, she finds her self embroiled in diplomatic tangles, a clash of cultures with the French, government upheavals, a twittering social secretary, and relatives that are driving her up a wall. Hilarity ensues -- it's sort of like a low-key late 1950s screwball comedy, set in an Embassy.  Fanny is the voice of reason throughout, it's all the surrounding people that are constantly causing trouble.

I did like it, though I had a hard time relating to what was going on -- I suppose it would help if I knew more about late 1950s French politics;  apparently, there were constant changes in government and votes of no-confidence and that sort of thing.  Also, since it had been a few years since I'd read the first two books, I had a hard time remembering who all the other characters were.  One side character, Grace Allingham, is actually the subject of a different Mitford book, The Blessing, and when I chose Don't Tell Alfred I didn't realize there was another book in between -- I wondered if I'd skipped a book.  Also, it ended really abruptly, and felt almost unfinished, like Mitford had run out of things to say.

Anyway, this was a funny, light read, though I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two.  I will have to go back and read The Blessing, and another Mitford novel, Wigs on the Green, which is on the TBR shelf.  I also have a biography of the Mitfords, The Sisters by Mary S. Lovell; plus I picked up Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford on a bookstore sale table last year.  The Mitfords were such an interesting family and I want to learn more about them.

So that's it!!  I've finished my TBR Challenge for 2012.  Time to make my list for 2013!  Is anyone else still participating in this challenge?  How is your progress?

Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

Well -- I'm winding my way down through the TBR Challenge.  Finally, I have completed Saplings by Noel Streatfeild, a Persephone Classic, and one that's been on my shelves for a couple of years.  Normally, I love Persephones, and I don't know why I took so long to pick this one up.  I did try it a couple of months ago and it didn't grab me right away.  I finally gave it another shot and I'm so glad I did, because it was really good.

Here's the setup:  on the eve of WWII, the Wiltshires are an upper-middle or upperclass family, and from the outside, they seem perfect.  Alex Wiltshire is working for the family business, engineering something for the war effort; his beautiful wife Lena is gorgeous and devoted to him; and they have four beautiful children, two boys and two girls, ages ranging from about 12 to five years old.  The war hasn't started, but there are rumblings afoot, and the family is taking a seaside holiday with the children's governess and nanny.

At first, all seems idyllic, but Streatfeild quickly cuts to the heart of what makes this family tick:  Alex is a devoted husband and father, but his wife is more interested in her husband than her children.  The author makes insightful and fascinating psychological observations about the family dynamic and the personalities of each of the children, more so than I've ever read in any book about a family before.  Streatfeild has the amazing ability to get into the essence of these people, especially the children, and examine their personalities and foibles.

Of course, with the onset of the war, this "perfect" family begins to fall apart.  The children are separated from their parents, sent off to the country to stay with their grandparents; the eldest go off to boarding school.  Later, a tragedy strikes that upsets the whole balance of the family, and things start to unravel.  The characters aren't necessarily likable, but they're so realistic, I couldn't wait to find out what happened to them.

Apparently, Streatfeild was one of the first authors to really examine the psychological impact of the trauma of the war on children.  Of course I knew that millions of children were evacuated and separated from their families because of the war, and I'd heard that psychologically, it was probably more damaging for the children to be separated from their families than for them to be together.  I can't imagine having to make a choice like that!

Another of my favorite Persephone books, Doreen, also deals with the story of an evacuated child, but in that situation, both the child's mother and the country family who host her love her and want to keep her.  It's interesting to compare the two.  I reviewed that book as well, and if you're interested, you can read my thoughts here.

This is my 42nd Persephone -- I haven't read that many lately and I've been hoping to read more, especially since they recently published their 100th book!  So congratulations to Persephone, I look forward to completing the other 58 on my list.

Has anyone else read Saplings?  Any other books by Noel Streatfeild?  Or any other Persephones that you love?

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Well, this book has been sitting on my TBR shelves for at least five years, and I finally started to read it about a month ago.  It took me a long time to get through it, and I was completely perplexed.  I just did not get this book at all.  

Here is the setup: set in 1930s London, sixteen-year-old Portia Quayne, who was recently orphaned, moves in with her much older half-brother Thomas and his wife Anna, who have no children.   Thomas' father left him and his mother when he was a teenager, after he'd had an affair with Portia's mother, who became pregnant.  The first Mrs. Quayne magnanimously decided it was better for everyone if Mr. Quayne divorced her and married his mistress, so that the unborn child would not be illegitimate.  Mr. Quayne, the second Mrs. Quayne, and Portia lived cheaply on the Continent, until Portia's parents died one after another and she was left with no one but Thomas.

Anyhow, now she's moved in with him and his wife, who are childless.  Thomas has an advertising agency, and a youngish friend of Anna's, Eddie, has gotten a job with Thomas' firm.  He's 23 but he starts hanging around Portia.  Basically, the story is about how Portia's innocence is lost.

It all sounds like it's going to be very sordid and scandalous, but basically, this is a book in which nothing happens.  My last book, Barnaby Rudge, was a book that was all plot and very little character development, and this one seemed like just the opposite -- it's all character's and dialogue, and very little action.  I kept waiting for something really shocking to happen, like the underage Portia having an affair with someone much older, but nothing like that happened.  The most shocking things are that Eddie is (gasp!) holding hands with another girl;  and . . . wait for it. . . Anna reads Portia's diary!!!!  Ye gods!!

Now, I know that this is a book that many people love.  Goodreads and the blogs are full of people who rave about it.  It has also been listed on Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century, which is where I first heard of it.  It was not a difficult read, and I agree, some of the writing was very beautiful and insightful (I'll try to find a clever quotation to insert).  But most of the time I wanted to smack Portia and say Get over yourself!!!  There's a very brief mention of Mussolini at one point, and I wanted to scream at the characters, "Any day now, the Luftwaffe are going to start dropping bombs all over London.  Then you'll see what real problems are."  (Okay, that's unfair, since the book was published in 1938;  it's easy for me to make this judgement knowing what's about to happen since obviously Elizabeth Bowen couldn't.)

Of course, I had a relatively uneventful, boring childhood.  Nobody died, nobody had any affairs or divorces;  I don't have any illegitimate siblings anywhere, so maybe I have no right to complain.  Really, I didn't see why Anna and Thomas didn't just ship Portia off to boarding school.

And the ending just seemed very abrupt and unresolved.  Maybe I just need someone much less pragmatic to explain it all to me.  I don't feel like it was a complete waste of time, because parts of it were quite enjoyable.  I just don't see what the fuss is about.  If someone out there in the blogging universe is a huge fan, I apologize if I've offended you -- and please tell me if there's something obvious that I missed.

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

I've been in a bit of a blogging slump lately -- all has been resolved with Blogger and the hijacker, and many thanks to everyone for the encouraging words -- and to the good folks at Blogger for taking care of it so promptly. And hopefully I'll never have to think about it again.

Anyhow. . . . I've been reading a lot but not terribly inspired to blog much lately. But I did manage to finish another of the books from my TBR Challenge list, which pleases me greatly. This one is The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, one of five Cathers on my Classics Club list, and my fifth book by Cather overall.

The Song of the Lark was published in 1915 and is the story of Thea Kronberg, a girl growing up in a very small town in Colorado. Thea is one of about seven children, the daughter of the local minister.  Since she was a small child, she's been mentored by the town doctor and everyone has recognized her musical talent. The reader follows her development, growing up in a rural community and finally going away to study music in Chicago, where her piano teacher realizes her true talent lies in her singing. It's about her struggle to rise from her humble beginnings and become a great artist.

This book is divided into various sections, based on times in Thea's life. By far my favorite sections were set in Colorado, during her childhood. There are a lot of short chapters with vignettes from her life, almost like interrelated short stories about the people that shape her character and her life, from the beloved town doctor to her rivals at the annual music festival, and the railwayman who hopes to marry her when she's old enough. I loved Cather's descriptions of the town, its inhabitants, and its surroundings. I've never been to Colorado though I've seen the Rocky Mountains in Montana as a child, so I can only imagine it. Detailed descriptions of settings sometimes bore me, but Cather does it really well.

I absolutely loved the first half of this book. The beginning really reminded me of two of my previous Cather reads, O Pioneers! and My Antonia, because they're about living in small Western towns. It also had little elements that I remembered from The Professor's House (1925) and Death Comes From the Archbishop (1927). Thea takes a break from her singing studies and travels to the canyons of New Mexico, and Cather's love of the southwest really emerges in this book. For me, this is a sort of transitional book between her Midwestern and Southwestern books.

About halfway through the book, Thea goes to Chicago to study music, and I loved that part too, partly because I spent ten years of my life in the Evanston/Chicago area, and for four of those years I lived very close to where Thea lives, in a Swedish neighborhood called Andersonville which is still there (and where you can get the best cinnamon rolls I've ever had). She also goes to the Symphony and the Art Institute, which is one of my favorite places in the world.

However, the last quarter or so of the book kind of went downhill for me. Thea becomes a very successful singer and, honestly, kind of a diva. The focus changes from mostly her point of view to that of Dr. Archie and of Frederick Ottenburg, the man who falls in love with her. There's a lot of talk about The Artist and what makes her so, blah blah. I admit it, I am not an opera fan so I didn't get a lot of it (and I'm looking over my shoulder for lightning as I write this, since I have a sister and brother-in-law who are classically trained singers).  I just found Thea to be really self-centered and unlikeable at this point. Having grown up with a sister who's a performer, I know creative people have to believe in themselves and their talent to survive all that criticism, but I just didn't like Thea anymore.

I have heard that this is one of the more autobiographical of Cather's works. I'm sure she's making a point about how hard it is to be An Artist, but I just didn't get it. However, I am going to send this to my sister, the professional singer, and hopefully she'll like it and maybe she'll get more out of it that I did. I do have several more by Cather on the TBR shelf, including a 1931 edition of Shadows on the Rock, a historical novel set in 17th century Quebec.

I've now finished nine of the twelve reads on my TBR Challenge list, so I'm averaging one a month and I'm on track to finish by the end of the year. I'm getting really gung-ho about reading books off my own shelves -- my goal this year is choose 50% of my reading material from my own shelves, and I'm pretty close. The shelves still seem to be just as full but I am making progress, however slow.

How are you doing with your Classics Club challenges, bloggers? And how about that TBR Challenge?Anyone finish it yet? And what other books do you recommend by Willa Cather?

A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

Of all the books I've read this year, I think this one is the most satisfying.  Partly because I really enjoyed reading it, but mostly because this is one of the books that has been on my shelves, unread, for the longest.  I know where I bought it, though not exactly when.  However, I can tell you that this book has been packed and unpacked at least ten times.  It's been in three different houses in Florida, three in Texas, one in Nebraska, an apartment in Chicago, and in storage with the rest of our household goods while we were stationed overseas in Japan.  Does that give you an idea of how long I've owned this book?

I am delighted to report, also, that it was a really good book.  A Bell for Adano is a Pulitzer Prize winner, which doesn't necessarily guarantee I'll like it, but I think that's the reason I never chucked it into the donation bin during any of my moves.  I finally started it the other day when I was looking for a good audiobook and realized that the library owned it -- I could listen to it on my commute to work, which would speed things along.  But after a few minutes, I really didn't like the narrator, so I picked up my own print copy and gave it a try.

Happily, I was rewarded for all my tenacity.  This book is really a charming story.  Major Victor Joppolo, the American child of Italian immigrant parents, is put in charge of an Italian town called Adano after the Italian surrender during WWII.   Major Joppolo has to deal with military bureaucracy, cultural differences, and the looming threat of the Germans as he tries to get the town running smoothly again after years of wartime shortages, fascism, and corruption.  One of his goals is to replace the town's treasured bell, a 700-year-old relic that had been taken by the Fascists and melted down for bullets.  

Honestly, I don't know why I put off reading it for so long.  It's not a very long book, and it's not a difficult read.  I'm not a huge fan of war stories, though I do enjoy reading about how everyday people deal with wartime on the home front.  A Bell For Adano isn't exactly a war story, since the war is mostly over when it starts, so in essence it is about the war at home for the Italians.  Parts of it did remind me a little of Catch-22, because it does poke fun somewhat at military bureaucracy.  It's not making of fun of the military per se, though it does satirize all the ego-massaging that has to go on in a big organization, which I'm sure isn't exclusive to the military.  

I did really like the characters and the story, though I did find the ending a little abrupt -- it really left me wishing I knew what happened to all the people.  Parts of it are very funny, and parts were sad and made me tear up.  I did end up reading most of it in one day because I got so engrossed in it.  It was quite uplifting after some of the terribly depressing books I've read recently.  

I am thankful for Roofbeam Reader's TBR Pile Challenge for inspiring me to finally get around to reading this book -- it was one of a dozen books I promised myself I'd read this year, and I've now completed eight of them -- one a month, right on schedule.   It's really inspired me to keep reading the books from my own shelves, and I've already started my list for the 2013 TBR Challenge.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Wow.  

East of Eden is one of the books I've had on my to-read list the longest, ever since I started on my quest to read more classics back in 2005.  Somehow, I managed to graduate from high school and college without reading a single word of Steinbeck.  When I started to read classics as an adult, I knew I'd finally have to read his books, and at first I was very apprehensive -- Grapes of Wrath sounded so dire.  But I joined an online classics group and one of the first books I read with the group was Travels with Charley, which I absolutely loved, so I became a Steinbeck convert.

I bought my copy of East of Eden at a library sale about four years ago, and I've packed and unpacked it in three different houses.  For about three years now, it's been the book I most wanted to read off my TBR shelves.  It was my daughter's assigned summer reading for her high school English class next year, so I decided to read it along with her.  And it was really worth it.  Why did I wait so long??  Was I saving the best Steinbeck for last?   

It's kind of hard to describe this book.  It's long and sprawling, and spans about 50 years, from just after the Civil War to World War I, and the story is covers American coast to coast  from New England to California.  Inspired by the Genesis stories of Cain and Abel and Adam and Eve, it's the story of the Trask family, about sibling rivalry and fathers and sons.  It also contains some of Steinbeck's best characters, including what is probably one of the most evil characters in American literature.  

Though it's Steinbeck's longest work at 600 pages long, I raced through it in just a few days.  The plot and the characters are really compelling.  It starts out with two half-brothers in New England, Adam and Charles Trask, who are competing for their father's love, living on a farm after the Civil War.  Just like Cain and Abel, their father favors one son over the other, and the less-beloved son takes his jealousy out on his brother.  

In this story, there are two sets of brothers, and love for a woman also fuels the rivalry.  I don't want to give too much away, but Steinbeck weaves together Biblical allusions and California history in a masterful way.  He also incorporates characters based on his own ancestors.  Adam Trask moves out to the Salinas Valley, where Steinbeck grew up.  There's a lot of local color with a delightful Irish family, the Hamiltons, and a faithful family servant, Mr. Lee, who starts out as a cook but becomes much more to the family, a tutor, nanny, and he's basically the one holding the family together after things start to fall apart.

I loved this book although I did find some flaws in it.  Steinbeck is pretty heavy-handed with the Biblical allusions -- not only are there two sets of brothers (with initials beginning with C and A) Steinbeck spends paragraphs with characters philosophizing about the Bible and Cain and Abel, just in case the reader didn't get it.  Also, Lee is sort of an amazing wise Oriental sage, spouting wisdom -- he's just too good to be true. But there is so much great stuff in the novel that I can overlook the parts that bothered me.  

After finishing it, I really wanted to discuss it with someone else who was reading it with me -- my daughter is plodding along with it, but there's so much in it that I don't think she'll understand; in fact, I'm not even sure why this was assigned to high school sophomores!  I really wish I had chosen this instead of Tortilla Flat for my library's book group -- it's longer, but there's so much more in it and it's so much better!  It's more than twice as long but it's a far superior novel.  If you're interested in Steinbeck at all, do yourself a favor and don't bother with the shorter works.  East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath are absolute masterpieces and everyone should read them at least once.  

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

This was one of the books I chose last year for my TBR Challenge, and since it's a neo-Victorian, I thought it would fit in very well with the Victorian Celebration.  Well, yes and no.  It's set in the Victorian era, though it was written 100 years later, in 1969, and even though Fowles does a very good job of writing in the Victorian style, it's definitely a modern novel, or post-modern one.  In other words, it's very meta and the ending just confused the heck out of me.

I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself.  Ostensibly, this is the story of a love triangle between Charles Smithson, an idle gentlemen in his early thirties, the heir apparent to a title and grand estates; his fiancee Ernestina, the sweet but spoiled only daughter of a rich tradesman; and the eponymous French Lieutenant's Woman, Sarah Woodruff (the French Lieutenant himself is only mentioned in passing, so don't worry about him).   Ernestina is staying with her aunt in Lyme a few months before her marriage to Charles, and he's come down to Lyme to visit her and poke around looking for fossils (the same ones discussed at length in Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, which I read several months ago).

One day while Charles and Ernestina are out walking out on the famous Cobb, Charles sees a beautiful and mysterious woman, staring at the sea.  She's a local eccentric known as the French Lieutenant's Woman -- apparently the Lieutenant was a shipwreck survivor and she fell in love with him while nursing him back to health.  She had planned to run off with him, but instead he left without her and ruined her reputation.  Sarah is employed as a companion by a nasty and pious rich woman who likes to torture the less fortunate, and she's forbidden to go out walking to the sea or the woods, but she defies her mistress and keeps running into Charles.  Charles then becomes obsessed with her, which complicates his engagement, as you can well imagine.

This story starts out as a fairly straightforward Victorian melodrama, but after a few chapters, it becomes apparent that it's more than that.  The omniscient narrator becomes more and more involved in the story, addressing the reader directly and reminding us that this is a modern book, with references to the present day and how Victorians were so different, unable to imagine television and computers and whatnot.  He starts putting in witty asides and footnotes and whole histories of other people, to try and show us how the Victorian mind worked and how different things are in the present (that is, the late 1960s).

The famous Cobb at Lyme Regis

I liked this book but at some points I did get very annoyed by the narrator, who seemed rather smug and condescending to the reader.  I assume Charles' attraction to Sarah was supposed to symbolize the break with traditional repressive Victorian society and desire for freedom.  (He's also a lazy snob, and I don't think he's ever worked a day in his life.)

One thing that really bothered me was I found the novel extremely sexist -- nearly all the female characters were either manipulative, gold-diggers or looking for husbands, with the exception of Ernestina's aunt who seemed genuinely kind.  There's a lot of discussion about hysterical females which I found really off-putting -- I'm sure Fowles is trying to show how modern he is, but since it was written  during the late 1960s, during the women's movement, I can't help but wonder if he's taking shots at feminism.

Also, I found the ending rather confusing.  I guess post-modern meta-fiction is just not my thing.  Still, overall I liked this book, though I wasn't what I expected at all.  I'd seen the movie years ago but I barely remembered anything about it, which I suppose is a good thing.

Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

I finished this last night, just in time for the discussion today at my classics book group.  I liked it, yet I am having a hard time describing this book.  It's sort of a book about nothing, if that makes any sense.

Essentially, it is a book about a quirky extended family in the Deep South in the 1920s, as spend a week together for a wedding.  Well, that's not true.  Other than the family getting ready for this wedding, there is not much plot to speak of.  The wedding serves as a plot device to get the entire family together, and showcase their various quirks and foibles.  There isn't a whole lot of character development.  It begins with the arrival of young Laura, the nine-year-old cousin of the Fairchilds, an old Southern family living in the Mississippi Delta (which is technically not a Delta, but that's really a geography lesson, and this is not school).  Laura's mother was a Fairchild, but she died in the past year, and Laura can't stand up in the wedding and be a flower girl, to her disappointment.

You'd think that the story would some how revolve around Laura, or at least would unfold from her point of view, but it does not.  The focus of the story, and point of view, change from character to character throughout the novel, and I'm not even sure what the story is supposed to be about, other than giving the reader a real sense of what large Southern upper-class families were like in this time period.  There are maiden aunts, and baby cousins, and hot-tempered sisters-in-law; there is a cousin who was dropped on her head as a child; a seventeen-year-old bride who's marrying the plantation overseer twice her age; and the mother of the bride is currently pregnant for the tenth time.  See what I mean?  A whole cast of quirky characters.  A lot of characters -- in fact, I actually started writing a family tree at one point, to try and keep them all straight and figure out who belonged to who.  I've only done that once or twice in all my years of reading.  If ever there was a book that needed a family tree in the appendix, this is it.

All these characters gave quirky names as well -- Battle and Rebel and India and Bluet and women with men's names and people who have the same name, like little Battle and Little Uncle.  And there's a character named Lady Clare, but she's a child and not an aristocrat to my knowledge.  And then there's all the servant's names, but that's another whole list.

I liked this book a lot, but I'm not sure I can explain it to anyone.  The writing was really good, but sometimes the metaphors just confused me.  I'm not sure if Welty was just kind of rambling, or if it was supposed to be stream-of-consciousness, but it did remind me a bit of Faulkner.  After awhile I tried to stop making sense of some of the writing and just went with the flow of it.  Parts of it were a little like poetry, if that makes any sense.  I think the characters were trying to explain their feelings, and sometimes you can't express them exactly in words.

And now I'm the one who's rambling.  Anyway, the book group was today.  Some people liked it and others thought it was sort of a waste of time.  If you're looking for something plot driven, this is not the book for you.  If you like great atmosphere, descriptions, and charming quirky characters, you might enjoy this book.


This is book #5 for the TBR Dare, and book 4/75 for my Classics Club Challenge.