BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2014, AT 1:00 PM.
Isolated in a decaying family home while her father performs
secret work at the end of World War II, 10-year-old Helen, grieving the
losses of her mother and grandmother, bonds with her sensitive young
aunt while desperately clinging to the ghosts and stories of her
childhood. (NovelistPlus)
/* Starred Review */ Godwin, celebrated for her
literary finesse, presents a classic southern tale galvanic with
decorous yet stabbing sarcasm and jolting tragedy. Helen, a writer,
looks back to the fateful summer of 1945, when she was a precocious,
motherless 10-year-old trying to make sense of a complicated and unjust
world. Young Helen lives on a hill in North Carolina in an old,
rambling, haunted house that was once a sanatorium for folks she calls
the Recoverers. Raised by her immaculately turned-out, tart-tongued, and
stoic grandmother, whom she worships, Helen is bereft after Nonie’s
sudden death. Worse yet, her father is summoned to work on the secret
military project at Oak Ridge. He recruits a 22-year-old Alabaman cousin
to stay in his place. Sweet, emotional, and seemingly guileless Flora
is no match for feverishly imaginative, scheming, and condescending
Helen. When a polio outbreak keeps them at home, and a war veteran
begins delivering their groceries, tension builds. Godwin’s
under-your-skin characters are perfectly realized, and the held-breath
plot is consummately choreographed. But the wonder of this incisive
novel of the endless repercussions of loss and remorse at the dawn of
the atomic age is how subtly Godwin laces it with exquisite insights
into secret family traumas, unspoken sexuality, class and racial
divides, and the fallout of war while unveiling the incubating mind of a
future writer. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Godwin is
always in demand, and with early accolades for this tour de force from
the likes of John Irving, requests will multiply. -- Seaman, Donna
(Reviewed 02-15-2013) (Booklist, vol 109, number 12, p25)
Publishers Weekly:
/* Starred Review */ Narrator Helen Anstruther, “going
on eleven,” is the relentlessly charismatic and wry star of this
stirring and wondrous novel from Godwin (Unfinished Desires). In the
summer of 1945, in the mountains of North Carolina, Helen is trying to
make sense of the world since her beloved grandmother’s death. When her
father leaves to do “secret work for World War II” in neighboring
Tennessee, this becomes much more challenging, and Helen, motherless for
years, is left in the care of 22-year-old Flora, a delicate and, Helen
might say, hopelessly effusive relative. Helen has grown up in a
rambling old house that once served as a home for convalescent
tubercular or inebriate “Recoverers” under the care of Helen’s physician
grandfather. For a precocious girl who has lost everyone who’s ever
loved and known her, the house becomes a mesmerizing and steadfast
companion. Though Flora initially appears to Helen as little more than a
country bumpkin, their time together profoundly transforms them both.
Godwin’s thoughtful portrayal of their boredom, desires, and the
eventual heartbreak of their summer underscores the impossible position
of children, who are powerless against the world and yet inherit
responsibility for its agonies. Agent: Moses Cardona, John Hawkins &
Associates. (May) --Staff (Reviewed February 11, 2013) (Publishers
Weekly, vol 260, issue 06, p)
Library Journal:
/* Starred Review */ Ten-year-old Helen is a
precocious, imaginative child who must spend the summer with her
guardian, Flora, while her father is in Oak Ridge, TN, during the last
months of World War II. Helen is a "haunted little girl" who lost her
mother at age three and whose grandmother, who raised her, has just
died. She and her late mother's cousin, 22-year-old Flora, are isolated
in Helen's family house on a mountaintop, quarantined from the polio
that threatens their community. Helen is resentful of her caretaker,
Flora, who cries easily and appears to Helen to be unsophisticated. But
Flora is singled-minded in her attempts to do right by Helen. The
aftermath of that formative summer will steer the course of Helen's life
and haunt her forever. VERDICT A superbly crafted, stunning novel by
three-time National Book Award award finalist Godwin (A Mother and Two
Daughters ), this is an unforgettable, heartbreaking tale of
disappointment, love, and tragedy. Highly recommended.— Lisa Block,
Atlanta --Lisa Block (Reviewed May 1, 2013) (Library Journal, vol 138,
issue 8, p73)
Kirkus:
/* Starred Review */ Godwin (Unfinished Desires, 2009,
etc.) examines the intricate bonds of family and the enduring scars
inflicted by loss. In the summer of 1945, 10-year-old Helen Anstruther
has just lost Nonie, the grandmother who raised her after her mother,
Lisbeth, died when she was 3. Helen's father, the discontented,
hard-drinking principal of the local high school in Mountain City, N.C.,
needs someone to stay with her while he does "more secret work for
World War II" in Oak Ridge, Tenn. So he asks her mother's 22-year-old
cousin, Flora, and, when one of Helen's best friends comes down with
polio, insists that the pair remain at home to avoid the risk of
infection. It's a bad idea: Weepy, unbuttoned Flora seems like a dumb
hick to snobbish little Helen, who at first makes a thoroughly
unappealing narrator. But as Godwin skillfully peels back layers of
family history to suggest the secrets kept by both Nonie and Lisbeth
(some are revealed; some are not), we see that Helen is mean because
she's terrified. She's already lost her mother and grandmother, she's
afraid her polio-stricken friend will die, and another close friend is
about to move away--after delivering some home truths about how "you
think you're better than other people." Helen got this trait from Nonie
and both her parents, we realize, as Flora's comments gradually reveal
how cruel Lisbeth was in her eagerness to leave behind her impoverished
background. As usual with Godwin, the protagonists are surrounded by
secondary characters just as fully and sensitively drawn, particularly
Finn, the returned soldier whose attentions to Flora spark Helen's
jealousy and prompt the novel's climax. Not all mistakes are reparable,
we are reminded, but we learn what lessons we can and life goes on.
Unsparing yet compassionate; a fine addition to Godwin's long list of
first-rate fiction bringing 19th-century richness of detail and
characterization to the ambiguities of modern life.(Kirkus Reviews,
February 15, 2013)
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