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Dec 17, 2009

Lauren rated it:

A perfect novel about family, hometowns, the grip of memory, and the dignity of living with sadness. So quietly and eloquently written and brutally full of heart.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2008

Emily rated it:

I just finished this. I feel like I need a bit to digest what I read (I read it in a day). My family is from Mississippi and any topic related to that state is near and dear to my heart.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this story and I worry that any review or recommendation I give will sound juvenile to the extreme. At times, I did not understand Laurel; I didn't know how to take her. Fay I hated from the beginning as she is easy to dismiss, shallow and immature even for bei More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 12, 2011

Heather rated it:

Welty's novel has spunk. Horrified by the new wife's character at the beginning of a narrative that seems built around an old man dying, my initial impression was that this book would be an ensemble cast narrative of a specific Southern community and somewhat comic but lightweight reading. The structure, however, changes as the book continues. From a narrative rife with dialogue, there is a deepening of the layers during the later passages about the optimist's daughter and much prose that del More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 13, 2011

Barbara rated it:

Though this isn't historical fiction, The Optimist's Daughter transports the reader back to a Mississippi town in the mid-twentieth century where social class stratifies the society and dictates behavior. Laurel, the daughter of a small town judge, has returned from Chicago to her family home because her father needs surgery for his eyes. The situation is complex because similar surgery caused the loss of her mother's vision and began a long decline ending with her death a few years before. H More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 15, 2010

Mary Anne rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Aug 10, 2010

Kendall rated it:

I just finished reading Welty's Optimist Daughter for the 2010 Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. Welty never ceases to amaze with her dark and subtle look into Southern culture. The main character Laurel faces dilemmas and competing loyalties after the death of her father, as she reflects on the deaths of her mother and husband before him. Each shows her a different perspective on life, from which she must choose. Both parents have had vision problems (cataracts) and eye surgery, prior to, though More...

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Jun 18, 2010

Terry rated it:

I loved this. It moved from a comedy of manners to a meditation on life and death and our desire and our ancestors' desire to make contact. It reminded me quite a bit of Joyce's "The Dead" so... take that the way it means something to you.

Two thoughts--one related to the book, one not, really. One: it's strange to read, to participate in, Southern literature without being aware of Southern history. There's always a twinge, there. It's like unraveling Faulkner's moodiness-- More...

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Nov 03, 2009

Stephen rated it:

“Wings beat again. Flying in from over the mountain, over the roof and a child’s head, high up in blue air, pigeons had formed a cluster and twinkled as one body. Like a great sheet of cloth whipping in a wind of its own making, they were about her ears. They came down to her feet and walked on the mountain. Laurel was afraid of them, but she had been provided with biscuits from the table to feed them with. They walked about, opalescent and solid, on worm-pink feet, each bird marked a litt More...

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Feb 03, 2009

Bethany rated it:

4.5 stars. This is a book about loss, the mystery of family, and how we compartmentalize our lives, and our suffering. It's about the power of memory, about death, and about letting go. It's about the ability even those closest to us have to surprise us. Or, better stated, about how we're only given the merest fraction of one another to ponder. How much we hoard ourselves from one another, afraid to be too well understood. It's about what's necessary to survive - a second wife, a slate wiped More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2008

Jim rated it:

The first three-quarters amazed and delighted me. That is not a criticism of the final quarter. Rather, it's an admission that the shift in tone led to a place I felt less comfortable. Welty is just an astonishing writer. Her Mississippians are drawn so specifically and so authentically, and the way she differentiates them from the Texan characters is perfect. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, which is no surprise. I've had it on my shelf for years. I'm very happy I finally read it.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

Knitography rated it:

This was a challenging book to read, in part due to the subject matter and in part due to the writing style; the story unfolds slowly, and there are no grand moments or revelations. This is a nuanced study of death and at the subtleties of human relationships.

The book gave me a lot to think about, but in the end I found it ultimatley unsatisfying. None of the characters in the book really won my empathy or interest, likely because apart from Laurel they were all quite one-dimension More...

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Feb 28, 2009

Gracie rated it:

I must be missing something, as it's won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has numerous sparkling reviews, but I did not enjoy this book at all. At only 180 pages, this book was still a struggle for me to get through. The narrative was both vague and tedious. The storyline seemed disjointed and at times defied belief. I failed to find the meaning in the blatantly meant-to-be-symbolic events, such as the home invasion by a chimney swift.

Additionally, I felt the characters grossly More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2011

Amanda rated it:

Not terrible. Not great or amazing though either. Literally a weekend book. In fact depending on your speed you could finish this is in a day.

Young woman meets her father and step mother who is only 40 years old, which makes her younger than herself, in New Orleans to find out her father is losing his eye sight similar to the way her mother also lost hers years before. She returns to her childhood home with her step mother and her father in a coffin due to his death after surgery. No More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 13, 2010

Jim rated it:

The saddest book I’ve ever read.

The Optimist’s Daughter, Laurel, comes back to Mississippi for her convalescing father who subsequently dies. At seventy, he had married a much younger woman, Fay, from Texas. Laurel’s bridesmaids, the local spinsters, pull off the funeral and Fay and Laurel eventually square off.

The book is about the lives we led and the choices we make and the consequences of same. In death, we get a final, clear look at how our parents lived and what More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Vasha7 rated it:

The year before Eudora Welty began writing this book, her mother and last remaining brother died (her other brother had died six years previously). Before that, Welty had spent years caring for her mother in declining health, and their relationship had always been difficult and guilt-laden. The Optimist's Daughter is an anguished novel. But although it's personal, it's not literally autobiographical. The events of the life of its protagonist, Laurel McKelva Hand, are not those of the author's li More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 23, 2009

Maggie rated it:

Although this book is told through an omniscent author, Laurel's view is so strong that it feels as if it were written in first person.

Laurel is a widow and the only child of Judge McKelva, a small-town Mississippi lawyer, who has remarried after the death of his beloved wife. Faye is the new wife and she is nearly the same age as Laurel but, as becomes clear during the book, the two women have nothing in common and are total strangers to each other.

The town, the cha More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2009

Sheri rated it:

I know this is a celebrated author and she won an award for this book and some say it's excellent,but...I had a real hard time getting into it, even though it's not a very long book, less than 200 pgs.
Laurel comes back home to be with her father while he has eye surgery. The poor man has to lay in bed, immobile, for weeks for the eye to heal and that in itself is torture to read about because you feel as if it's you yourself going through it. She is very good at making you feel the sit More...

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Dec 15, 2011

MJ rated it:

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972.

It must have been a slow year. Not that the book is bad, it's just not that good. The characters are flat and static, which is a personal pet peeve, made worse here by the fact that there's not much in the way of a plot.

The basics: Laurel is a 40 something widow whose mother has died more than 10 years before the start of the book. Her father, seventy years old, has married a woman his daughter's age. He falls ill and d More...

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Feb 24, 2009

Daniel rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 21, 2010

Ralph rated it:

“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!” ~Oscar Wilde

I guess I saw the holes in this book. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize and is considered by many a modern day classic. I hate giving low ratings on what are considered classic books because it makes me seem unsophisticated somehow. However, I just don't understand the praise for this book. I didn't feel the characters were very developed More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2011

Ensiform rated it:

Laurel, a young widow, returns to the South to be with her dying father; after he dies, she and her snotty young stepmother, return to her family house in Mississippi. This won the Pulitzer, but I disliked it. First, I always find the proud clinginess of the Southern patriot to be boring as well as arrogant. But mainly, I found this to be a rather simple tale, with a simple moral, written simply: a small bird in her house utterly terrifies Laurel; it doubtless represents her fear or helplessn More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 24, 2009

Frances rated it:

I pulled this off the shelf on a whim with no real knowledge of what to expect. Because I didn't go into it as a serious reader, I feel that I've missed layers and am almost tempted to pick it up again and start over, but I'm not sure I could handle it. The book sucked me into Laurel's emotions. I haven't empathized with a character to such an extent in quite some time, especially considering that Laurel is having to come to terms with a type of grief that I fortunately cannot begin to imagin More...

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Feb 11, 2012

Lisa rated it:

I chose this book of Welty's first from the list because it was the thinnest :) Not a good way to choose books, I know, & I was told it might not be easily understood because some of the references were a little obscure. Well, I was captivated by this story of family, pain, loss, & dealing with the aftermath of it all right from the first page. In reading this, there were times I caught glimpses of my own family & past, & sometimes they were all as foreign to me as oceans away. Parts of it I More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 07, 2009

Stella rated it:

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I hadn't read this book before now. After all, I am from the South; I teach Southern literature; I generally like Eudora Welty . . . ah well, what are summers for if not for filling in the many gaps in one's reading?

I truly loved this short novel. The verisimilitude was what initially grabbed me. I especially appreciated the character, Tennyson, who regularly exclaimed, "Great Day in the Morning." I have no idea what the origins More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 17, 2011

Khris rated it:

A short novel by Eudora Welty. Tells the story of Mississippi-born Laurel McKelva Hand, who now lives in Chicago, but rushes off to New Orleans where her 71-year-old father (Judge Clint McKelva) is having emergency eye surgery. He's there with his new young wife (Laurel's mother is deceased), a self-centered woman who seems to only care how much this has all inconvenienced her.
Judge McKelva dies shortly after the surgery, and they make the sad trip back home to Mount Salus, Mississippi More...

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Dec 01, 2011

Christina rated it:

This book kept my interest pretty well. Given that it was only 180 small pages it didn't take me long to finish once I finally sat down and was able to read. About half way through the book I was a bit concerned that I was not only not attached to any of the characters but that I didn't have any strong feelings either way toward any of the main characters. I found almost all of them a bit annoying and didn't find too much excitement even when the story began threaten as such. Overall, given More...

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Jun 27, 2010

Rachel rated it:

I didn't like this book, but I didn't not like it either. The book is very short, only 180 pages in my edition, and really could have been longer. I thought many of the characters were one note, possibly because of the brevity of the book. The main character is Laurel; a middle-aged widow who lost her mother and husband years before and now has to deal with her father's illness and her step-mother's selfishness. The cover blurb says that she "finally comes to an understanding of the pas More...

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Jan 11, 2010

Connie rated it:

This short novel takes place in both Mississippi and Chicago. I did not always fully understand the symbolism, but the development of the characters made it easy to form both attachment and distaste. The daughter, having lost her husband in the war, and then her mother, has now just lost her father. She must deal with her own grief, that of her father's friends and associates, and with the personality of her father's second wife, who is younger than she is. There is power in memory. Lett More...

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May 19, 2011

Lynn rated it:

This did not do much for me. I found the main character inaccessible and couldn't sympathize with her. In the beginning, the fact that she didn't speak much made her seem wise and restrained, and her awful stepmother made her look nice by comparison. I wondered why she didn't stand up for her father, and later, for herself. But as time went by, when she started interacting with her old friends and reacting more to the situation, she actually seemed ungrateful and critical, almost bitchy. Sh More...

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Feb 15, 2012

Kathy rated it:

This novel is understated, as is typical of Welty, perhaps the writer closest to Hemingway in that regard, although Welty is more lyrical and imagistic. She presents the interwoven lives of Laurel McKelva Hand, Judge McKelva (Laurel's father), Becky (Laurel's mother), Fay McKelva (the Judge's second wife), and Philip Hand (Laurel's deceased husband). "Confluences" of north and south, Ohio and Mississippi, white and black, living and dead, comprise the thematic center of this novel. More...

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