<![CDATA[The Optimist's Daughter: A Novel]]>

false <![CDATA[The Optimist's Daughter: A Novel]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166505024m/12585.jpg 12585 18 The Optimist's Daughter is a compact and inward-looking little novel, a Pulitzer Prize winner that's slight of page yet big of heart. The optimist in question is 71-year-old Judge McKelva, who has come to a New Orleans hospital from Mount Salus, Mississippi, complaining of a "disturbance" in his vision. To his daughter, Laurel, it's as rare for him to admit "self-concern" as it is for him to be sick, and she immediately flies down from Chicago to be by his side. The subsequent operation on the judge's eye goes well, but the recovery does not. He lies still with both eyes heavily bandaged, growing ever more passive until finally--with some help from the shockingly vulgar Fay, his wife of two years--he simply dies. Together Fay and Laurel travel to Mount Salus to bury him, and the novel begins the inward spiral that leads Laurel to the moment when "all she had found had found her," when the "deepest spring in her heart had uncovered itself" and begins to flow again. Not much actually happens in the rest of the book--Fay's low-rent relatives arrive for the funeral, a bird flies down the chimney and is trapped in the hall--and yet Welty manages to compress the richness of an entire life within its pages. This is a world, after all, in which a set of complex relationships can be conveyed by the phrase "I know his whole family" or by the criticism "When he brought her here to your house, she had very little idea of how to separate an egg." Does such a place exist anymore? It is vanishing even from this novel, and the personification of its vanishing is none other than Fay--petulant, graceless, childish, with neither the passion nor the imagination to love. Welty expends a lot of vindictive energy on Fay and her kin, who must be the most small-minded, mean-mouthed clan since the Snopeses hit Frenchman's Bend. There's more than just class snobbery at work here (though that surely comes into it too). As Welty sees it, they are a special historical tribe who exult in grieving because they have come to be good at it, and who seethe with resentment from the day they are born. They have come "out of all times of trouble, past or future--the great, interrelated family of those who never know the meaning of what has happened to them." Fay belongs to the future, as she makes clear; it's Laurel who belongs to the past--Welty's own chosen territory. In her fine memoir, One Writer's Beginnings, Welty described the way art could shine a light back "as when your train makes a curve, showing that there has been a mountain of meaning rising behind you on the way you've come." Here, in one of her most autobiographical works, the past joins seamlessly with the present in a masterful evocation of grief, memory, loss, and love. Beautifully written, moving but never mawkish, The Optimist's Daughter is Eudora Welty's greatest achievement--which is high praise indeed. --Mary Park 1030623 book 1972 The Optimist's Daughter: A Novel By total:1211|5:207|4:403|3:394|2:158|1:49| 1211 4194 1837 160 5 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 11:36:29 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 11:36:29 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Dec 27 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 17:16:21 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 17:23:06 -0800 2008
I'm not sure what I was expecting from this story and I worry that any review or recommendation I giv...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Tue Nov 03 15:04:17 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 03 15:06:57 -0800 2009 “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 walk...more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Feb 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 00:52:41 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 01:51:27 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 true false Tue Feb 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 12 20:58:51 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 06 09:39:21 -0800 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false false Thu Feb 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 05:52:23 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 28 19:47:36 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 12 12:57:20 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 16:25:32 -0700 2009
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...more...]]> 3 2 true true Sat Feb 21 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 09 10:20:44 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 21:00:16 -0800 2009 1
It took me most of the story to become interested in the story. one night, I just flat didn't want to read it because it was so boring. The prota...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 24 18:28:09 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 24 18:42:55 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jul 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 11:27:54 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 11:33:39 -0700 2009
I truly loved this short nove...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 20 07:10:12 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 24 20:47:27 -0700 2007 5 0 false true Wed Nov 11 06:08:36 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 11 06:16:47 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Mar 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 17:06:51 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 17:33:01 -0700 2009
The story is about a woman who travels home to Mississippi to help her fa...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 18:47:38 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 22 09:12:37 -0800 2008
I wish I had been at book group to hear the discussion. I was really annoyed with Laurel's reactions to her step-mother...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Mar 16 14:33:33 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 16 14:33:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 11:32:18 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 14:54:57 -0700 2009 The Optimist's Daughter is a twisting story about the relations between a child and parent. Laurel McKelva Hand's father, Judge McKelva, is deeply ill with an eye disease. At first he thinks it's easily fixable but little does he know that all he ends up is in eye patches, slowly fading. Judge Mckel...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri May 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 08 17:21:56 -0700 2009 Fri May 22 15:45:00 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Dec 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 19:42:48 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 19:57:46 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Oct 03 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 03 15:51:05 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 03 16:08:08 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Thu May 01 17:09:15 -0700 2008 Wed May 21 17:47:49 -0700 2008
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