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5th out of 219 books
—
377 voters
Fair and Tender Ladies (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
by
Lee Smith
"A TOUR DE FORCE"
- Los Angeles Times
"The story of Ivy Rowe, born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountain enclave of Sugar Fork, is told completely through letters that Ivy is forever writing family and friends...Lee Smith exhibits her own understanding and affection for the traditions of the Appalachians. She is at home with the down-home speech and ways of h...more
- Los Angeles Times
"The story of Ivy Rowe, born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountain enclave of Sugar Fork, is told completely through letters that Ivy is forever writing family and friends...Lee Smith exhibits her own understanding and affection for the traditions of the Appalachians. She is at home with the down-home speech and ways of h...more
Paperback, 336 pages
Published
June 1st 1993
by Ballantine Books
(first published 1988)
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I think that maybe I love Ivy Rowe more than any character I've read. The reader meets Ivy as a child and grows old with her. She's a natural-born writer, so the story is told in epistolary style through the letters Ivy is forever writing to her friends and family. Ivy believes she yearns to see the world, but as her life progresses and she has opportunities to escape the poverty of her Appalachian upbringing, she discovers that the pull of home and family are stronger than that of travel and ad...more
This novel is one of my favorite books of all time. Polly Hollar gave it to me in college with two lines from the book inscribed in the cover: "Slow down, slow down, this is the taste of spring" and "I have walked in my body like a queen." It's an epistolary book that appears as a compilation of all the letters written by a poor Appalachian woman named Ivy Rowe throughout her lifetime. Some letters are to herself, a pen pal, or to individuals who will never receive them. Some letters are to othe...more
I'm an Appalachian mountain girl. I felt like I knew Ivy from the first sentence. She truly seemed to come to life on the pages. I came along a few generations after her time, but I felt like she could be one of my grandmothers. She talked the way I probably still talk :-) Education was important to her, and she was very smart, but she never really got a chance. I guess, really, I felt like I could have been reading family history. That says a lot about a novel.
Re-read June 28, 2009
There's not a...more
Re-read June 28, 2009
There's not a...more
9 likes · like · see review
Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith is an enchanting epistolary (told through letters) novel about a life. There is not one specific antagonist or event that this novel is centered on, instead it is centered on the heroine, Ivy Rowe, and the events of her life as they unfold through letters she writes to family and friends. The story begins a few years into the 1900's when Ivy is 12 years old writing about her life to a hoped for pen-pal, and continures into the 1970's as Ivy writes to friends...more
I like this book because I grew up in Appalachia. This is a beautiful picture of life in the mountains, with a musical quality that is reminiscent of the region and draws you in.
3 likes · like · see review
Jul 11, 2008
Lynn
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Lynn by:
Ashley Andrews
Shelves:
great-reads,
tougher-but-worthwhile
I really enjoyed this book. Once you got hooked into wondering what would happen to Ivy next you just didn't want to put it down. The whole time while reading it I had this feeling of da'javu. I'm not sure whether it's because I already read it in this life, another one, or it's resonating with part of my soul. I'm going to mail my copy to my mother in law because I really think she'll like it too.
I'd recommend this for people who feel like even normal life is a nonstop adventure but that someti...more
I'd recommend this for people who feel like even normal life is a nonstop adventure but that someti...more
1 like · like · see review
Feb 06, 2008
Diana
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone interested in Appalachian culture
I went from reading about Tudor England to this book. I have to admit it was hard going at first, but once I did it was hard to put down. I definitely would include this book in my list of favorites up there with Tree grows in Brooklyn. I am looking forward to reading her other books now. The hard part is that I have one more Tudor England book to read...I don't know...now it's going to be hard to pick that up again. Lee Smith's characters are so much more lovely. Lee Smith puts so much depth in...more
My sister, Pamela, sent this to me as a birthday gift. I LOVED IT!!!! The pacing is so organic, believable and rich. I care about the characters and Ivy Rowe is so whole, so human. I love her with all of her life foibles and precious discoveries. This book is a gem. The fact that Ivy loves Jane Eyre and compares herself to that character on many occasions is another true testament to how much I love her!
And, by the way,
Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle are the authors whose work was adapted in 'Good "...more
And, by the way,
Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle are the authors whose work was adapted in 'Good "...more
1 like · like · see review
I really didn't like this book. I just thought that the themes of sex and death were way overdone. The main character has some personality, but her focus in life, and thus the focus of the book, was just too strange. I didn't get it.
I did like how the story was told in all letters. I thought that made an interesting forum. And I LOVED the "accent" you got from the writings. I just didn't like the plot or point.
I did like how the story was told in all letters. I thought that made an interesting forum. And I LOVED the "accent" you got from the writings. I just didn't like the plot or point.
I read Lou Crabtree's copy of the book - she loaned it to me years ago, and I know I enjoyed it. I conflate Lou and Ivy some, although they are very different in many ways.
Lou is the primary muse of this novel, as I remember it. Lee Smith had many conversations with her. Lee Smith was the fire under getting Lou to publish, too - having discovered her in a writing workshop. Lee provides the introduction to Sweet Hollow.
So they had a great artistic connection. Lou is an amazing writer in her own r...more
Lou is the primary muse of this novel, as I remember it. Lee Smith had many conversations with her. Lee Smith was the fire under getting Lou to publish, too - having discovered her in a writing workshop. Lee provides the introduction to Sweet Hollow.
So they had a great artistic connection. Lou is an amazing writer in her own r...more
A moving account of Ivy Rowe, a girl growing up in the Virginia Mountains. The entire book are her letters written to sisters, brothers and often to her mentally challenged sister. The character development is excellent and the realistic life experiences from dire poverty to the new coal towns where there was so much hope, and then so much loss. Ivy is a character you'll grown to love, laugh with and cry for. The novel takes you through her life.
At a time in her life she wrote, "It is clear to...more
At a time in her life she wrote, "It is clear to...more
It seems like every generation has those who look forward to a better future, and those who look backward at a better yesterday.
As Ivy Rowe begins to write letters at the age of 12, her Appalachian home in Sugar Fork seems completely shrouded and sheltered from the outside world. Her family is high up in the mountains, away from everything the world can offer - good education, good medicine, etc.
As she grows old, it seems in her letters like the backwoods, faraway quality of the Appalachians...more
As Ivy Rowe begins to write letters at the age of 12, her Appalachian home in Sugar Fork seems completely shrouded and sheltered from the outside world. Her family is high up in the mountains, away from everything the world can offer - good education, good medicine, etc.
As she grows old, it seems in her letters like the backwoods, faraway quality of the Appalachians...more
This satisfying novel of a woman's life in rural Appalachia during the first half of the 20th century rings so true that one would think she was a real person. We follow the story of Ivy Rowe in the first person and entirely in the form of letters, which enhances the realism and prevents too much detail. I was reminded somewhat of a more recent novel, The Guernsey Literary Society, which employs the same format, but Fair and Tender Ladies is better. Ivy meets the poverty and limitations of her l...more
Added 7/20/11.
On 7/20/11 I received the following email from our local public library, Crandall Library in Glens Falls:
=====================================
Crandall Public Library presents the free theatrical program:
Barbara Bates Smith in "Ivy Rowe"
Thursday, July 28 at 7:00 PM in the Community Room
"The spunky mountain woman character from the novel Fair and Tender Ladies, Ivy Rowe (portrayed by Barbara Bates Smith) takes us, in a flashback, through her life of “livin’ on love.” With a sensuous...more
On 7/20/11 I received the following email from our local public library, Crandall Library in Glens Falls:
=====================================
Crandall Public Library presents the free theatrical program:
Barbara Bates Smith in "Ivy Rowe"
Thursday, July 28 at 7:00 PM in the Community Room
"The spunky mountain woman character from the novel Fair and Tender Ladies, Ivy Rowe (portrayed by Barbara Bates Smith) takes us, in a flashback, through her life of “livin’ on love.” With a sensuous...more
Lee Smith (female) is the author of The Devil’s Dream, one of my favorite books from adolescence. Like so many of my books from that period, it’s a remaindered hardback I bought at Bookland in Corbin, Kentucky. The bookstore is no longer there, but whenever I pass Belk Simpson on 25E, I remember it. Bookland was situated to the left of one of the entrances to that southern chain department store.
Anyway, this is an epistolary novel. It begins by chronicling the life of Ivy Rowe, a girl living in...more
Anyway, this is an epistolary novel. It begins by chronicling the life of Ivy Rowe, a girl living in...more
I got this book expecting a Southern novel concerning the affluent set of the early to mid-1900s. Instead I the opposite - a beautifully written story of Appalachian poor of Virginia. It is a book written in letters and follows the life of Ivy Rowe from childhood through old age. She is smart, spunky, flawed, and beautiful. Lee Smith uses Ivy to explore religion, childhood, sibling relationships,friendships, the heartache of mothering children and letting them go, depression, marriage, old age,...more
Yet one more I'd have passed over, if I'd lacked sense enough to ask another beloved heart, a mountain woman herself, why she so loves this epistolary novel, of all things.
And Margie's answer simply was, "Read it and you'll see."
Never one to shirk a challenge, especially one from a Scots/Cherokee who's been a guiding light in life to me since, yup, the day we met at a lil' litfest in Florida in 1977, I picked it up, began.
And stand amazed, to this day, that anybody could carry off, in letter for...more
And Margie's answer simply was, "Read it and you'll see."
Never one to shirk a challenge, especially one from a Scots/Cherokee who's been a guiding light in life to me since, yup, the day we met at a lil' litfest in Florida in 1977, I picked it up, began.
And stand amazed, to this day, that anybody could carry off, in letter for...more
Lee Smith. The name for me evokes memories of long days spent happily lost in books that speak to the minds and hearts of mountain girls everywhere. Oral History, Family Linen, Black Mountain Breakdown, The Devil's Dream, Saving Grace, and my particular favorite, Fair and Tender Ladies. I know so many of the women in these books, and I have been one or two of them. Thought provoking, funny, tender, haunting; each book has a meaning far beyond the story. The richness of detail about mountain life...more
We read Fair and Tender Ladies for my book club, and I must say that the novel grew on me . I liked the main character from the get go--it was the epistolary structure that slowed me down. The dialect and the spelling was difficult to move through. I read the first couple of chapters and put it down for a week. But then, the rhythm of her letters, and the unraveling of Ivy's life, drew me in.
Ivy is spunky and smart, one of nine siblings living with her parents on a mountain farm in Sugar Fork,...more
Ivy is spunky and smart, one of nine siblings living with her parents on a mountain farm in Sugar Fork,...more
1 like · like · see review
I give author Lee Smith five stars for her creative writing! I very much enjoyed the letter format used to chronicle Ivy's life: her thoughts, feelings, actions, her view of home front and world happenings; to shadow Ivy, to experience first hand Ivy's journey from childhood to her death bed. Keeping Ivy's text in her Virginia hill folk vernacular greatly contributed to the support of the theme. I was swept along by the colorful back drop Smith painted. I could easily invision Sugar Fork, the ca...more
Fair and Tender Ladies is written entirely from the viewpoint of protagonist Ivy Rowe Fox, through her letters to family and friends. The letters in the first part of the novel are written with many misspellings, as Ivy is but a child—-around twelve years old—-at that point in the story. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s certainly worth the effort. As Ivy matures and becomes better educated, so does the quality of her writing, though the entire epistolary novel remains true to Appalach...more
Fair and Tender Ladies (alongside the Little House books)has been on my "comfort read" list for a long time. The boo is written in epistolary style, first person, and tells the life story of Ive Rowe, who lives in impoverished Appalachian in the early 20th century. This was my fourth time around, and I hadn't read it for at least ten years. An author myself now, and the survivor of around 15 workshops, my "critical brain" is more active that it used to be. I kinda miss the days where I just read...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This book has given a look into the coal mining towns life at the turn of the century. This has been illustrated through letters written by Ivy. So real it becomes that it is hard to belive that someone wrote them.
I found this book devastating. It is written entirely in letters. I could only read a few at a time and I would set the book aside and think about Ivy.
FAIR AND TENDER LADIES chronicles the life of IVY, written in letters spanning the decades of her life,(beginning as a small child) to her various loved ones. They are written in Appalachian dialect and sometimes, I had to read it again to make certain I got the meaning.
The book paints a portrait (a very accurate portrait) of life in rural West V...more
FAIR AND TENDER LADIES chronicles the life of IVY, written in letters spanning the decades of her life,(beginning as a small child) to her various loved ones. They are written in Appalachian dialect and sometimes, I had to read it again to make certain I got the meaning.
The book paints a portrait (a very accurate portrait) of life in rural West V...more
Thank you Sassy, for mentioning how much you loved this book, it was wonderful.
The entire book is written in letters to various people. Ivy starts out as a young, bright, but mostly uneducated girl living in the Appalachian mountains. Her life story unfolds through letters and you're left with a whole character who is as real as any living person.
I also enjoyed watching her spelling and grammar improve throughout her life, but also noticing that she never stuck with what she knew. She'd catch t...more
The entire book is written in letters to various people. Ivy starts out as a young, bright, but mostly uneducated girl living in the Appalachian mountains. Her life story unfolds through letters and you're left with a whole character who is as real as any living person.
I also enjoyed watching her spelling and grammar improve throughout her life, but also noticing that she never stuck with what she knew. She'd catch t...more
Fair and Tender Ladies is one of those books you would have a dog-eared, tea-stained, cracked spine copy of on your shelf that you wouldn't lend to anyone, its that special.
From the first few pages, even paragraphs, I could tell this was quickly going to become a favorite book. And I was not disappointed, right down to the last word of the book.
The story is told via letters to friends/family from Ivy Rowe, who starts out as a young girl in the mountains of Appalachia. The letters and the languag...more
From the first few pages, even paragraphs, I could tell this was quickly going to become a favorite book. And I was not disappointed, right down to the last word of the book.
The story is told via letters to friends/family from Ivy Rowe, who starts out as a young girl in the mountains of Appalachia. The letters and the languag...more
Through letters Ivy Rowe tells her life story while growing up in Appalachia in the 1900 though the early 1970’s. At the young age of twelve Ivy starts her tale.
Ivy is a normal little mountain girl who has family responsibilities, adventures and trials. As she grows, with much potential and the opportunity to move from poverty and attend a University, she discovers that she is trapped back in her current situation. Trying to make the best of it and never looking back with regret, she moves forw...more
Ivy is a normal little mountain girl who has family responsibilities, adventures and trials. As she grows, with much potential and the opportunity to move from poverty and attend a University, she discovers that she is trapped back in her current situation. Trying to make the best of it and never looking back with regret, she moves forw...more
Mar 01, 2012
Silver James
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2012-books-read
I normally don't read "women's fiction" -- whatever the heck that actually means -- but this book was recommended in a "Blind Book Date" on the Valentine's Day blog by agent Jessica Faust at Bookends LLC. I checked the book out from the library a few days later and have been reading it in bits and pieces. As the format is a series of letters written by the protagonist, the book lent itself well to this. I finished it this morning with a bit of a sniffle. Ivy Rowe is a character I know well. Not...more
"Fair and Tender Ladies" is a story set in the hollows of Appalachian Virginia, and is told through letters written by the protagonist and narrator, Ivy Rowe. Her letters begin when she's a young girl and end at the end of her life, and she unfolds her own story by writing to her relatives and friends. Her life is filled with incredible poverty, struggles, opportunities, unusual characters, serendipity, and blessings galore. Lee Smith is a very fine writer, and the development of this novel thro...more
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Growing up in the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing--and selling, for a nickel apiece--stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown of Grundy and the nearby isolated "hollers." Since 1968, she has published eleven novels, as well as three collections of short stories, and has received many writing awards.
The sense of place infusing her...more
More about Lee Smith...
The sense of place infusing her...more
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Apr 03, 2008 09:52pm