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45th out of 73 books
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Ellen Foster
by
Kaye Gibbons
Kaye's wonderful and beloved first novel.
Paperback, 126 pages
Published
May 3rd 1999
by Vintage
(first published 1987)
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The first line of Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons reads: "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." Wow! Talk about a powerful hook! Eleven year old Ellen has been through more than any child should experience. Her father is alcoholic and abusive toward Ellen's mother. Ellen just about raises herself in this dysfunctional household, the "hero" in the alcoholic family. After her mother dies, she goes to live with her teacher and things would have been fine...more
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Kerrin
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In the fiction book I read Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, the main theme is determaination. This book revolves around a ten year old girl who learns is looking for a family to love her. The main character is Ellen Foster. She struggles with trama and abuse after her mother commits suicide.
The novel Ellen Foster focuses on a girl Ellen who struggles with abuse by her father After her mother commits suicide by overdosing on her pills. Ellen must find herself a loving home an...more
The novel Ellen Foster focuses on a girl Ellen who struggles with abuse by her father After her mother commits suicide by overdosing on her pills. Ellen must find herself a loving home an...more
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Ellen Foster VintageBooks,1990,126pp.,$13.56
ISBN 0-7383-0477-8
Kaye Gibbons
“ When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.” Ellen foster is not a homicidal girl out to kill her father, but a girl with a troubled past. She has to endure a life with her alcoholic father after her mother passes away. She moves from house to house trying to find a better life.
If you have ever lived with an alcoholic father then you might know ju...more
ISBN 0-7383-0477-8
Kaye Gibbons
“ When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.” Ellen foster is not a homicidal girl out to kill her father, but a girl with a troubled past. She has to endure a life with her alcoholic father after her mother passes away. She moves from house to house trying to find a better life.
If you have ever lived with an alcoholic father then you might know ju...more
Patricia
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who don't think all movies should have a car chase
Shelves:
fiction,
re-read_every_couple_of_yrs
"Ellen Foster" is one of those books I have to re-read every few years. The understanding of a pre-pubescent and otherwise unlucky girl as she deals with the insanity of adult reality in the flatlandish southern US speaks of a seasoning beyond her years. Her transparent naivté is obviously predicated on the awareness of the writer herself, but then, the book is using the disingenuousness natural to a child to make observations about the adult world. This device, hardly new to the world...more
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons is a story about a young girl whose name is Ellen. Her life is a roller coaster. From losing her mom to trying to find a home she she keeps on trying to be better even when the world comes crushing down on her. She decides to go on a journey, but, unfortunately, she's alone. Her dad is a hopeless case who spends most of his time drinking. Her mom, before she died, was afraid of her dad and didn't do much to create a better life and future for her daughter. Ellen also...more
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons is a novel about an 11 year old girl named Ellen. It explains the struggles she goes through everyday and how she is a strong girl. She has a two way life, and old family and a new family. Her real family creates bad memories for her which causes her to have a bad life. Her dad is an alcoholic who abuses Ellen. Ellen's Mother. Commits suicide when she can't handle her husband anymore. Ellen is left suffering on her own. The harsh moments she passed through were, bein...more
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons is a novel about an eleven year old girl who lives a harsh life all on her own. Ellen compares her old life with her new one and explains all her bad and good memories. The book is mostly about her life with a drunken dad who abuses her and her mother. She lives with her parents but when her mother can no longer handle her husband she ends up committing suicide. Ellen has to go through so many sad things on her own, because she has no one. She deals with her mother’...more
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons is a novel about a young girl. Throughout the book she goes from present to past. She goes through many tough times throughout her life. Ellen has to deal with her mother’s death and with an alcoholic father that doesn’t care for her at all. When she goes to the past it’s all about her real family and everything she had to go through. When she’s in the present, it’s all about her new foster family and how it’s all different there. Everything there is way better a...more
Ellen is a girl who has gone through a lot; Ellen is the protagonist of the book. She had to face the brutal attacks of her dad and life. ”Ellen Foster” by Kaye Gibbons is about the journey of a little girl named Ellen who is very brave emotionally during different moments in her life for a 11 year old. The book is mostly about the most memorable things she has even if it means they are negative. She is sexually abused by her alcoholic father, and, as he is unemployed and very mean at home, she...more
In the novel Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, Ellen lives with her disoriented family. Her mama is always sick and her papa is a drunkard that could care less about his family. The beginning, Ellen tells about the ways that she planned to kill her father, but in the end, he dies of his alcohol addiction. They are around the table. Ellen’s father commands her mama to cook and that he had to cook while she was gone. That was a big fat lie and he talks to her like that when she gets home from the hos...more
I picked this gem of a novel up at Borders' going out of business sale on my way home from work last night and devoured it -- cover to cover -- in a couple of hours. Eleven-year-old Ellen's uniquely insightful voice kept the tone of the novel from sinking into the saccharine sweetness of an annoyingly precocious child’s narrative. Her descriptions of attempted incest, rampant racism (often her own), and domestic violence are all the more horrific for the matter-of-fact way in which they are deta...more
Shannon
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I picked this book off the shelf, because the protagonist was compared to my beloved Holden Caulfield, because the novel was praised by my favorite professor's favorite author (Walker Percy), and because how does one NOT wish to read a book with an introduction like: "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy"? A quick read easily completed in a solitary Saturday afternoon, I mark this as adequate, though I probably would have left dear Salinger out of it.
A simple slic...more
A simple slic...more
Mixed. Very good in parts, and in other ways it just didn't all hold together.
I didn't fall in love with the main character, Ellen, because despite her matter-of-fact narration and perspective on her own tormented childhood, she didn't feel like a real person to me. She had a voice I couldn't imagine a real 11 year old using, even one who had gone through what Ellen had. And at times she seemed far too adult to be plausible, while at others she seemed strangely naive (not knowing he...more
I didn't fall in love with the main character, Ellen, because despite her matter-of-fact narration and perspective on her own tormented childhood, she didn't feel like a real person to me. She had a voice I couldn't imagine a real 11 year old using, even one who had gone through what Ellen had. And at times she seemed far too adult to be plausible, while at others she seemed strangely naive (not knowing he...more
If you are looking for a book to take your breath away, this is the one.
If you are looking for an exceptionally well-written novel wherein each phrase, each sentence, each paragraph contains poetic beauty, then this is the one.
If you are looking for a book that resonates deep within your soul, leaving you laughing, crying and simply not wanting it to end, then this is the book to read.
And, I'll go out on a huge limb to say that if you choose to read only one o...more
If you are looking for an exceptionally well-written novel wherein each phrase, each sentence, each paragraph contains poetic beauty, then this is the one.
If you are looking for a book that resonates deep within your soul, leaving you laughing, crying and simply not wanting it to end, then this is the book to read.
And, I'll go out on a huge limb to say that if you choose to read only one o...more
Gibbons' style reminds me of Cormac McCarthy. For me, that's no compliment. There are no quotation marks around the dialogue, making it harder to keep track of, and almost no commas as far as the eye can see. Gibbons at least could claim a rationale for what in McCarthy I can only see as an affectation. The first person narrator, Ellen Foster, is a child, poor and uneducated, so at least one could say the punctuation impoverished style fits her.
That doesn't mean I found the novel a ...more
That doesn't mean I found the novel a ...more
"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy."
That's the first line of Kaye Gibbon's noel "Ellen Foster." How could you not read on?
"Ellen Foster" is the story of Ellen, a little girl with a hard childhood and how she finds her way to a safe place. Ellen lives with her ailing mother and abusive father. She watches as members of her family kill themselves or die of old age, leaving her more and more alone. But Ellen is an indust...more
That's the first line of Kaye Gibbon's noel "Ellen Foster." How could you not read on?
"Ellen Foster" is the story of Ellen, a little girl with a hard childhood and how she finds her way to a safe place. Ellen lives with her ailing mother and abusive father. She watches as members of her family kill themselves or die of old age, leaving her more and more alone. But Ellen is an indust...more
The deck is stacked against Ellen Foster, an 11-year-old girl. Her father is an abusive alcoholic, her mother dies and then her father, and her grandmother and aunts verbally and otherwise abuse her. The family members are not merely insensitive but actually full of hatred and abuse. Ellen strives to survive and to find a surrogate family that will give her some measure of love.
Tear jerker? Well, that’s the risk, isn’t it, pulpy sentimentality? In 1913, Eleanor H. Porter published a...more
Tear jerker? Well, that’s the risk, isn’t it, pulpy sentimentality? In 1913, Eleanor H. Porter published a...more
I would have never chosen this book- but the libray had "blind date with a book" week. A bunch of books wapped up, you pick one, check it out, and unwrap your blind date book. So, I chose the smallest book I could find.
I liked it, and i would recommend it to friends. I actually think this WOULD make a good book club read, there were alot of issues going on here that didn't have closure- so I think a good discussion could be had.
Negatives:
The narrator, wh...more
I liked it, and i would recommend it to friends. I actually think this WOULD make a good book club read, there were alot of issues going on here that didn't have closure- so I think a good discussion could be had.
Negatives:
The narrator, wh...more
Ellen Foster is a quick and satisfying read that is rich in character yet slightly lacking in big ideas. There's the typical abusive-father dead-mother aspect that's seen in loads of literature, from Secret Life of Bees to Shakespeare (although this stuff really happens, so perhaps I should be light in my criticism). The book certainly starts out strongly from the first line. My biggest peeve about a book is when it weaves the present with the past, and doesn't explain the present situation unti...more
I've read lots of reviews of this book that were really positive. All the quotes on the book itself are of course glowing with praise. It was an Oprah's Book Club selection. It got published. A friend chose it for book club. Many people apparently think this is a really amazing book. I'm not exactly sure what I'm missing here. I didn't hate it, but I was just kind of bored and not impressed. The good thing is that it was a very short and easy book to read so I didn't feel like I wasted a...more
First Recorded Reading: May 9, 1999
I first read this short novel back in May of 1999, because it was an Oprah Book Club book; I thought at the time that it was a good book, but not a great book, and in re-reading the book some twelve years later, I still stand by my original assessment, that it’s good, but not great.
The narrator is a girl named Ellen (nine years old at the start of the book’s action), living somewhere in the rural South during the mid- or late-1970′s. The...more
I first read this short novel back in May of 1999, because it was an Oprah Book Club book; I thought at the time that it was a good book, but not a great book, and in re-reading the book some twelve years later, I still stand by my original assessment, that it’s good, but not great.
The narrator is a girl named Ellen (nine years old at the start of the book’s action), living somewhere in the rural South during the mid- or late-1970′s. The...more
"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy." So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbon's first novel.
It was that first sentence that enticed me to buy this book. It turned out to be not what I was expecting at all. It's a strange little book, an easy and quick read, but not one I couldn't put down. I wasn't even sure at first that I...more
It was that first sentence that enticed me to buy this book. It turned out to be not what I was expecting at all. It's a strange little book, an easy and quick read, but not one I couldn't put down. I wasn't even sure at first that I...more
What would you do if your dad was an alcoholic guy who was always drunk? What would be the first thing you would do? You've felt what Ellen Foster has gone through. She's the type of girl who was never able to back up her mom while her dad was yelling. She even saw her own mother dying, but of course - he dad threaten that if she told anyone what happen, he'd kill her. After a few years of more torture, Ellen's dad finally died, and Ellen was free. Free from all the pain that has been in her. Me...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
In this book, Ellen is the main character who is very persistent and brave. She has a very very unhappy childhood. Her father has a drinking problem. Every time after he is drunk, he would hurt Ellen and Ellen's mother. When Ellen is 11 years old, her mother dies from the overdoes of her heart pills. Ellen's life becomes dramatic from now on. You would know what happen when you read the book!
Also, Ellen has a best friend, Starletta. She is a black girl. Every time when Ellen goes to her h...more
Also, Ellen has a best friend, Starletta. She is a black girl. Every time when Ellen goes to her h...more
Ellen foster by Kayne Gibbons is a novel of a young girl who goes through a rough life. The young girl named Ellen talks about her past life and her new life. This novel is mostly about her dad always getting drunk and how her closest family members died. Also how she survived with all the drama she went through. So at the beggining Ellen lived with her parents but apperantly her mom commited suicide because Ellens father would abuse them. Ellen had to go through her moms, aunties and her gra...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Great writer - simple and profound. Check out this quote:
"I had plenty of time to myself. Which is something I always enjoy. The only problem is that all that free time leaves your head open for thinking and before you know it your brain slips a idea in and you have to shoo it away like that baby Roger clawing around in my business. So I try to keep my head pretty full at all times. But as soon as a spare room opens up in there here comes somebody like my daddy settling in thinki...more
"I had plenty of time to myself. Which is something I always enjoy. The only problem is that all that free time leaves your head open for thinking and before you know it your brain slips a idea in and you have to shoo it away like that baby Roger clawing around in my business. So I try to keep my head pretty full at all times. But as soon as a spare room opens up in there here comes somebody like my daddy settling in thinki...more
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Kaye Gibbons was born in 1960 in Nash County, North Carolina, on Bend of the River Road. She attended North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying American and English literature. At twenty-six years old, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster. Praised as an extraordinary debut, Eudora Welty said that "the honesty of thought and eye and feelin...more
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“I might be confused sometimes in my head but it is not something you need to talk about. Before you can talk you have to line it all up in order and I had rather just let it swirl around until I am too tired to think. You just let the motion in your head wear you out. Never think about it. You just make a bigger mess that way.”
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“Have you ever felt like you could cry because you know you just heard the most important thing anybody in the world could have spoke at that second?”
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