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56th out of 225 books
—
240 voters
A Woman Of Independent Means (Virago Modern Classics)
One of Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey's most popular novels--the story of a very unsual woman and the three very different men in her life.
Published
(first published May 26th 1978)
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This is another book that reaffirms my belief in books having the uncanny power of choosing their readers when the time is just right.
My gaze has lingered on the tattered spine of A Woman of Independent Means for many months now; I've been perusing my shelf and consistently pausing there, hearing an echo of my sister's voice saying, "I think you'd like it. Here, take my copy." Still, it wasn't until a few days ago that I actually heeded its call.
Mortality is a topic every thing and one can rela...more
My gaze has lingered on the tattered spine of A Woman of Independent Means for many months now; I've been perusing my shelf and consistently pausing there, hearing an echo of my sister's voice saying, "I think you'd like it. Here, take my copy." Still, it wasn't until a few days ago that I actually heeded its call.
Mortality is a topic every thing and one can rela...more
My dear friend told me to run, not walk, to the bookstore and purchase a copy of this book. And my, am I glad I did. This epistolary novel is written through a series of letters throughout the life of Bess Steed Armstrong, a forthright woman of the early 1900s who believes in living life on her own terms. Because of inherited money, she is indeed a woman of independent means, which helps her fulfill her chosen life's paths. Through her letters we come to intimately know this woman of indomitable...more
It's a book of letters from a woman of high society, beginning with her childhood letters to her sweetheart. She later marries him and they enjoy a life of luxury until his death. The book is touching, but I find the main character to be a bit bossy. Her insistence to have things her way all the time becomes a bit annoying, and she is outspoken to a fault. Her children, especially her daughter, become estranged from her near the end of her lift, as a result of her intrusive personality. The book...more
I tried a book without a single recommendation - very scary for me! I picked it up at the dollar store or a clearance rack and I fell in love with it. The entire book was written in letters over the span of an American women's life (late 1800's - 1969ish). She was a great character of strength and determination albeit selfish at times. Life deals her tragedy yet she often rises and grows from her losses. The word independent describes her perfectly (a bit like Scarlett O'Hara ) I am not sure if...more
This book was well written and had some interesting insights. I'm sure there are many women who would identify with Bess and her hardships, but I didn't like her all that much. I found her pushy and manipulative. Maybe that is how you had to be to become a success back in the early 1900's.
I liked the creative way in which this book was written, through letters and other types of correspondence from Bess to various people in her life. We learn a lot about her not only from what she writes, but from her references to what other have written to her. She is a very controlling woman, who seeks to manipulate everyone and everything to her wishes and usually gets her way, but sometimes at a price to her personally. Very well written and wonderful 3-dimensional character development.
I read this book for the first time as a young girl and loved it. I was asked what inspired me to be a writer, and I thought about how I read a book once and never forgot it. I was pleased to love it just as much after reading it again thirty years later.
A Woman of Independent Means is a story told in a series of letters and correspondence over the lifespan of an average, yet brilliant, young American woman. It goes beyond a coming of age novel. Through her letters, we learn how to read Bess’ th...more
A Woman of Independent Means is a story told in a series of letters and correspondence over the lifespan of an average, yet brilliant, young American woman. It goes beyond a coming of age novel. Through her letters, we learn how to read Bess’ th...more
This is not about the book itself.
Found my copy of this book as I was gathering books to take to the Half-Price Book seller/buyer. (My husband does this for me so I won't come home with more than I took there. So I've never been in the store. Not that I need to with a Kindle Fire and a hot Amazon account.) I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw an inscription from my mother who has been gone from this life so many years ago. She always gave me a book for my birthday, a hard back book with an ins...more
Found my copy of this book as I was gathering books to take to the Half-Price Book seller/buyer. (My husband does this for me so I won't come home with more than I took there. So I've never been in the store. Not that I need to with a Kindle Fire and a hot Amazon account.) I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw an inscription from my mother who has been gone from this life so many years ago. She always gave me a book for my birthday, a hard back book with an ins...more
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A Woman of Independent Means is a little saga that follows the life of Bess, a woman living through the tumultuous first half of the 20th century. It is a time of war, of depression and hardship, of a blossoming women's rights movement and confusion over modernity and tradition. Bess stumbles through each of these obstacles throughout her life. The book is written in a letter format, which is a little annoying, because the reader must figure out who the letter is to, what the date is, what event...more
I always find novels written in the form of letters interesting (not that I's want to read more than one a year!). Though this novel was different in that the letters were all from the same person, so you had to glean from them what was going on with the people she would write to. This was well done by the author.
I found myself putting this book down and reading other things because somehow it was becoming too much a part of my thoughts!! It wasn't that I related to Bess and her lifestyle of tr...more
I found myself putting this book down and reading other things because somehow it was becoming too much a part of my thoughts!! It wasn't that I related to Bess and her lifestyle of tr...more
This book is written from letters the author wrote to family members for several decades. The high and low points are touched upon, offering detailed snapshots of her most memorable and challenging life events. Her writing is old fashioned, compared to today's prose, and it makes it just a short, sweet and beautiful story.
I listened to this as an audiobook which was rerecorded from the original rendition done on a vinyl record, played on a record player. Barbara Rush, a lovely actress, narrates...more
I listened to this as an audiobook which was rerecorded from the original rendition done on a vinyl record, played on a record player. Barbara Rush, a lovely actress, narrates...more
I don't know why I liked this book, exactly. I read it in one evening, and then in the morning I couldn't understand my fascination with Betsy's life. The main character gets married, gets an inheritance, has kids, travels and gets remarried. Good things happen, bad things happen but they are not unusual things that could only happen in the land of fiction. They are little things, like the grown woman Betsy writing a letter to her daughter that she later regrets. The series of letters introduced...more
I have a very fast reading pace, so when I started reading "A wWpman of Independent Means" I was very unconfortable with the broken reading provided by the epistolar technique. But once the child started to evolve into a woman, that disconfort seemed to disappear, and I got more and more interested in the complicated personality revealed in those letters.
Hailey does a great job at giving definite ends to the different actions of the book, no small feat when your source of information and only, a...more
Hailey does a great job at giving definite ends to the different actions of the book, no small feat when your source of information and only, a...more
I read this book thirty years ago and it was a light bulb moment for me - the first time I had read a 'how-to' on becoming independent in a relationship. Not meant to be a how-to book, this is a beautiful story of a woman, her loves and life, told in diary format. It is a page turner, but the take-away for me was how Bess illustrates the importance of every woman having her own financial security, her own thoughts and dreams. I thought it was so important that I bought copies for my own three da...more
I really loved this book. It's written diary-style so you fly through the pages. It's the story of one woman --- over decades of her life, relationships, marriage, children, the pain of loss, coming to terms with change, forgiveness and redemption. There are a handful of books, if we're lucky, that stay with us for years. We remember what we felt while reading it, how exciting it was to have found a book that had us forego everything needing to be done because we couldn't put that book down. Now...more
This book is written entirely as letters from the main character, Bess, to family and friends throughout her life. The first letter is written when she is a young child to her friend, who later becomes her husband. I was surprised how the one sided letters read so well like a story. I was still able to get to know the other characters even though they had no voice in the book. Bess, the Woman of Independent Means, is a very strong character and sometimes comes off as a little pushy and egocentri...more
This book is a very fast read due to its epistolary nature. All of the letters are written in the first person by one character - the main character Bess, the woman of independent means. I think that perhaps I would have liked it better if there had been a few letters written by other characters as responses to her, because without responses it felt so one-sided and the main character, instead of being powerful, independent, and admired, came across as bossy, manipulative, and spoilt. While she...more
read this back in high school because my bookworm aunt promised me i'd love it. well, i did love it, liked the character, but i can't deny that in some situations, i loathed Bess Steed Garner. there are those moments where i just find her too independent, too self-righteous, too strong-willed, too "garbosa" for her own good. i see myself in her (i'm garbosa at times) and i must say, those moments in the book where i see myself in her are the ones i actually disliked.
but all in all, it was a wond...more
What I remember most about this book is when she learned to drive and realized that she could get anywhere just by making right hand turns. I felt the same way when I learned to drive.
One of my favorite formats - a story told through letters. But we only see the letter-writers piece, we are left to put the story together based on the continuity of her letters. I am loving this book. The letter-writer can be a bit snobby at times, I think. The book starts in 1899, and her thinking is quite progressive, even now, but especially for that time period. Enjoying this very much !
Finished it last night - one of those books that I didn't want to end. The author (Hailey) did such a gre...more
Finished it last night - one of those books that I didn't want to end. The author (Hailey) did such a gre...more
This novel was recommended by a dear friend of mine during my divorced years and it is one of my favorite fiction reads. I enjoyed the intimate details of the character's diary written in letter form and following her various stages of her life. This to me was a very tender and touching story of the many aspects that women face in their lifetime; in their relationships, socio-economic status, process of aging, and struggle to maintain independence. I think the best message that this book offers...more
I saw the mini-series of this when i was about 8 years old. I had to do all sorts of extra chores to be able to stay up late enough to watch it, and i did, because i was transfixed. When i read the book years later, i had a similar reaction. This is an amazing story about a strong, independent woman who had more than her fair share of heartache and sorrow, still trying to carry on in the manner that she always has. Her optimism and striving in the face off all of the misfortunes of her life are...more
This book is composed of Bess's letters to various people throughout her life. We end up learning a lot about her personality, which is at times quite bossy, overbearing, and without tact. The other characters are understandably a lot harder to get to know, but the book is not about them I guess. She is a very interesting person and I mostly enjoyed reading about her life. It covers her life pretty much from her first marriage to her grade-school sweetheart to near her death. It began to kind of...more
I really liked it - for no apparent reason other than observing the path of life. The Author did very well in bringing alive the life of the main character - and all those around her - simply through the one-sided letters. I felt the ending was sad, because it was the end of her life. In my opinion it would have felt more uplifting to have had, near the end, a writing transition to her grand-daughter so we would have felt a continuation rather than an end.
Letter-writing is definately a dead art/...more
Letter-writing is definately a dead art/...more
Though I'm not usually a fan of the letter-writing format, I enjoyed it in this book, possibly because it was almost all one voice (the protagonist, Betsy Ross) and therefore allowed for some character development.
I loved to watch as she articulated her role as a woman in the turmoil of the early 1900's. As the title suggests, she was part of a privileged class, yet her true independence was found in her resilient spirit and compassionate heart. I laughed at her moments of "bossiness" and eccent...more
I loved to watch as she articulated her role as a woman in the turmoil of the early 1900's. As the title suggests, she was part of a privileged class, yet her true independence was found in her resilient spirit and compassionate heart. I laughed at her moments of "bossiness" and eccent...more
This book was quite unusual. Very average in terms of writing, and a bit too plotless...but Hailey captures the nature of our emotional existence so perfectly. She understands that unlike in fiction, where characters undergo big, dramatic changes and revolutions which are thought to be permanent, real people have emotional and mental growth in revolutions, reversals, fast and slow spurts, and frequently change their minds. If such versimilitude does not make for traditionally compelling fiction,...more
There were times when the feelings of the main character in this book were expressed not to my liking (I didn't feel like I got deep enough into what she was thinking and what the real emotions would be in each experience) but the author rights in letters from the main character only, so it was probably a challenge to do as well as she did. The book is based off of the author's grandmother's life and it was incredible to see the ground breaking things she was able to accomplish and do in her tim...more
A compelling picture of a woman's life in the early to mid 20th century. I found Bess a fascinating character. Intriguing, irritating, admirable, and, in many ways, appalling. She reminds me of a particular family member who shares her ability to see the world through a limited lens of entitlement. She knows what she wants, is certain that she deserves it, and believes unquestioningly in her right to get it through whatever means. A great manipulator. But she's smart, clever, sometimes charming...more
I read this book years ago and loved it so much I keep it on my bookshelf near me! I thought the story was compelling, but more than that, I thought the author did an amazing job capturing the main character, Bess, who is indomitable, flawed, interesting and wonderful. Bess manages to be manipulating, overbearing, yet also kind, concerned for others, passionate. It's really a thoughtful book and I keep going back to it. It always reminds me that people are so complicated and most have terrible a...more
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“Sometimes being a good mother gets in the way of being a good person.”
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36 people liked it
“Life causes estrangement enough—why do we add to it out of misplaced pride?”
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5 people liked it
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Jun 13, 2012 10:28am