Book Four-Five

I adore this book.

Here is part of the summary on the back: "... a single mother who enjoys a successful career as a journalist, a comfortable income, and a formidable bank account. Written as a series of short vignettes and snatches of overhead conversations, Ruth Hall is as unconventional in style as in substance and is strikingly modern in impact."

The way this novel is written is absolutely unconventional. It's also unique and wonderful and incredibly effective. Several of my classmates complained that, by writing in vignettes as opposed to continuous narrative, Fern had "left out the novel." I beg to differ. Fern left out the boring, unnecessary parts that bog down a book. The obligatory descriptions, the dull transitions, the development of setting and history, this was all interwoven beautifully into the actual telling of the story, as opposed to a set-up before delving into the good stuff.

Now I will get off my soapbox.

The characters in this novel are incredible. I loved several of them - loved them as my own, dear friends. And others, I loathed. I got so angry that I wrote in the margins - in big, screaming red letters - things such as "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!" or "OMG, YOU BAD WORD". I suppose you must take the bad with the good. Because there certainly was a lot of good. The good characters were absolute angels. Ruth, for example, endured the death of her first child and of a husband, estrangement from a negligent family, near starvation, and being turned away by countless publishing companies, yet never gave up.

There are moments in this novel that are just so precious. They are so real and poignant that I stared breathlessly at the page, as though I had written the words myself. That is how much I understood and felt Fern's writing. And the writing itself was beautiful. I feel as though I'm stumbling over my words in comparison to such a craft.

I'm not going to do my traditional quote frenzy. If I did, I'd be quoting every other page. Instead, I will quote from my favorite chapter, which is but three quarters of a page:

Daisy shook back her hair, and settling her little elbows on her knees, sat with her chin in her palms, dreamily watching the shifting clouds. A butterfly alights on a blade of grass near her: Daisy springs up, her long hair floating like a veil about her shoulders, and her tiny feet scarce bending the clover blossoms, and tiptoes carefully along in pursuit.

He's gone, Daisy, but never mind; like many other coveted treasures, he would lose brilliancy if caught.

...

Just -
no words.

I know I get overly sentimental when it comes to novels. We both know how much I love them (I say we because I am sure, if you are following this blog, you are well aware that the majority of my posts these days consist of gushing over my most recent read). But truly, this novel holds a special place in my heart. It is so well-written, so uniquely constructed, so poignant, so dear to me (as I know I will be in her starving-writer shoes one day). And to have been written over one hundred fifty years ago... brilliant.

I will dream in nineteenth-century prose tonight.

Book Five: The Minister's Wooing by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Start Date: February 13, 2011
End Date: March 1, 2011