Another Southerner

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
New York : Vintage Books, 1990.
180 p. ; 21 cm.

The past several years I've been updating our library's collection of literary criticism and noticed the availability of several volumes of Bloom's criticisms for Eudora Welty.  I acquired two and added a couple of her novels, too.  I had heard of Welty, but had never read any of her novels so I picked The Optimist's Daughter - the novel that brought Welty a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

In some ways the novel is more of a meditation than a novel.  Very little really "happens" in the novel - a daughter returns to the south to be with her father for a surgery that does not turn out well, and has to deal with the shallow new wife that her father recently married.

Before returning to Chicago where she lives and works, the main character, Laurel revisits the home of her childhood and ruminates on the people her mother and father were.

It's not an incredibly compelling read, but I enjoyed it and appreciated its subtle and light-handed touch, a touch which does not take away from seriousness of the subject matter. I'd definitely recommend Welty for a student looking for an author to research for an English class.

Welty's novel reminded me a bit of Carson McCullers, and made me want to go back and reread some Flannery O'Connor - which I have not read in many, many years.

A Wondrous Read

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz
New York : Riverhead Books, 2007.
1st U.S. ed.
340 p. ; 22 cm.

No wonder Wondrous won the Pulitzer Prize for 2008. It is a stunning read - full of passion, humor, history, wit, and anger (and an unforgettable protagonist, the overweight and unlucky in love Oscar). Reading this book, most Americans will realize how little they know of the Caribbean Stalin aka Trujillo, who merits some unsavory nicknames from the author, the nicest of which is the Cattle Thief. Unfortunately, Trujillo ruled with help from Uncle Sam, and when overthrown, popular rule was again thwarted by US Marines sent in by LBJ. The joy of this novel is all in the telling though - the history is woven in with such scathing humor and deadpan craziness that it only really sinks in after you have put the book down.

And what about the high school audience? Well, the book was written for adults, though Booklist recommended it for mature YA readers, which makes sense with the teen/college-aged protagonist. It's definitely not a book one could assign since it has mature sexual scenes and rather salty language. It's also rough with political violence, but for any student who wants to get a grip on the history of the Dominican Republic through an inspired coming of age/immigration novel - this is it.