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books:

The Best American Essays of the Century (The Best American Series (TM))

12 reviews

Houghton Mifflin, 2001

Authority and beauty
I don't think I'm alone in viewing essays as members of a somewhat lower caste than novels and non-fiction books. Maybe it's because I associate the essay with newspapers, and people like George Will who pretend to know more than their readers. I think the editors of this essay collection understood that popular conception, and tried very hard to fight it. In line with that fight, one of the ...

The Other Side of Air: A Novel

3 reviews
Jeanne Braselton

Ballantine Books, 2006

A Step above the Ordinary
Jeanne Braselton's The Other Side of Air is a book of simple prose that leaves you aching to believe that our loved ones continue to care for us after their deaths. Katy and Ephraim Doyal have been in love since they were eight years old. Their marriage was a long and happy one but when Katy realized she is going to die and leave Ephraim alone she arranges for him to be cared for by a woman, ...

A Cure for Dreams

14 reviews
Kaye Gibbons

Algonquin Books, 1991

a South I never knew
Kaye Gibbons' books all focus on a South that I have never known. That said, I love this place that she creates. It is a bit of old-school South, in that it seems like bad things are just bubbling under the surface, waiting to burst free. This is the same world that Faulkner, Dickey, and Welty inhabit. A world where human passions are often dark and where salvation is often not forthcoming. ...

Charms for the Easy Life

63 reviews

Audioworks, 1999

Charmed by this read
Gibbons' book is amount three strong women who possess the determination to succeed and do so with their hearts intact. You'll fall in love with these characters as the author cleverly displays their motives, desires, thoughts, and feelings. I thought this book was a little slow in the beginning, but soon I could not put it down. The characters began to evolve, and then Charms for the Easy Life ...

A Virtuous Woman

108 reviews
Kaye Gibbons

Jonathan Cape, 1989

Wonderful
This was a quick and fabulous read! I felt as if I knew each of the characters.

On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon

58 reviews
Kaye Gibbons

Bt Bound, 1999

Good, But Not as Good as Charms for the Easy Life.
While one can absolutely be provoked to feel the same sense of dread and loathing for Emma Tate's cruel and abusive father Samuel, pitying the rest of the family, and having great respect for Clarice, this book never lets up on loads and loads of misery. Gibbons's Emma is drawn more to being like her kindly mother who is constantly tortured in some way by Samuel until he makes her so sick ...

The Awakening and Other Stories (Modern Library Classics)

5 reviews
Kate Chopin

Modern Library, 2000

a counterpoint to the last review
I got turned on to KC in college through one story--The Storm--and a little background on her (she wrote ahead of her time, was published and then forgotten until the 1960's Feminist Movement dug her up again). She became one of those authors I lodge in the back of my head to investigate later. I happened upon this wonderful book at the book tent at New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest and grabbed ...

Ellen Foster

306 reviews
Kaye GIBBONS

Jonathan Cape, 1988

A study of a resilient child
You will fall in love with the title character of Kaye Gibbons's Ellen Foster. Throughout the novel, Ellen's most dominant character trait is self-preservation. From the first page to the last, she reveals and demonstrates the backbone and resilience necessary for a child thrown into challenging circumstances. Gibbons structures the novella around a series of temporal shifts between the ...

Divining Women

22 reviews
Kaye Gibbons

Putnam Pub Group, 2004

A Feast of Words
This is my first experience with the author and I thoroughly loved the experience. I found the plot and characterization well done but the best part was the language. Gibbons captures the diction of the aristocratic Old South using antique words and elaborate phrases that are fun to say and settle deliciously on the ears. Her writing is almost like poetry. She also uses a technique of ...

Sights Unseen

29 reviews
Kaye Gibbons

Avon Books, 1997

Impersonal Narrator
I am Bipolar. I bought this book for my son, who is now 34. His comments, as far as the impersonal narration were these. His way of dealing with growing up with my crazy roller coaster ride, in a situation where I was emotionally unavailable to him, although I was right there, was to detach. And become emotionally unavailable himself. Which persists to this day. He admits that he forms no ...

*5* Best-Selling Novels: "Where the Heart Is"; "A Virtuous Woman"; "Ladder of Years"; "Dear John"; and "The ...
Kaye Gibbons, Anne Tyler, Nicholas Evans Billie Letts

Signet; Warner; Fawcett; Vintage, 1000

WHERE THE HEART IS (Billie Letts) (Oprah's Book Club Selection; Literary Guild; Doubleday Book Club) Warner Books 1998 ISBN 0446672211 376 pages "Quiet zaniness. . . warm, quirky conversations...mischievous humor...Letts's writing shines." -- San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle A VIRTUOUS WOMAN (Kaye Gibbons) Vintage 1990 1st. ed ISBN 0375703063 165 pages "Complex, compact...one thinks of a Lillian Hellman play...The architecture of this novel ...

The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster

29 reviews
Kaye Gibbons

Harcourt, 2005

Life All Around Me difficult to follow the voice
This book has a unique voice that is supposed to be Ellen Foster as she has gotten older. It is definitely a unique voice, however, it was diffucult to follow at times and did not lend itself to the empathy created in the first book when Ellen was a younger child. I sailed through the first book but struggled to finish this one.

Christmas in the South: Holiday Stories from the South's Best Writers

3 reviews

Algonquin Books, 2004

Real Life at Christmas
Sure, Christmas is eggnog, gifts, desserts galore, choirs singing carols, and families coming together to bask in each other's company. Christmas is my favorite season, and I appreciate it for all of these reasons and more...however, often the eggnog is spiked without prior notification, the unstylish shirts from your grandmother don't fit and have to be returned, the desserts pack on an unwanted ...

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