A Feast for the Mind's Eye....Four Plus Stars

books:


	• On Agate Hill: A Novel Lee Smith A Shannon Ravenel Book, 2006 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Unique Style, Interesting Idea

This was a very unique book. It starts off with a letter from a young girl who is writing to a college asking to be let back into the program she was in. She tells the director of this school that she has a diary and some letters from the civil war. It is unclear if she sends the Director all that she has or just writes to tell him about it but then the book switches over to the diary and so the story begins. The setting is Agate Hill, North Carolina and it is just after the Civil War ended. Molly Petree is the author of the diary. She begins to tell about the people that have come to live on Agate Hill after her mother and father and brother have died. At first, I was not that thrilled about the story. It was difficult for me to follow all the characters and how they were related to Molly. Since it was told in the form of a diary, it made it even more difficult. But then, when Simon Black comes and takes Mary to the private school in Virginia, I started to take more interest in the story. From that moment on, I began to like it a little better. This is normally not my favorite genre. But since this was a book club book, I felt obligated to give it a try. I am glad I did. It is such an extraordinary work, I don't think I will forget it.

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Another tour de force

Lee Smith is a great author. She writes books with a broader scope, more robust characters, and more accurate speech than anyone living today. Lee's strongest works depict one character throughout a lifetime, and she usually gives us a resilient woman who messes up and perseveres through hardscrabble love. For all Lee Smith's other strengths, I am most grateful to her for her faith in people.

On Agate Hill is a love story and a mystery set in reconstruction. Bliss and tragedy build from childhood through a marriage, showing Molly Petree's strength unfold as if inevitably. The mystery is one about the responsibility for loss, and the author shows how the stronger of us learn to take it.

On Agate Hill challenges the reader with changes in point of view, as the novel uses a collection of letters, diaries, and papers to tell the story. A lesser author could not manage this well, but Lee Smith has the virtuosity to tell a great story in a unique manner.

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A Feast for the Mind's Eye....Four Plus Stars

This is wonderful story told in a very clever format - a series of letters & a thesis proposal. There is a host of well developed characters some evoking laughter and some fury. I am familiar with the locations in which this book takes place and these areas are every bit as beautiful as described. The book is well constructed and fast-paced.

The main character, Molly Petree, reminds me of Ivy Rowe from "Fair and Tender Ladies" and her eventual husband, Jackie Jarvis, reminds me of Honey Breeding from the same book. Clearly Lee Smith is comfortable with and skilled in the letter-writing format, delighting in strong-willed, smart child characters.

The very end of the book might not be quite as strong as the preceeding pages. The character Molly, now reflecting on her life, has lost some of her clarity of thinking. Molly writes that she is "old" and sick but even given that, I was not sure why she waited so long to return to her secret childhood cubby and this bothered me. I would have liked to read a little more about that and also about her recollections of the fire.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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