Emmeline

It will make you feel what Emmeline went through. Imagine your family disowning you after you worked so hard to improve their lives with your earnings. Life was cruel for Emmeline and she didn't deserve those terrible hardships. Maguire was the scum of the earth taking advantage of her. Read the book and you'll know what I'm talking about....

This is one cold book. Probably says more about Rossner than "Looking for Mr. Goodbar". Everything is laid out very matter of fact, very dispassionate, stand back and away, look but don't touch, it might hurt. A must read, if just to wake one up to the cruelty of life.

We are all acquainted with the familiar chestnut: 'truth is stranger than fiction'. The tragic story of Emmeline Mosher (the real Emmeline spelt her name with a single m) is complete truth, and truth does not get much stranger than this. Emmeline's tale begins commonly enough: the oft told, well-worn story of a poor, naive country girl come to the city to find honest work, and in the process is seduced. Emmeline's seduction is especially poignant, as she has honest feelings, though they be confused, for her seducer, a much older man of much higher status, who plays on Emmeline's feelings to his advantage. Emmeline becomes 'with child', flees back to her home in shame, gives up her baby, and is forced to endure the guilt and sorrow of this event every long, empty day of her life. Until ~ one day, a stranger arrives to town. They meet, and there is an immediate, electric bond which deepens quickly into love. The two marry, and all seems well enough until Emmeline arrives to a shocking realisation. Whom she has married is indeed her own illegitimate son, the baby she gave away years ago, the product of her seduction. Certainly all of this sounds bluely lurid, fodder for the 'Daily Mirror' or worse, but Miss Rossner's ('Looking for Mr Goodbar') prose stands up to the plotline unflinchingly and carries it through. Rossner tells the tale the only way it might be told successfully: straight up, without flourish. These were real people, with real flaws, and here they are, in front of you, unvarnished. Such an unimaginable twist of circumstance incurred results. After Emmeline's disasterous marriage ended, she became a complete outcast, living on the fringes of her community, unvisited, alone, ekeing out a subsistance through her garden and her chickens. But her singular story lives on, in word and through music. For its 40th anniversary season in 1996, the Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere performances of Tobias Picker's first opera, 'Emmeline', which is based on Emeline Mosher's remarkable story, with its true-to-life undertones of the Oedipus legend.

What struck me about the book was how it ended the way real life does - not in a pat unrealistic romantic way, but having to come to terms with yourself and your decisions in life.

Emmeline is one of the best novels of fiction I have ever read. I read it because I knew Judith Rossner was a good author, but was astounded at how this book kept my interest. If a book is not exceptionally good, I usually do not finish it. Emmeline was so good that I convinced my sister to read it (she usually only reads heavy reading like James Mitchner). She read it in one day. She loved it too. The ending is so very shocking, and really caught me off guard. I would read it again if I had the time, but want to read another Rossner.