The Christmas Letters

I received this book as a pre-Christmas book many years ago and have just finished reading it for maybe the fifth time just before Christmas. It is a very quick and engaging read. The Christmas Letters recounts all of the bittersweet memories that surround Christmas. It is not necessarily all happy, but it is all very real. Maybe as I get older, the pathos of Christmas becomes more real - both the sadness associated with memories of the past which can no longer be recreated and the realization that we can only celebrate from that place where we currently live in our lives. When we are in good places, then Christmas is magical. When not, Christmas can be very difficult. Smith touches on both of these points. I am a great fan of Lee Smith's books. I gave this one only 4 stars, but that is in relation to her other books. To me, her best is Fair and Tender Ladies, also written in letter form. Christmas blessings to all.

A quick, interesting, wonderful read! You won't be sorry to pick this one up and you won't want to put it down until you are done! I look forward to reading more of Lee Smith's books!

The Christmas Letters is a short novella by Lee Smith; my Mamaw gave me a copy for Christmas and i read it in one sitting. I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly to anyone who writes her/his own Christmas letters).It's an epistolary novel told through the yearly Christmas letters of three generations of rural women, and spans the geography of West Virginia and North Carolina. The letters are somewhat typical of that sort of structure, recounting births and deaths and achievements, yet tell the story of the women's lives, their relationships, their struggles to cope with the hardships each generation is given--a husband off in WWII, a brother brokenly and miserably surviving Viet Nam, divorce, loss of a parent, a child leaving home and choosing a lifestyle you can't understand but try to accept. By the end, one of the letter-writers has come to a point where she addresses her letter frankly, and reveals the subtext behind all of her cheery soldier-on previous letters, and you can go back and see exactly how those emotions were definitely present beneath the surface of the writing of the earlier letters (some you'll pick up as you read them the first time around, others will be a surprise).The book is a lovely quiet holiday read, and one that for me will take its place beside A Christmas Carol as a book to read every Christmas season, to remind me of what I hold dear about the holidays, an embracing of family, heritage, goodwill, charity...in short, the Christmas Spirit.

Lee Smith's book is a touching journey through the hearts and minds of three generations of women. When the Southern grandmother takes her first bite of a bagel, and remarks "Whoever thinks this is good has never had a biscuit!," I howled. This is a great little book

I just finished this wonderful novella.Lots of it will ring true with we babyboomers especially the ones of us just entering the last half of our first century.So much is said by the things left unsaid,If you love touching fiction. Don't miss this one I'm going to send several to friends it will be a wonderful Xmas gift.This is the first I've read by Lee Smith but it won't be the last I'm already searching for hardcover editions of her prior books but I'm so anxious to read other things by this author I may have to settle for paperbacks