The Optimist's Daughter

At the time of her death, Eudora Welty of Mississippi was generally considered America's greatest living author. Although Welty made her reputation with and is best remembered for her remarkable short stories, she also wrote a number of novels, including THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.As seen in reviews posted here, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER provokes a very divided response in readers. This largely due to the nature of the work, which is character rather than plot driven, and which although quite short requires a slow reading in order to develop clearly in mind. Perhaps more so than in any other work, Welty writes "below the surface" here: the story itself, which concerns a daughter who returns to her tiny Mississippi home town when her respected father dies, is quite slight--but Welty endows it with a surprising depth of meaning, transforming what would otherwise be pure character study into a sharply focused and deeply moving statement on the nature of love, loss, life, and the passage of time we must all endure.Although written in a deceptively simple style, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER is the mature work of a master. Given the nature of the piece, I do not think it can be much appreciated by young adults; one requires the perspective of at least middle age to fully grasp both its delicacy and beauty. But once that perspective is acquired, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER should move immediately to the top of every serious reader's list. Strongly recommended.

Hearing this story in the author's own soft, cultivated and yet mischievous Mississippi voice is the greatest treat. I liked the story itself because it was one of those things that you just got drawn into, like family gossip. You don't maybe want to take the time at first, it's hardly blood and thunder, but you just get to wondering why people are where they are in life. How did we get to this pass? All of sudden you find yourself in some little town because your father is in need of an operation , and then you are forced to be among people not your own class because your dad gave into his sexual desires at an advanced age, and the woman he's married stomps all over the family memories and does the bedroom in hooker style. Later, the younger wife's kin will arrive and collectively freak. And you (finally) take it all like a good, believing Christian, but only because you have the gift of irony and humor. And because any other response does violence to the memory of your parents. Classical virtues act like a giant levee against the red mud tide of blind pig-squealing relatives. Is it self-control at a price? Sure. God, I love this woman. May flights of angels send her to her rest.

I enjoyed taking the time to read this short novel. Welty has crafted incredibly believable characters that carry their frustrations and inanities safely in a clip-shut purse to rest on their laps. I particularly enjoyed discovering Fay; she stands for the selfish, nasty, and brutish in all of us; she is all around us, we all know someone like her. Best of all, however, is Welty's supple gift with language. She constructs the narration with a maturity of style that is difficult to describe. She delves into the lives of the characters, their pasts, their silent struggles, and reveals it with respect. It's as if she were handling a rare vase newly unearthed from a dig, turning it in the light, pointing out the scratches and cracks and always admiring the thing.This is a character novel. The plot is secondary to the lives of the characters. Inside the story, the gossamer trace of humanity in the characters left me with a tickle--a flutter--and it made me think about things in my life in comparison.

The sentence from this book that best describes it is: "Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams." What a beautiful piece of writing! I am so thankful for growing older and maturing. Having done so, this book can truly be enjoyed. It is about maturing, deepening, remembering, and honoring. It is about relationship with the persons in one's life, with the past and with the future. Obtrusively thrust in the middle of all this is Fay and the Chisom family, representing all the possible ugliness, crassness, uncaring and unfeeling meanness of today's world.I could write that there is little that happens in this book...on the surface, but as in all truly rich experiences, one has to go deeper and reflect to see the richness. After slowly enjoying the first 160 pages or so, the last 10 pages explode in complexity and interaction and meaning. Those pages comprise one of the finest endings to a novel that I have read.