Unfinished Desires

You don't have to be Catholic or a Southerner to love this novel, and you don't have to have gone to an all-girls school or women's college to understand it. Gail Godwin's storytelling skills are so masterful (mistressful?) that almost any reader can relate to her large cast of complex and interconnected characters --students, nuns and many extended family members--but it probably helps to be smart and patient. As many reviewers here have noted, this multigenerational, time-shifting story is not a light-hearted romp of a read, but it is nonethesss a page-turner, and its dramatic arc is deeply satisfying. On the first day of school in 1951 at Mount St. Gabriel's in North Carolina, where the best families send their daughters for a rigorous, old-fashioned education, Tildy Stratton, the irascible, charismatic ringleader of her ninth-grade class, ditches her old best friend, the socially iffy Maud Norton, whom she had taken under her wing years earlier, and trades her in for the newly orphaned, brooding and artistically gifted Chloe Starnes. The other girls in their class, as Tildy puts it, are really just "background" for the adolescent exploits and titular desires of this trio. But the desires are not limited to their era; a generation earlier, their autocratic headmistresss Mother Suzanne Ravenel (who spends 60 years at the school as student, teacher and head) was a classmate of Chloe's late mother and Tildy's mother and her long-dead twin sister. (You really do have to pay attention to keep the relationships straight at first, but they quickly become as familiar and emotionally engaging as those in your own family.) The unfolding story, which involves a dark, semi-Sapphic secret and a school play written by Mother Ravenel as a ninth-grader, moves back and forth from 2001, when she is in her 80s and tape-recording a history of the school, to 1951-1952, when Tildy is put in charge of re-staging the play, to which she adds some inflammatory but truthful touches of her own. To tell you more would spoil the fun, but be assured that there is fun to be had, as well as tragedy. If you are fond of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and other intensely charged school sagas, put this thoughtful, absorbing melodrama immediately on your reading list.

Once in awhile, if we are lucky, we find a book such as Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin, a fine novel which is such a delight to the reader it becomes one of those books that we don't want to put down or ever end. Godwin's prose is so finely tuned it becomes like poetry, each word carefully chosen and delicately placed in the sentence and paragraph. While the story, which takes place at Mount St.Gabriel's School for Girls in the mountains of North Carolina, moves in time from 1951 to the present, it is never difficult to follow or know where we are. The passionate friendship that exists between teen age girls is developed through well formed characters with the adults in the novel standing firm in their own contributions to the overall story. The lasting impressions and profound effect of the events at the school linger throughout the lifetimes of the participants becoming forever a part of their lives. This character driven story will long remain in the memory of the reader and be worthy of not only a place on the bookshelf, but a re-read in days to come. Congratulations, Gail Godwin, on spinning a super novel with grace and fine writing.

The first book I read by Gail Godwin was "Finishing School," which was about a young girl's betrayal of an older woman, and her newest "Unfinished Desires," explores the same subject. Mother Suzanne Ravenel (no relation to Craven, I assume), has been drafted to write a book about the Catholic girls' school, Mount St. Gabriel's, that she attended as a student and later became the headmistress of. One school year, in particular, haunts her, the "toxic year," of 1951-1952, in which the rivalries of the girls and their elders come to a head. The main members of that class are recently orphaned and somewhat withdrawn Chloe Starnes; Tildy Stratton, the class ringleader and Queen Bee, whose mother and aunt attended school with Mother Ravenel; Maud Norton, who is the Serena to Tildy's Blair Waldorf, and Tildy's older sister Madeline, who has recently been expelled from St. Gabriel's. While trying to find a healthy outlet for Tildy's "leadership qualities," Mother Ravenel gives her the chance to direct the same play she herself wrote while at school. As the book progresses, the reader is given more and more clues as to how the play will bring about the downfall of several characters. This book reminded me of Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye," which is also a multilayered look at how girls and women treat each other. I enjoyed this book, and thought it was beautifully written, however one thing bothered me. It seemed like Tildy's and Maud's "punishment," went a little overboard. I'm not referring to their official one, just that everything you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy seemed to happen to them after the play. I felt the same way about the punishment of one of the character's mothers, too, it was a little too appropriate.

I really loved this novel. It has a bit of everything and is so well told. A book you can get lost in. It starts with former headmistress of Mount St. Gabrial located in the western NC mountains visiting some of her old girls in the present day. They tell her she should write her memoirs. She thinks back on her long career and decides she will write the memoirs.Her name is Mother Suzanne Ravenal and she has had a long career, 60 years at the school.She is haunted by the years 1952-53. That class with ring leader Tildy Stratten, urged on by her mother Cornelia decide to put on a play, The Red Nun written by Mother Ravenal many years before. Cornelia's twin sister was in that class and because of something that happened that year she decided not to become a nun.Cornelia with the help of her daughter decide to use the play to reveal Mother Ravenal's secret that she has never come to grips with.This leads to much drama with several girls being expelled and Mother Ravenal having a " toxic year"when she leaves the school for a long period of time. The novel is not linear but goes back in forth between 1952, 2001 and 2007. It all comes together beautifully in the end and leaves you wanting more.The book focuses on the girls and not so much on the nuns. The characters are well written and after you finish the book you wish you could know them as grown ups.

This is a mature, adult book about adolescent girl behavior. Not since Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye have I read such a powerful novel about teenage feminine conformity, coercion, betrayal, jealousy, secrets, and love. Godwin creates a labyrinth that begins with a simple layer and gradually builds to a complex and knotted snare. I was pulled in from the opening pages as this rich, multi-generational tapestry is woven as if from the loom. The book never loses steam, and the lyrical rhythm amplifies as the story builds. Godwin designed an absolutely beautiful brocade of a book. She sublimely and organically explores the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious layers of the human mind and all its dark and light attributes while she braids a tale of intrigue, desire, and loss from the fabric of memory. The central narrative is the school year of 1951-52 at a Catholic boarding school, Mount St. Gabriel's, in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. Mother "Suzanne" Ravenel, age 85, is reaching back and writing her memoir in 2001 of her time as a student and then headmistress of the now defunct school. She is plagued by events that occurred that one year, especially after her freshman girls staged the annual spring play and brought buried secrets into the performance. She feels stuck and unable to write about that time. Memories--how they are interpreted and relived and revived by the people who remember them--that is the primary theme that this intricate web and convoluted story is built upon. Their unfinished desires, a key element of each person's intimate story (and of course the title of this book), is subsumed and sometimes emotionally tampered by various interpretations of past events. Godwin uses several narrative devices with ease. Developments are non-linear and yet not confusing, and she uses several perspectives, along and within the third-person voice, to tell the complete story. There is Mother Ravenel at her tape recorder or walking with other nuns at the retirement home, contemplating her past and receding into her future. Interspersed with that is the story of that "toxic" year and the girls at the boarding school--shy and recently orphaned Chloe, who talks to her dead mother and draws pictures that explain mysterious incidents; Maud, the enigmatic, elusive and beautiful daughter of a broken home; and Tildy, the assertive ringleader and undiagnosed dyslexic who switched best friends that year from Maud to Chloe and added tension to the clusters of girls. Tildy's sister, Madeline, animates the narrative with her grounded and giving nature. Their acid-tongued mother, Cornelia, a former classmate of Mother Ravenel, adds history and a fiendish dose of doubt and a wicked but droll perspective. She is contemptuous of Suzanne and imparts her derisiveness to her daughters. Cornelia's twin sister, Anotnia, was Mother Ravenel's best friend when they were students at Mount St. Gabriel's, and their shared history is the source