The Optimist's Daughter (1972)

I know what it's like to lose my father, and it hurts, just as Laurel, the optimist's daughter hurts when her father dies. But unlike Laurel I don't know what it is like for my mother to die and a few years later my widowed father marries a woman younger than me, a woman who apparently is quite selfish and vulgar.

Welty is a master of capturing the perfect essence of the small southern town where everyone knows and loves Laurel and Judge McKelva, her father. The neighbors and friends who are like family, but who have not tried very hard to like Fay, the judge's new wife. Fay isn't likeable so disliking her is the sport that almost everyone in town can enjoy. Laurel must contend not only with the death of her beloved father, but also the wife who tries to obliterate the memory of Laurel's mother and who creates hysterical scenes at vastly inappropriate times. This book is a treasure and a worthy winner of the Pulitzer prize. 4.5 stars ( )

It was okay. ( )

This novel is about two women and the father of one of them.
The father is also the husband of the other woman even though the two women are the same age.
The father dies.
The two women have very different personalities. One is nice and has deep thoughts and plans things out. The other is selfish, intolerant and not capable of thinking things through, just acts on impulse.

So the reader roots for the nice woman. But there are no positive events or interactions in this story. The nice woman is left with nothing, not even the wooden bowl she has memories of as a child. The selfish woman claims everything, even the nice woman's fathers letters, and her deceased mother's letters as well. The book ends with the selfish woman having everything and no sadness of her husband's passing, while the nice woman is sad her father has died and is left with nothing at all. She leaves town and returns to her job n another far-away the city. Her parents are dead. Her husband is dead. She was married only a short while and so had no children. She effectively has no living relatives and inherited nothing. She walks out of the book with nothing but her fading memories.
.
This is more grim than holocaust literature. At least most holocaust vistims had each other andleft surviving relativs and hoped for beter times prior to death. In this book, ther eis no hope anywhere. There is also no message either, except perhaps that memories are what can be kept despite the rigors of life. However, with no one to pass the memories on to, even those are of little value.

I'm 70 years old. I know all about memories, birth,and death. My mother and father are dead. My wife is dead. I've personally watched the birth of several of my grand kids. I know about birth death, and memories.

This is the most grim book I have read in over a decade. I do not recommend it for anyone of any age.. ( )

A rather grim little slice of life as Laurel has traveled from her home in Chicago and put her work on hold to be with her father when he goes south to New Orleans to consult about an eye problem with a surgeon who unsuccessfully treated his first wife. The second wife, Fay, has got to be one of the all time achievements in shallow, selfish, ill will ever to take from on the page. Most of the book is Laurel dealing with her father's funeral and revealing its effects on her, complicating the effects of her mother's slow death. ( )

I listened to the audiobook version read by the author: a lovely reading of a deeply tragic moment.

I'm fairly shocked that this isn't taught more frequently. I think the amazing quality of this is the ripples of similarity in material to others. I kept thinking of the legacy of Eudora (the phrase "Eudora's daughters" stayed with me throughout this). ( )