Had a dreamy quality that I enjoyed. The atmosphere was kind of beautiful and the descriptions were great and the scenes felt real. I liked it.

Weird/bad points: there was pretty much no conflict involved in the book even though quite a bit was set up, which was bizarre. For example, there are constant references to Troy's seeming unsuitability as a husband but nothing comes of it - and there's not really much explanation of WHY people talk about him as unsuitable. Near the end, Shelley witnesses him apparently shooting a black worker who's threatening him with a knife. The scene lasts maybe a page and she says it shows some sort of extreme unsuitability, but the event is never referenced again and Shelley makes no further comments about Troy, in thought or otherwise. The event itself is incredibly confusing and I have no idea what went on. Weird. There are a couple other similar scenes, which presumably have deeper implications or ones which aren't the obvious but aren't referenced again and don't seem to have an impact - George talking about "sleeping with" the vagrant girl Ellen finds in the woods - Ellen seems shocked but again nothing else happens, it doesn't affect their relationship and the girl is referenced once again in an ambiguous context. There are several times the author seems to be describing some sort of romantic tension between George and other people but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Every character is prone to going into deep reflection at every opportunity, which is pretty ridiculous but adds to the dream like quality of the book and really wasn't bad. There are a lot of named characters that it's impossible to keep track of and don't really have a point.

Bigger things: I note an event re: violence above - violence is treated as tainting someone in this one case. Yet Battle beating children happens often and is treated incredibly casually. He also threatens extreme violence casually and the one reference to this plays it off as a "oh haha our Battle!!" thing.
None of the Fairchilds are ever shown engaging in any work. Yet at the end of the book several describe how "draining" and "tiring" the wedding has been. The disconnect between words and experience is noticeable. The only reason I can see Troy being unsuitable, in fact, is in his job as an overseer - in doing their work, the work of the plantation owner running their lands, he's somehow "unclean". His presence impinges on the "paradise" of the Fairchilds' life - they have no experience of the reality of where their (obviously absolutely massive) income comes from. The thing is, this theme is hardly developed and shows mostly in omission, making me curious how the author felt about this.
The black workers have very little presence, even though they should be a constant presence around the house as domestic servants. The scenes that feature them show them as personality-less - they just obey orders happily - with 2 exceptions. Right at the end of the book, one says they don't like roses. This upsets Ellen, although we're not given much more than that. One character is visited at her house to ask about something lost and the Fairchilds who visited treat her vaguely dramatic searching as malicious - the one example of personality is shunned and considered bad.
In fact, I could think of only two other instances of things being treated as malicious or wrong in the book - the first is the mentally disabled preteen Maureen (who is referred to in rude terms) and the other is George's wife Robbie, who is again considered "unsuitable" but especially for leaving him when she feels hurt. Their real crime seems to be that they disturbed in some way the Fairchilds' untroubled existence.
I don't know if my view of the Fairchilds as horrible people who live an incredibly happy life merely by ignoring or shunning things that disturb it is an unreasonable one, but to me it was the only one that made sense and still let me enjoy the book. ( )

Delta Wedding is the story of the Fairchild family at the time of daughter Dabney’s wedding. The Fairchilds are a wealthy early 20th-century Mississippi Delta family; Dabney is marrying their overseer, Troy. That Dabney is 17 and Troy in his 30s, and that she is marrying beneath her station, don’t seem to bother anyone – at least not enough to do something about it. In another author’s hands this might be the central conflict of this novel, but Eudora Welty has something else in mind. This is primarily a portrait of a family at a certain place and time, how each person relates to one another, and how class informs their world view.

While Welty’s prose gripped me from the first page, as her characters tumbled off the page I found I had to concentrate more than usual just to keep up. Characters are given little introduction and it took quite a while for me to piece together the family relationships, and distinguish the servants from family members. Dabney is one of the least complex characters; her uncle George, on the other hand, is an enigma. He is different from the rest and held on a pedestal, for reasons that are never entirely clear. The plot – events in the days leading up to Dabney’s wedding – is secondary to the everyday interactions between people, and the composite picture this creates.

Although I can’t quite say I enjoyed Delta Wedding, it left me with a respect and appreciation for Eudora Welty and a desire to read more of her work. ( )

Eudora Welty writes books that seem to be about nothing in particular. There are seldom any staggering occurrences. It is all about life. Of course, there is a major event coming in this novel, Dabney Fairchild is marrying, and all the family are gathering for the event; aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, in-laws, all assembling to see Dabney off from the family home to a home of her own.

Along the way, we meet an array of fantastic characters, each an embodiment of their Southern heritage. This is a way of life that is virtually gone, I suppose, but it is a way of life that opens so many memories for me that it makes me want to cry. I was never, of course, one of THESE Southern belles, with the portico porches or land wealth and stores, but I can easily recall days when everyone from five generations would be gathered together in this same kind of family mash that sometimes brought with it ease and sometimes strain.

Welty knows people. Every word they utter in her stories rings with truth and veracity. You feel you have met them, you are there on the porch, you are sipping the iced tea, swinging the children, kissing the uncles. You are safe, as they are safe, because you have family, you belong, someone cares.

It has taken me a long time to get around to reading this wonderful story. I can add it to my list of Eudora Welty wonders that I have loved. ( )

It's 1923, and nine-year-old Laura McRaven is taking the train down to visit her mother's family in the Delta for the wedding of one of her cousins. As preparations for the big day ramp up, family secrets circulate and emotions run high.

Does anyone ever read Eudora Welty and immediately comprehend exactly what she's getting at? Because I find her immensely challenging. The writing is beautiful, but sometimes I have to read a sentence multiple times to untangle the syntax -- and there were a few times when I basically shrugged and moved on! Add to that the particularly Southern vocabulary (for instance, I had to look up "joggling boards"), and characters with names like Battle, Dabney, and Lady Clare (many of which repeat over generations, so they may be talking about an existing character or her deceased great-great-aunt), and the result is a slow-reading text, languid as a Mississippi summer.

Personally, I would have liked this book better if it had remained in Laura's perspective the whole way through. Instead, the point of view shifted frequently, sometimes disconcertingly, from one character to another, and that character might get lost in reminiscences for several pages before picking back up in the middle of a scene. There's not a great deal of plot here ("a southern family prepares for a big wedding" about sums it up), so there's nothing to pull the story along.

I did enjoy parts of this book -- the characterization was strong, and of course the setting shines. I probably won't keep or reread it, but I'm glad I made the effort. ( )

Delta Wedding was my first book read during May. I chose it to tick off 1945 of my ACOB – and I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it. I know lots of people really like Eudora Welty’s writing, but my only previous experience of her writing was not very successful. In 2012 I began reading her later novel Losing Battles, (1970) a book of something like 400 pages, I read about half of it before giving up in frustration. I had really wanted to like it but just couldn’t get to grips with it. I felt I needed to give Eudora Welty another try and this much earlier Welty novel was a charity shop find last year. Good news, I enjoyed Delta Wedding very much indeed, so much in fact that I might revisit Losing Battles one of these days.

Right from the start I was drawn into the story by the exceptional writing and evocative sense of place. It is a novel which deserves slow, considered reading, and while there isn’t a huge amount of plot – the story of a large, Mississippi family, in the weeks around the wedding of their daughter to the plantation overseer, is quite wonderful.

“People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.”

In September 1923 nine-year-old Laura McRaven travels on the Yellow Dog train from Jackson Mississippi to the family plantation of Shellmound on the Mississippi delta. Laura’s mother has died, and at Shellmound she is enveloped by the enormous Fairchild family – her mother’s family. The cast of characters is huge, and it took me a while to get to grips with who was who. I found some names confusing, a child with the same name as his father and several older aunts called by their husbands’ names; ie Aunt Jim Allen – and Aunt Robbie married to Uncle George – it doesn’t take much to confuse me.

As Laura arrives the family are beginning to gather for the wedding of Dabney the prettiest of the Fairchild children. She is still only seventeen and about to marry an older man, Troy Flavin, a man from the mountains, the family overseer and there is the feeling that deep down the Fairchilds don’t fully approve. Though everyone treats Dabney with all the deference due to a beautiful young bride to be, giving her advice, and gently teasing.

“‘Don’t ever let this husband of yours, whoever he is, know you can cook, Dabney Fairchild, or you’ll spend the rest of your life in the kitchen. That’s the first thing I want to tell you.’”

The day to day events in the lives of this large, proud Southern family are portrayed with humour and affection. Children race around the house and grounds, drawing, poor motherless Laura into their games and their world, while the adults concern themselves with wedding preparations and family gossip. Aunt Ellen is the mother of the bride, mother to eight and expecting again, married to Uncle Battle she is a warm loving presence. Uncle George, the firm family favourite is due to arrive soon from Memphis with his wife Robbie – though when he finally turns up, he is alone, Robbie having apparently left him. This is just about as shocking a thing as any of the Fairchilds have ever heard, that she should leave George! George of course can do no wrong, though we see him as a little less than perfect.

As with all families, stories are told and retold, some quickly taking on an almost legendary status. Like the recent story; told to Laura and then repeated later by the adults – of George walking the railway trestle with young Maureen, as his wife watched nearby. Maureen’s foot got caught in the rail just as the train was coming, George stayed to free the child’s foot as the train raced toward them. Tragedy was averted, but the story of such a close call is hard to resist.

Dabney, the child bride is in love – after her marriage she will move into another family house on the plantation, Marmion. She has her head in the clouds, appearing at table just whenever she feels like it – Laura notices. She is girlish and romantic but despite her youth she knows what she wants and the life she wants is just within reach. The old maiden aunts gift her a small, treasured night light, the object seems to be symbolic for Laura and the aunts and perhaps even for Dabney too.

“Life was not ever inviolate. Dabney, poor sister and bride, shed tears this morning (though belatedly) because she had broken the Fairchild night light the aunts had given her; it seemed so unavoidable to Dabney, that was why she cried, as if she had felt it was part of her being married that this cherished little bit of other peoples’ lives should be shattered now.”

Capturing a time and place perfectly Delta Wedding is the story of long, slow Southern days, a complicated loving family, and ultimately a celebration of a way of life. So very pleased I gave Eudora Welty another chance. ( )