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Loading... Propertyby Valerie Martin
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This little 193 page book packs quite a punch. The narrator is Manon Gaudet, the bitter and selfish mistress of a sugar cane plantation in Louisiana, and wife to a sadistic and domineering husband whom she detests. Manon is every bit as much his "property" as the slaves are, and her powerlessness is not much different than theirs. Property won the Orange Prize in 2003, and it explores the evils of slavery and unlimited power over others, and the self-distructive effect it has on the society that condones and participates in it. I can't really say that I liked this book, it's too powerful and disturbing to like. But I am glad I read it. (  )loriephillips | May 17, 2009 |   Edna Pontellier ('The Awakening') meets Uncle Tom's Cabin with a touch of Beloved. This would be an okay text for an undergrad course on images of women in literature; it incisively raises the issue of one (white) woman's unthinking complicity in the enslavement of an(black)other. ( )Fullmoonblue | May 7, 2009 | Incisive short novel form the p-o-v of a plantation owner's wife in pre-Emancipation Louisiana. Manon Gaudet is royally pissed off because her husband turned out to be a dull, money-squandering brute with a taste for sadism. He's forced a sexual relationship on Sarah, a beautiful house 'servant,' as Manon calls her. Despite the fact that he is as cruel, or crueler, to Sarah than he is to his wife, Manon bemoans her loneliness and isolation without ever considering that Sarah and she might be natural allies. In fact, she goes out of her way to ensure that Sarah shares her misery. I haven't run into a protagonist/narrator this unlikable since Humbert Humbert. Why: it was on my mother-in-law's bookshelf and promised to provide a story to get lost in. Author: I've read one other book by Martin, something about a villa in Italy, which I liked well enough, but did not think I'd read her again. I was quite impressed with Property. (  )citygirl | Apr 26, 2009 | 1  A powerful book that is completely readable despite the fact that it deals with so many heavy issues. Valerie Martin's approach is subtle and understated but revelatory. Her characters always reveal more to the reader than they understand themselves -- certainly more than they intend to reveal. (Compare the narrator here (Manon) and Mary Reilly from the author's other historical novel.) As a result, there's always a touch of ambiguity. The reader is left to contemplate the issues without being told what to think by the author. ( )Geenyas | Apr 21, 2009 | Dismal truths. Bleak indeed. Powerful. (  )ViaLys | Apr 9, 2009 | 0.074 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0349115834, Paperback)From the acclaimed author of Mary Reilly, a groundbreaking novel that reexamines the questions of power and resistance, violence and sex, which inform all her work.Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, PROPERTY takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slave holder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and bored. She has come to a sugar plantation north of New Orleans as a bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband’s mistress and bear his child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her longings and dreams – an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness. PROPERTY is riveting fiction, fast, richly plotted, shimmering with visual detail. It is also an invitation to re-examine the traditions of the Southern novel and the myth of the chivalrous South, and a haunting meditation on what Valerie Martin has called “the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed.” (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:04 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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