Kaye Gibbons

Ellen Foster is a tale of survival, courage and endurance. Ellen is one of the bravest eleven year olds I have ever encountered in literature, wise beyond her years, but innocent and sweet and deserving of better.

When she says, “My daddy was a mistake for a person.”, she could not be more right. In fact, many of the people she encounters in her short life seem to be mistakes, but she also finds hope and gets glimpses of what might be, and the determined soul that she is, she fights to show more have that better life be her reality.

The book is written entirely in Ellen’s voice, and it is both honest and genuine.

I know I have made being in the garden with her into a regular event but she was really only well like that for one season. You see if you tell yourself the same tale over and over again enough times then the tellings become separate stories and you will generally fool yourself into forgetting you only started with one solitary season out of your life.

Can you imagine having to hold on that tight to one memory and making it the central one so that the reality, that is so much the opposite, does not overwhelm you? I loved that she was able to do this, even though she clearly knows that is what she is doing.

With most novels written from the child’s perspective, we have an unreliable narrator and must fish for the truths that lie beneath what the child sees but cannot understand. Ellen is nothing if not reliable. She sees the truth so much more clearly than the adults around her do, and she clings to the thing inside her that makes her herself and keeps her strong.

So many folks thinking and wanting you to be somebody else will confuse you if you are not very careful.

This is my first book by Kaye Gibbons. I have had several of them on my TBR for a long time and one sitting on my physical bookshelf that I have managed not to read yet. I will not hesitate to read her again. This was her first novel, so I have every reason to expect she can only get better--and better than this would be some accomplishment indeed. show less

Hot damn, I loved this. My only gripe with this book is that the Grandmother's superheroine grit unbalances her into a fairy tale by the end (sort of a cranky, older MPDG) but by then you don't really care because you like everyone so much.

Suppose the literary spirits of Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor needed a place to stay and they settled down in author Kaye Gibbons, mixed things up a little and out came "Ellen Foster". This is a remarkable first novel that will tug at your heart, make you sad and make you chuckle and admire the spunk of a young girl who got a very bad hand dealt to her.

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes southern literature and maybe everyone else too. I'm dropping this onto my favorite books by show more year list for 1987. I have another book by Kaye Gibbons which I am looking forward to. show less

"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my Daddy." - Says 11-year-old Ellen in the opening line. A white orphan from a very racist North Carolina, she narrates this short book in almost a single breath. The grammar is her own slang, and there is little punctuation as she switches from narration to dialog, from past to present, from descriptions to thoughts. This is her account of her experiences with her mother's death and all the uncomfortable bounces toward her present. Her show more spirit, instead of breaking, sharpens itself, becoming a fierce armor of confidence and independence.

This is a quick read, probably a great young adult book. It's actually a pretty charming story at least on the surface where, instead of crying, Ellen just keeps talking. But, it's also very intense; the natural tension of Ellen's experience amplified by Ellen's naivete, her nonchalant confidence and unintended humor. Each time I put the book down and exhaled, it felt like I had just been holding my breathe through the entire passage.

2009
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