Ellen Douglas (1921–2012)

SELECTED FOR RE-READ 2023 - just as lovely the second time around. Determined to find and read her fiction!

Original Review
Before finding this book, I'd never heard of this southern author, who apparently draws heavily from her long family history for her fiction. I chose the book from the biography shelves based on the lovely snippet of prose on the back cover.

Part memoir, part contemplative musings, partly an exploration of southern history and a southern family's history...a dense, lush, show more marvelous reading experience!

Lovely writing, and beautifully puzzling in its construction. I loved this book so much, I will likely read it again (after finding and reading some of her fiction, perhaps.) show less

Gorgeous writing and Douglas gives you a beautiful sense of place, making me want to visit Mississippi, something no other book has done. But (spoilers ahead) in this book about racism, she's ultimately too easy on the white characters who aren't Klansmen because they're racist, but just because they're bored and like being with men. Or the narrator's parasitic white family, living off the sweat and blood of the same black family for generations, but, well, that's the way it goes & we're all show more friends now. You can't write about this stuff and then back off from its consequences just because you're uncomfortable. So for writing and everything up until the end, I'd give it a 4.5. For the "we're all friends here after all" ending, I'd give it the coward's 1 it deserves, so I’m averaging them.

Coming back to this in 2020, I have even less patience for it now. I don’t know what the math is math is, but it’s a 1. show less

Before finding this book, I'd never heard of this southern author, who apparently draws heavily from her long family history for her fiction. I chose the book from the biography shelves based on the lovely snippet of prose on the back cover.

Part memoir, part contemplative musings, partly an exploration of southern history and a southern family's history...a dense, lush, marvelous reading experience!

Lovely writing, and beautifully puzzling in its construction. I loved this book so much, I show more will likely read it again (after finding and reading some of her fiction, perhaps.) show less

Ellen Douglas wrote eight novels when she published this memoir in 1998. As the dust jacket says, “Douglas is the pseudonym for Josephine Haxton, whose family roots extend back to the earliest days in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.” These four tales describe her search for details of her ancestors. Sometimes she meets with talkative relatives who surprise her with some interesting information. Others stonewall her search, because she used the information from previous interviews show more in her novels and changed some important details.

This work should interest those who enjoy the historical aspects of fiction. Douglas talks about how she could use some people and incidents from her investigation in her next novel. Her meticulous search of records and memories of her family – and those who knew her family – adds a lot of weight to these tales. She readily admits when she will have to fill in gaps.

The most interesting of the four stories – “Julia and Nellie” – tells the history of her paternal grandmother, Nellie, and her friend, Julia, and a cousin, Dunbar (Dunny). Her prose has a soft and gentle quality – musical, enchanting, and absorbing. “I am sure now that I remember my grandmother and Julia—and Dunny, too—on the gallery at The Forest on a long, hot summer afternoon. I recall an embrace and then the two women in intimate, quiet conversation. I hear their soft voices, Julia’s pitched a shade lower than my grandmother’s, the voices, it seems to me now, of ghosts, alive only in my head and only for the time left to me to remember them. I remember the call and response of those voices as I might remember music—the oboe making room for the flute and then meditatively answering—and, like oboe and flute, they speak with deep emotion, but wordlessly.” (81)

One incident in particular eluded her best efforts to uncover details. In 1861, an unknown number of slaves were tortured and whipped, and some were executed, because of a plot to kill slave owners as soon as “Mr. Lincoln and his army” came to Mississippi. Several “gentlemen of the county” served as judges, jury, and executioners. No newspapers reported the event, no record of any burials exist. The only evidence Douglas uncovered involved lists of slaves “interviewed” about the plot.

I most definitely need to track down some of those novels. (5 stars)

--Jim, 9/26/10 show less