Kate Vaiden

by Reynolds Price

0ne of the most feisty, spellbinding and engaging heroines in modern fiction captures the essence of her own life in this contemporary American odyssey born of red-clay land and small-town people. We meet Kate at a crucial moment in middle age when she begins to yearn to see the son she abandoned when she was seventeen. But if she decides to seek him, will he understand her? Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Kate Vaiden is a penetrating psychological portrait of an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances, a story as joyous, tragic, comic and compelling as life itself.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novels, Literature

306 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 1986

About the author

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University. He taught at Duke since 1958 and was James B. Duke Professor of English.

His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.

Photo courtesy of Reynolds Price's author page on Amazon.com

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate Vaiden

I had Reynolds Price's novel "Kate Vaiden" (1984) in mind for a long time before finally being persuaded to read it by an online review written by a friend.. I proposed the book to my reading group as a possible choice among several other books each of which portrayed an individual American woman. The group chose a different book, but I went ahead and read "Kate Vaiden" (the last name rhymes with "maiden") anyway. The novel is unusual in that Price sets the novel in the first person in the voice of his primary female character. Novels in which the author writes in the voice of a person of the other gender are challenging and rare. Two recent examples of women writing in the voices of men are Siri Hustvedt's "What I Loved" and Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer-prize winning "Gilead".

Some reviewers have questioned whether Price (1933 -2011)has the understanding and novelistic skill to project himself effectively into the voice of a woman. Kate is her own person and an individual character indeed. As a young woman of 17, she abandons her baby son conceived out of wedlock. Price spends much of the novel trying to prepare the reader for this event. I thought he made Kate's behavior understandable and believable. As the story progressed, I became absorbed with Kate and her travails. I felt for her as she made her decisions, some good and many rash. The novel kept me involved with the heroine and her world.

The novel is set in the rural upper South, in North Carolina and Virginia. Much of the book is set in Macon, North Carolina, where Price was born, with substantial portions set in Raleigh, Norfolk, Greensborough, and elsewhere. Most of the action of the book takes place during the Depression and WW II era, with these large events contrasted against the quiet voices of individual rural lives. The book proceeds through the post-Vietnam era into the 1980s, with glances at civil rights, feminism, the anti-war movement, and other great changes which occurred over a relatively short time span.

The book is narrated by Kate Vaiden as a woman of 57. She tells the story of her life, especially of her tumultuous adolescence, with the hope that it will interest her son Dan, 40. Kate abandoned Dan when she was 17 and, at least up until the time she sets down her story, has had no contact with him. The book is almost a picaresque novel as young Kate picks up and moves many times and leaves a variety of people, relatives, lovers, and friends in her wake. The novel is sad as Kate abandons many people who genuinely want to offer her love, and Price made me sympathize both with Kate and with the others. Many of these individuals are themselves frequent lonely and searching. The novel is also a young woman's coming-of-age story. Abandonment, loss, and loneliness are important themes of the book as many of the characters, including Kate, her mother, the father of her baby, Douglas, her would-be lover Whitfield and others are orphans. Many people close to Kate die in the book: her parents, her first lover, and Douglas.

Precocious sexuality receives much emphasis in Kate's story. Her parents, Dan and Frances, have an apparently passionate but doomed relationship. After their shocking death, Kate, raised by her mother's sister Caroline and her husband Holt, begins a sexual relationship with a slightly older boy named Gaston who dies during Marine boot camp. Kate blames herself. The book includes strong portrayals of this relationship which stays with Kate all her life. After Gaston's death, Kate is molested by her older cousin, Swift. She then begins a relationship with Douglas, an orphan who can be tender and loving but also who has a tendency towards drifting and violence. Kate cannot bring herself to marry Douglas, who also comes to a violent death. During the story Kate has many other sexual relationships with men and friendships with women but she allows them all to fall out of her life. Price emphasizes the importance of marriage and commitment, parts of life which are denied to Kate. Late in the novel, Kate has a conversation with a teacher, Rosalind Limer, who has unhappily remained unmarried through life. Kate explains to Miss Limer her rejection of some of her suitors. Miss Limer observes:

"I won't try to judge what I didn't get to watch. But steadiness is what men seldom have to offer -- not in life anyhow, not in this green world. We're not promised that, in the Bible or any other book known to me."

Kate achieves a modicum of financial security. She is an independent, tough, perceptive, yet vulnerable and highly fallible woman. I came to feel greatly for her through her mistakes and misfortunes. The book also offers a portrayal of small town life in the upper South in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. Besides Kate, one of the characters that Price portrays effectively is Noony, an African American woman slightly older than Kate who works for Caroline and Holt. Noony offers her own commentary on Kate and on her life. The novel is presented against a backdrop of religious themes, including sin, redemption, and what appears to be God's ever-present love even in harsh circumstances. This is a stunning novel.

Robin Friedman

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t expect to read a book like your mother’s southern novel. Kate Vaiden isn’t your typical genteel lady of “Cold Sassy Tree,” or “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Most of Kate’s story takes place in the late 30’s, but she has a thoroughly modern independent nature; one that today’s woman could easily identify with. Narrated in the first person, it’s the story of a Southern girl, who is raised by relatives, following the death of her parents by murder-suicide. Kate seems strangely detached, and at first, this made her feel foreign to me. She is, at best, like semi-sweet chocolate; something I am intensely attracted to and repelled by, at the same time. Like looking at a bug too long under a looking glass, perhaps studying Kate made me feel a bit squirmy. It didn’t take me long to discover that there is a bit of Kate in all of us, and very likely, a lot of her in most of us. It was, after all, her guilt that I felt most keenly. Perhaps like Kate, I have chosen not to seek it out; for any child that has lost a parent can ask you, why they should still be here, while the parent is not. Placed on my bookshelf to read again, Kate Vaiden will seduce you with her charm and invite you to share her pain, but don’t expect her to stick around for the ending.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

I couldn't quite figure out what I thought of it as a whole, because there was so much about it that I loved---especially the Southern flavor, the occasional laugh-out-loud humor, and the style of writing that is so different from other authors. But the whole is definitely less satisfying than its parts. I liked Kate better as a young girl than as a woman.

The book has a strong orphan/abandonment theme that's very interesting to follow. You can't really dislike Kate, and yet there seems to be something fundamentally missing from her personality. Hard to tell if she was born that way or if being orphaned at age eleven made her that way. She's the most impulsive character I've ever encountered. She uses people when she needs them, and then just picks up and disappears whenever things get uncomfortable or she's "used them up." This would be an excellent book for a book group to read and discuss. Even for group members who may not love the book, there would be MUCH to pick apart.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrator of this award-winning novel is a 57 year old single woman about to meet the son she abandoned as an infant. Kate came of age in the 1930s and 1940s, in a close-knit small rural community, raised by an unconditionally loving aunt and uncle after the tragic death of her parents when she was 11. The author deftly captures the speech of a person recalling her life with folksy similes that give the reader a sense of time and place. Price gives us a conflicted and flawed character, sympathetic and perplexing in turns. I am no psychologist, but I began to wonder if Kate suffered from PTSD or Reactive Attachment Disorder, rejecting or abandoning those who loved and supported her, even seeming to use people. Despite everything I enjoyed about this book, I never felt connected with the narrator, maybe because she never seemed connected to her own story. Two-thirds of the way through, I was counting the pages to the end. 3.5 stars

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best novels I've ever read. I marvel at how true Price's voice is as a young woman.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, Kate breaks your heart, over and over. Or she did mine. Why does she do what she does? I kept wondering. Her world is a violent, fatalistic, and sad one. Independent and plucky, she knows her own mind about things. I don't know if KATE VAIDEN qualifies as the late Mr. Price's tour de force, but it sure had an impact on me. Kate narrates her saga in a North Carolina idiom that might take some getting used to while reading.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Kate Vaiden begins when she is fifty seven years old and is hoping to meet her son who she abandoned forty years before when he was a baby. The book then goes back to Kate's childhood and reveals the events in her life that led her to this point. It is a story filled with tragedy and hard luck and revealed a young woman, a victim of circumstance, who often made the wrong decisions when the occasions arose. It's a heartbreaking story beautifully written by Reynolds Price.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

My initial impression of Reynolds Price’s Kate Vaiden -- the first 50 pages or so, at least -- was the unique voice. I couldn't quite tell if the language was authentic Southern or Price's modified Southern. My best guess is that it's the latter because I spent three years in North Carolina and, to the best of my recollection, no one in North Carolina (well, Durham, NC, that is) talked like the way the characters did in Price's novel. And, as one of my professors once said, "Okay, the voice is great, but you can't build a novel on voice alone. There has to be more." She's right, of course. After 50 pages, the distinctiveness of the voice, though a worthy accomplishment, wasn't enough. In fact, I got irritated by the voice at times.

So, what else is there?

I came away with Kate Vaiden with one dominant impression. And this impression was related to my experiences with literature as an adult. As a child, I read a variety of books from fairy tales to children’s classics (e.g., Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh) to young adult (e.g., The Pigman, Charlotte’s Web) to crossover children/adult (e.g., The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, White Fang). As a fourth grader, I even read mass market adult literature (e.g., Jaws, Carrie, The Godfather) from cover to cover with little difficulty. But sometime in high school, I sort of lost interest in literature as I developed other interests. I simply couldn’t finish a book – no matter how thin. (For those of you who know me and are wondering if I “phoned in” my reading assignments in school, the answer is “no.” I read everything that was assigned to me. My half-assed effort only applies to those books I selected on my own in my free time.) From high school until today, I often had difficulty finishing an entire novel. Since 1982, I’ve attempted to read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment on five separate occasions and I never made it past the first twenty pages. When I confessed to one of my professors, he remarked that perhaps my difficulties stemmed from my agony over Raskolnikov’s dilemma. I said, “Who’s Raskolnikov?” You see, what was happening was that I always believed there was something else I could be doing or some other (better) book I could be reading. So, I’d invariably lose my concentration or my thoughts would otherwise stray to other more important – in my eyes – things.

And this is what Kate Vaiden is about. Our heroine, Kate Vaiden (rhymes with “maiden”), never commits to any one path in life. Just as she’s developing a relationship or bond with someone or someplace, she bolts. Family, friends, lovers, beloved pets – it doesn’t matter who. There’s a lot of hurt in her wake. She has a “the grass is always greener” mentality – sort of like my experiences with literature. Four years ago, I started Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I got to about page 80 and then I stopped reading. My thoughts then were: “Well, this is a great book. I’ll get back to it some other time.” (I never did.) The same with Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.

Kate Vaiden’s inability to commit to a single concentrated path in her life was baffling – and frustrating. And as much as I tried to understand, I really couldn’t divine any clear insight from the book. After each instance of Kate Vaiden’s flights, I thought, “Kate, what the hell are you doing?!?” I guess it’s Reynolds Price’s way of saying, hey, men aren’t the only ones with commitment issues.

Incidentally, I started reading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin in 2009. After about 100 pages, I thought the book was great. For some inexplicable reason, I set it aside. It wasn’t until 2012 that I finally finished it. But I’m glad I did because it turned out to be one of my all-time favorites. Unlike me, I suppose Kate Vaiden herself never wised up. If she had actually made a commitment with one particular path, perhaps she would’ve had a much better life. But some people – and I guess Reynolds Price is saying as much – are self-destructive and, for reasons unknown to them, are prone to significant errors in judgment.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price is a first-person narrative of the unsettled life of Kate Vaiden. The novel opens with Kate in her late fifties. She takes us back in time, recalling her turbulent life beginning at the age of eleven when she loses both her parents to a murder-suicide. Kate is then raised in a loving environment by her aunt and uncle in the small town of Macon, North Carolina.

Kate has her first sexual encounter with a young man who later dies in a military training camp during the Vietnam war. Not long after, she runs away to live with her uncle and his friend, gets pregnant at the age of 16, and runs away again. And so begins a series of events in which Kate ricochets from one attachment to another, runs away for no apparent reason, immerses herself in another attachment only to run away again. Meanwhile, she has abandoned her baby infant with her aunt and doesn’t consider contacting her son until he is in his mid-thirties when she is in her late fifties having received a diagnosis for cervical cancer.

Kate drifts aimlessly from one situation to another. And yet wherever she lands, she seems to find men who are attracted to her and who desire her company. She flees from any sort of commitment but doesn’t provide a plausible explanation for doing so, leaving the reader baffled and frustrated at her behavior. She emerges as an unlikable, selfish, ungrateful, and self-absorbed character. Her constant running away and haphazard choices in life make it hard to sympathize with her. She is an aimless drifter, bolting whenever she whiffs a relationship getting too close for comfort.

Now that she is middle-aged, now that she is staring cancer in the face, she tries to reconnect with people in her past who loved her and showed her kindnesses only to discover they have all since died: her aunt and uncle who took her in when she was orphaned and their neighbor, Fob, who gifted her a horse when she was a teenager. She plans to reconnect with her son. But the belated emergence of concern for people in her past, people she had abandoned for over thirty-five years, appears self-serving and underlines her selfishness. It all seems too little, too late.

The novel was okay but not something I would necessarily recommend.

[Chris O'Brien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I slogged through a Reynolds Price novel. I can't say I particularly enjoyed it. Rather, it felt like I was fulfilling some obligation as a Duke alum to have read at least one of his novels. So, I can cross that off my list.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The best thing about my life up to here is, nobody believes it. I stopped trying to make people hear it long ago, and I'm nothing but a real middle-sized white woman that has kept on going with strong eyes and teeth for fifty-seven years. You can touch me; I answer. But it got to where I felt like the first woman landed from Pluto - people asking how I lasted through all I claimed and could still count to three, me telling the truth with an effort to smile and then watching them doubt it. So I've kept quiet for years.

Now I've changed my mind and will try again. Two big new reasons. Nobody in my family lives for long, and last week I found somebody I'd lost or thrown away. All he knows about me is the little he's heard. He hasn't laid eyes on me since he was a baby and I vanished while he was down for a nap. I may very well be the last thing he wants at this late date. I'm his natural mother; he's almost forty and has got on without me."

[Arnie Kahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd heard Reynolds Price do commentaries on NPR many years ago. I had never read any of his novels and picked up this novel, a hardback with the original cover, for $.50 at a thrift shop. The story felt like a 3-star read until Kate grows up a bit and suddenly I thought, this is a 4-star book. The novel takes place before, during and after WWII, and it's the story of an orphan living with her aunt and uncle. It follows Kate as she grows up, and her story is rather unique for the time and place. Although many girls and young women would not have made the choices Kate made in the 1930s and 1940s, those choices make her a unique and interesting protagonist. I'm glad I read this one.

[TK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reynolds Price is one of my favorite authors. His words paint pictures of the characters and the setting.

Kate Vaiden’s parents were killed when she was a young girl and this story is told by her looking back through the years at the decisions she made after her parents’ death. No regrets but a longing for the son she abandoned.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

some very lovely parts.
almost a 5.

[Sherri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this book for the second time and it consumed me. I read it first when I was in my early thirties but now in my fifties, like Kate, I feel every word of her story. I honor Reynolds Price for creating the woman, her family, and the story he let her so ably tell.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no expectations for this book. It was a gift, and one I likely would not have chosen for myself. It is written in the first person from the perspective of a 57-year old woman who wants to tell about her life. She really only tells about her life from age 11 to about age 20, then there are some 20 pages covering the next nearly 40 years. I can only describe it as a coming-of-age story - a type of story I prefer to skip. I didn't want a longer story, I just wanted more of the adult Kate Vaiden.

I think it is unusual when a woman writes successfully from a man's perspective and vice versa. While this male author didn't get Kate quite right, in my opinion, he did better than some attempts I've read. There is enough dialogue throughout that I remarked to myself Price thankfully did not descend into regional dialect, and he especially did not denigrate Noony, the black servant, by having her speak pidgin English. The narrative itself was written with a certain "rural southern" cadence, but my reading ear was attuned within a very few pages. It may have been this that lent more reality to the story than anything else.

While I did not especially care for this, I will give it 3 stars. For me, it languishes toward the bottom of that range. 3 stars is supposed to mean OK, and I suppose it as at least that, though I am obviously a tad reluctant in saying so. There are other reviews by those who thought better of it. If it looks in the least interesting to you, you owe yourself a moment to read one or two of them.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A winner of the National Bokk Critics Circle Award this is painfully obvious story of the title character, Kate Vaiden. Reynolds Price amongst his many academic accomplishments holds a named chair as a professor a Duke. My own digression here - his brief bio in the back of the book reads much more like a senior CV for someone applying for a prestigious position in order to inculcate the ignorant masses.
A well wrought story that is written by the protagonist as means of explanation to the son that she abandoned 40 years ago it traces the tragedy of the life of Kate Vaiden. Set in the rural hinterlands (i.e. read backwater small town) of North Carolina it gets going early with the double murder-suicide of her parents at age 11. Further hardships follow, many bittersweet. Throughout the novel Kate continues to struggle towards stability, only to erratically take flight without warning when it comes close. Ultimately there are as many warm hopeful aspects to this work as there are bitter loss.
I particularly was drawn to the countless imaginative (at least to a relatively urban Yankee) comparisons and similies, and Price has a writing style that is evocative and original.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reynolds Price introduces us to one of the most complex, well-developed characters I have ever had the pleasure to read. Kate Vaiden gives birth to a baby boy in Macon, NC at the tender age of 17. Already she has experienced more tragedies than most adults, which may arguably help to explain why she abandons her son. As the rest of the world lives in WWII, Kate struggles with her own confusing choices and grows up to be a heroine you will sympathize with as well as want to smack. She is a complex, strong, independent, smart, and stupid woman that you will find yourself trying to understand from chapter one. The people involved in Kate's World (and it really is Kate's World) are also extremely well-written, thought-out characters.
A perfect book to be discussed in book groups or literature classes, as it is entertaining while able to sink your teeth into- lots of layers to ponder! I am amazed that I have not come across Mr. Price before now; I will be reading more of his work as he is a first class writer.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

“When I could see Fob and Walter still standing in the cold up ahead, I told myself what I suddenly thought, ‘You are safe, Kate. These grown men are waiting on nothing but you. Now turn out good.’ I was less than half-right, and I turned out stranger than they could have dreamed, but that one moment got me through many others less happy and free.”

I am sick to death of novels written from the first-person perspective of plucky, white Southern women. Lord. We have had enough of those. But Reynolds Price is rather skilled at this overdone gambit here with Kate Vaiden. It is a very strange novel. Kate seems unreal, somehow. Price accomplishes moments of beautiful language and perfect, idiomatic, fabled Southern speech. And yet. And yet. Something about the novel, especially the last third, failed for me in a fundamental way.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very different book for me to read. It was so much a book of words rather than a book with a plot.
The plot was slow, but the words, phrases and images Price uses are rich and evoke strong feelings and paint images in the readers eye. I had difficulty at first because he writes in such an unusual way. He does not write "she is sad"- instead he creates an image totally unrelated to sadness that brings out the feeling. All in all, I enjoyed the experience of reading this book, but I felt the character of Kate Vaiden did much more to wreck and hurt others than was done to her.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this many years ago and only remembered that I loved it. I reread it in the last couple of days. Kate Vaiden is an amazing creation--Price manages to make her so complex that you can love her and yet not understand her or why she makes the decisions she makes. You can disagree with her decisions or think they are not ethical, and still love and accept her as a human being.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like this book much. I moved through it pretty quickly, because there was always something going on, but I never felt like our Kate changed or learned much. If I had to describe her personality, all I would come up with is "unreliable". I just don't much see the point in following her story for 300 pages.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story, this kind of life, is so true it breaks my heart. The language is exquisite and speaks to my North Carolina self. My favorite line, which has nothing to do with the story but to do with MY story, is " ...the two most useful subjects in school are Latin and typing..."

[Rebecca MacNeal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether it's true or not, this is a real girl and a real story. If you grew up in North Carolina, in any type of agricultural area, you'll feel like you're sittin' on a porch listenin' to someone tell you a story that's the God's honest truth. Thank you, Mr. Price.

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to say 2.5. A lot of words for an unbearable character.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t so sure about this novel at first. It took me a couple of pages to catch on—despite being southern, even I had a little trouble getting into the colloquialisms and dialect of the narrator, fifty-something-year-old Kate Vaiden.

When I became attuned to Kate’s universe, however, it was clear I was diving into the memories and misfortune of a girl-turned-woman who recognized her troubles but didn’t feel burdened of them nearly enough to sit down and make a U-turn.

Most people express frustration at this point. However, I found Kate’s impulsive amusing. Her snap judgments made for an interesting study in human behavior. How do we justify choices that are bound to senselessly hurt others? How do our pasts inform our identities and color every move we make? You see this all play out in Kate’s world up until her “come to Jesus moment”, so to speak, toward the end of the novel.

I’d also say that as a black woman, I felt a level of amusement reading the segments that included comments or recollections on black people in Macon, South Carolina and, truthfully, around the world.

I typically shy away from male authors whose novels center female characters because they often get them wrong. I can say Reynold Price did fairly well, and though I raised an eyebrow at a few things, I think much of it wasn’t Price doing the talking, but Kate herself.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was halfway done with this book when life (meaning illness) intervened. I can’t quite explain why, but when this happens (and I think I have to accept that it will continue to happen at regular intervals for the rest of my life), I can almost never bear to resume the book I was reading, no matter how much I may have been enjoying it. It’s as if the book becomes tainted with all the pain and confusion of those lost weeks. Maybe one day I’ll come back to this one, because I really was enjoying it. This, like all of Price’s novels, is good stuff, so don’t let my failure stop you from attempting it.

As an aside, I think the cover of the edition I read (the original American hardcover) is possibly the most beautiful book cover I’ve ever seen in my life. It doesn’t really show up so well in the miniature version you see here, so I guess you just have to find a real copy and see for yourself.

[David Zubl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reynolds Price was interviewed by Susan Ketchin for her book, "The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction" (an excellent book). In her interview with him, he talked about "the degree to which my work has dealt with what I might call 'Christian Outlaws,' or 'believing outlaws,' the 'virtuous' or 'saintly outlaw.'" Referring to a character in another novel (Blue Calhoun), Price said, "He's done a lot of bad reckless stuff in his life, but basically I think he's an enormously good and careful person. I think Kate Vaiden is like that."

A great description of the title character in "Kate Vaiden," one of my new favorite books. Complicated, honest, infuriating, and ultimately very human, Kate is an unforgettable character in a thoroughly unforgettable novel.

I wish I had read this years ago.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A very well written, interesting, plot driven, character based novel about Kate Vaiden. This book won the 1986 National Book Critics Circle award. Told in the first person, Kate, now a 57 year old woman tells the story of her life. At the age of eleven her parents died in unusual circumstances. A few years later her lover dies suddenly. The story itself, whilst interesting, is not unusual, but Reynolds Price writing gives the story a feeling of dignity. Kate, the protagonist, is a character who has a kind of decency and honesty that propel the reader forward. She is a flawed character by her own admission who is fortunate to have the support of her next of kin.

[Graham Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I added this book to my to-rad list more than a decade ago, after reading Reynolds Price's memoir about his cancer diagnosis, A Whole New Life and thinking it was one of the best memoirs I'd ever read. I then read A Long and Happy Life and found the writing style good but the plot/characterization uninteresting.

Here I found something more: Kate is a fascinating character. The voice is really good. The plot wasn't really for me, though. Most of the plot's engine is foreshadowing: future, storytelling Kate keeps telling us bad things are on the horizon, even though the story creeps along with little conflict for a huge chunk of the book. Not really a fan of that!