Unravelling

by Elizabeth Graver

From a small, bogside cabin in rural New England, 38-year-old Aimee Slater unravels the story of her life, attempting to make sense of the tangled thread that leads from her mother's house-a short, unbridgeable distance away-to the world she now inhabits. It is soon after the Civil War; Aimee lives alone, but is graced with visits from two friends, a crippled man and a troubled eleven-year-old girl. She is perpetually caught between the sensual world she so desires and the divine retribution passed down to her by her mother's scorn. How Aimee ultimately creates a life for herself and bridges that distance makes for a moving story of love and loss. Told in a voice of spare New England lyricism, Unravelling is a remarkably haunting account of the power of redemption.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Novels, Coming Of Age, Historical

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1997

About the author

Elizabeth Graver’s novel, Kantika, is a multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home. Inspired by the life story of the author’s maternal grandmother Rebecca, Kantika was selected by the New York Times as a 2023 Best Historical Novel and Notable Book of the Year, and by NPR as a Best Book of 2023 and translated into Turkish and German. Kantika was awarded a National Jewish Book Award, the Edward Lewis Wallant Prize, the Julia Ward Howe Prize and the Massachusetts Book Award.
Elizabeth Graver's previous novel, The End of the Point, set in a summer community on Buzzard’s Bay from 1942 to 1999, was on the long list for the 2013 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book. She is the author of three other novels: Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her short story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. Her story “The Mourning Door” was award the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine. The mother of two daughters, she teaches English and Creative Writing at Boston College.

Reviews

[Laurel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quiet, intense read...I cared about Aimee the main character pretty early on and was interested in what her journey would be. This book spoke much to what it is to be a woman going against her times (even though she didn't truly plan to) and the damage that can result from being so alienated from one's family. The poetic prose style was often lovely and uplifting, despite the overall feeling of sadness. All in all, a good read for those winter days when you feel like hibernating with a cozy blanket and a hot cup of tea.

[Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

so far, so wonderful - so i am reacting to the way of telling, not the complete plotting and story. Part of my joy is just to be actually reading again - slowly - a few pages a day - but mostly I love the exploration of inner and outer solitude, and the eternal girl inside the narrator's voice.

I've been taken in by both her pacing and her lyric severity - cause i relate, i suppose. Other readers have been impatient, bored, incredulous and disappointed. glad to be me, i guess:>!

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. The character of Aimee felt so real despite her being from a time period I barely understand. Graver does an excellent job of not just showing what her world is like but how Aimee herself shapes her world. A beautiful girl on the outside who felt ugly on the inside and haunted by shame her whole life. Eventually finding forgiveness and a home from unexpected places. The writing felt so down to earth and realistic. Sometimes happy endings don’t come the way we might have thought and sometimes not every mystery or regret gets a solution.But time leads to change which can lead to healing and it was a beautiful thing to see how Aimee goes through that in this book. Very bittersweet.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was beautifully written and had some really powerful language. Page 78 had one line that stuck with me: "And I don't know why it stayed with me, except that even then, I sometimes squirmed inside my skin as if it were a wool dress on a blistering hot day, and I knew what it was to want to leave yourself behind."

I was also in love with the stories that the mom told Aimee. They were awful and imaginative; I wished for more of them throughout the novel.

I think I only lost a little steam with the book at the end when the narrator gets a little whimsical and starts really talking to the children she lost.

I loved the childhood merging into the "present" self and the characters and descriptions of emotion were just wonderful.

*Thanks Lesley*

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book starts off very sluggishly but turns out being good. Aimee, the main character, begins as a beautiful-smart-young teenage girl who becomes kinda slutty, gets knocked up, left alone and goes a little batty. normally this would not be a very interesting story line but that it takes place shortly after the civil war first in the country and than in the city, when girls couldn't give in to their slutty side and really couldn't get pregnant out of wedlock, without huge consequences. the story is kinda how she deals with her consequences. Aimee may end up batty but this character is very strong.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere I read that this story was about a girl working in the cotton mills in Lowell, MA in the 1840’s but this book is much more than that. Aimee grows up on a farm in New Hampshire and wants to go to Lowell to get away from her family. She eventually gets a job at the Boott mill in Lowell (which really did exist) but feels very alone when two of her friends return home. Her friendship with one of the mechanics at the mill results in her pregnancy and the bulk of the novel is about the unraveling of her life. It is an interesting psychological study.

[Margo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book detailed a young woman's choices and how they affected her and her family. It is very moving especially when describing the relationship between the woman and her mother. It shows how certain decisions affect our future. I learned that decisions can have a big impact on your life, but, there is always a way to reconcile those decisions if you so desire.

[Lauren Hallal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book rich and compelling. I loved Elizabeth's writing and her character, it was a pleasure to read and has stuck with me over the years.

[Belle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have such conflicting emotions about this book, I had to sleep on it before deciding the star rating because for a good 60% of this book, it was a 1 star read but the ending really brought it together but I still can't forget that I suffered more than the first half. So quick summary:

Aimee starts the book being a 38 year old woman in the 1860s who lives in a bog, away from society and she only gets 2 visitors, Amos her lover who is missing a leg and she nurses his wound and Plumey a young girl who is considered the village idiot but really she had a traumatic childhood. Then Aimee begins to recount her life as a child growing up in a farm in the adjacent land. The relationships that become central to her life and follow her throughout is the one with her mother (this was the strongest point of the book) and then the one with her brother Jeremiah who was a year younger than her but they could almost pass for twins. The relationship with Jeremiah, the event that led to them falling apart and the subsequent constant shadow of that event absolutely ruined the book for me. I couldn't get past how much it jarred me out of the book each time she mentioned it. After this event, Aimee leaves her family against their wishes and takes a job in a mill to earn money for her dowry, things go to shit there, to the point that she's never able to fully recuperate and she spends the rest of her life mending.

The best parts of this book are the thug and pull with her Mom and also her relationship with Amos, I don't know why I enjoyed it so much. I think it was the spot of happiness in such a dark depressing book. Much the way she lives next to the bog, I felt I was suctioned into this bog while reading it, it just pulled me down into these dark human thoughts and desires and I didn't like it one bit. I don't enjoy books like this; overly literary, self-aware, and contrived to showcase a point.

The problem I had with the Jeremiah angle is that Aimee could have had deep love for her brother as a sister, I am very close to my younger brother and if something would happen to him I'd be devastated. However Graver chose to manifest Aimee's sexual repression by having the children fondle one another when they were 11/10 yrs of age and that moment carries with Aimee for the rest of her life. The obsession she had with Jeremiah made it clear to me that she constantly desired him and his death (this is not a spoiler she tells you in chapter 1 that he died) was that of a lover not of a brother. It plunged her into despair and suicidal thoughts. In addition to feeling icky about the whole incest thing, Graver's language made it so... crude almost. She uses words such as fondled, paleness, grasped, cupped - I couldn't handle it. Not only are we talking about children here but I'm getting this vivid imagery that made me incredibly uncomfortable. The first time she makes love to a man she speaks of desiring him to fill her so that she can get Jeremiah 'out' of her. Just... it was a lot. 

The POV of older Aimee was a completely different character, I enjoyed her very much and I think I enjoyed the ending of the book so much because young Aimee's story is done and older Aimee continues it. Overall, I can say with certainty I will not read another Graver book again and unfortunately I hated too much of it to enjoy the rest.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A teenage girl leaves her family's farm to work in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. She finds her ability to operate a loom gives her life an economic viability; however it is undone by a dalliance with the mill's mechanic which leaves her pregnant. Her mother forces her to give up the twins to whom she gives birth. and she returns home to a shack on the family farm. The narrative voice in this book is her imagining explaining her life to her twins.

Ostracized by the village and viewed as mad, she slowly fashions a life, supporting a village orphan, and eventually finding a lover in a disabled man. The book is the story her surviving and coming to terms with her mistakes and ultimately finding ways to forgive and be forgiven. Four stars.

[Patrice M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intensely descriptive on the teen years of a girl from NH in the 1830's. She eventually goes to the mills in Lowell. She does well in the mills, meets a mechanic, but fate being what it is, her life will change forever. Good story, intense in parts, but I enjoyed the historic references in mid 19th century NH and Lowell.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely and poetic, this is the story of a woman living outside of societal norms in the 19th century. Aimee leaves home as a young girl to work in the mills, hoping to see more of the world, but ends up back where she started.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. Wasn't my favorite.

[Amy Flanagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Took a lot of work to read this book. Too many details.

[Katherine Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

From my blog Readsreading.blogspot.com

Elizabeth Graver’s 1977 novel, Unravelling, is intense, raw, sensual, and psychologically astute. Set in the 1820’s in rural New Hampshire, this book is one of the best coming-of-age stories I have read. Graver penetrates the complex inner lives of her characters and imbues them with words and deeds that impart insight and inspire empathy.

Aimee Slater, an older woman, narrates the novel. She tells a mesmerizing tale of how she came to live in a hunting shack on the edge of her parents’ property with limited family contact and minimal social interaction.

As a young girl Aimee lives and works on her family’s farm. Though her family experiences many hardships, Aimee’s relationship with her parents and siblings is positive. Aimee is perceptive, precocious, intuitive, and intelligent. But when she moves into adolescence and forms her own opinions, Aimee’s mother withholds her love and her father harshens his tone. Aimee begins to observe the ways people navigate their feelings. She wonder about her mother’s relationship with her father, “What did she know of the man she lived with? Was he a gentle man with sudden, rare spinnings into rage, or an angry man who mostly held himself in check?”

Aimee and her brother Jeremiah are close in age and spend a lot of time together. As they begin adolescence, the siblings have a sexual encounter in the hayloft of their family’s barn. It is consensual, childlike, brief, and singular. Shame and embarrassment infiltrate their lives and they are never quite the same. In a different era, they might have gone to therapy or talked with a religious figure, but confusion corrodes their relationship. For relief, Aimee decides to leave the farm to work in the mills of Massachusetts. Without understanding Aimee’s motivations, her parents feel rejected and emotionally turn away.

Many tragedies befall Aimee and at age 17 she copes as best she can. She works hard in the mills and lives in a boarding house in Lowell. When she becomes pregnant, Aimee has no one but her family. Instead of sending love and support, her mother sends her a letter filled with judgment and wrath. The letter ends, “Do Not Come Home.” Rather than provide unconditional love, Aimee’s mother’s provincialism and religious superstitions determine her actions. After giving birth, Aimee returns to New Hampshire and does not lie or apologize. And like Hester Pryne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Aimee is shunned. Yet, as the decades pass, she creates her own little family with a disabled man from the town and a traumatized girl named Plumey. Reading about the unraveling of Aimee’s life haunts me. Yet Aimee’s accumulated insight and compassion over the years allows her to understand herself and attempt to reconcile with her elderly mother. As Aimee says of Plumey, “It is the deepest mystery what goes on inside anybody’s head.” Elizabeth Graver’s succeeds in delving into her characters’ heads and writing a novel filled with emotional and psychological nuance and poignancy.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

an intriguing story of a girl who goes off to work in the Lowell Mills in the 1840s.
Captures the mood, dialog and feelings of oppression in a completely realistic way.

[Laurel Deloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully realized novel, in which a young woman triumphantly chooses independence over conformity. From a small, bogside cabin in rural New England, 38-year-old Aimee Slater unravels the story of her life, attempting to make sense of the tangled thread that leads from her mother's houseShe is perpetually caught between the sensual world she so desires and the divine retribution passed down to her by her mother's scorn. How Aimee ultimately creates a life for herself and bridges that distance makes for a moving story of love and loss. Told in a voice of spare New England lyricism,Exquisitely drawn characters

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems I have a Golden Book view of what growing up on a farm looks like-Apple-cheeked children milking happy cows. I was a little horrified at the visceral scenes in this book-the cow with the afterbirth spilling out of her, the doe eating her bunnies. But the tales Aimee's mother told her and parts of the book were all so beautiful and horrible that I couldn't put it down. Except. I came very close to wtf-ing away from it with the whole "showing my little brother my vagina" thing. What the hell was that about? I guess it leads to some of her guiltily self destructive choices and that makes sense. She herself says she doesn't know why she did it.

[Fairlyfeisty Dragonwagon · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are many, many novels about what happened to girls who had never been off the farm when they went to work in mill towns in the 18th century. This over-literary, self-conscious convoluted tale is not one of the better examples.

I suggest, if this subject interests you, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

Still, like several here, once I had started I felt duty-bound to finish. Now why is that?

[Cathi95 · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Fiction 1997) It's really hard to say whether I liked or didn't like this book. It was interesting, and gave some insight as to living with the social mores of 19th century New England, but there was so much sadness in this woman's life. And her sadness makes for sadness in the lives of others. There were so many choices that led to all of this. Not much information here, but in a way, that's how the story went, too. Well written, pensive, occasional sunny moments.

[Katie Van Sloten · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are looking for a happy read - keep looking. Although I can appreciate the mother/daughter struggle, it was a little too passive/aggressive for my liking. I felt that the character remained stagnant - never a good thing for the main character in my opinion. The author's writing is good, however her subject matter is not.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

i felt betrayed by this book a bit, it's much darker and more difficult than the cover blurb led me to expect. partially because it touches on a very tender topic for me, but i think not entirely that. i had a hard time empathizing with any characters, they all seemed awkward in one way or another. the surreal writing style does match the mood, with a few brilliant moments.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreakingly beautiful, achingly sad, depicting early 19th century farm and factory life of a young girl with sensitivity and interesting historical detail. The pain and regret of Aimee's story was sometimes too drawn out and painful. Nonetheless, I could not put the novel down. UNRAVELLING is excellent historical fiction. I look forward to reading Graver's other novels.

[kellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was good enough to keep me reading it. There were things in the beginning that happened between a brother and sister that I would rather not have read and was glad for them to be over. I really liked parts of the book, but not the whole book.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book looked really interesting to me but I'm having a hard time getting into it and I'm about 2/3 the way through. I hate to give up on it but there's just nothing that's keeping me very engaged.

[Gretchen Temby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was engaged for the first 2/3 of the book. I didn't love it but was curious enough about this strange loaner of a woman who lived on a bog that I kept going. I felt like the last third of the book was more denouement than anything else and I found myself skimming.

[Michelle]

Read this in 1998 when I kept a paper reading journal with only two categories: I liked this more than I like most books (it stands out), and I didn't like this. This book was marked that I liked it more than most.

[Karen Hogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

We are our choices. Explores how one young girl's life unravels after a pregancy out of wedlock. Her self imposed exile from her family was both frustrating and sad at turns. Would read other works by this author.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting story about a flawed character, but I found the underlying trauma unsettling a difficult to read about. It was unexpected and continued to be brought up throughout the story making it difficult to move on.

[Jacqueline115 · Rating 1 out of 5]

yuck, did not like this book but forced myself to read it in hopes it would get better.