Flora

by Gail Godwin

The family members Helen depended on are gone. She lost her mother some years before, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away. And now her father has left town to work on a top-secret military project at Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II. Helen is wise beyond her years, but a ten-year-old cannot be left on her own to fend for herself. Her father arranges a summer guardian, Flora, her late mother's twenty-two-year-old first cousin who cries at the drop of a hat. A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact, with all its ghosts and stories. Flora is the good-hearted, modest cousin who wants to do her best for Helen. Their relationship and its fallout, played out against a backdrop of a lost America, will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction, Book Club, World War II, Historical

278 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2013

About the author

Gail Kathleen Godwin is an American novelist and short story writer. She has published one non-fiction work, two collections of short stories, and eleven novels, three of which have been nominated for the National Book Award and five of which have made the New York Times Bestseller List.

Godwin's body of work has garnered many honors, including three National Book Award nominations, a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Five of her novels have been on the New York Times best seller list.
Godwin lives and writes in Woodstock, New York.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to follow! Buddy read with Lisa ….

I’m back..

“Flora” is tender, touching, and completely compelling. I cared so much about these characters. I couldn’t put down the novel. I read through the night.
Gail Godwin writes about young hurt, loss, difficult emotions, provides a path for understanding and healing ourselves and how one summer can affect an entire life.

Set in North Carolina….the summer of 1945….towards the end of WWII.
Hitler had just committed suicide in Berlin.

Helen Anstruther,(first-person narrator), is 10 years old.(turning 11 in August). She was 3 when her mother, Elizabeth (Lisbeth), died of pneumonia.
Her grandmother, Honora Drake Anstruther, (Nonie), recently died.
Helen and Nonie had a special closeness — and throughout the story —we feel, see, examine, the effects that her death had on Helen.

Harry Drake Anstruther, Helen’s father, Principal of the local High School, went back for his second summer to a construction job in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They were making something highly secretive for the war effort.
Helen’s relationship with her father — isn’t closely explored … (he’s away the entire summer)… but we definitely get tidbit thoughts, and feelings, about his character from Helen. We know he isn’t shy about drinking Jack Daniels to a state of being sloshed at times. He also is a master chef of burnt grilled cheese pimento sandwiches.

Helen is bright, clever, highly imaginative,…..and an interesting precocious character.
She obviously couldn’t be left alone in their large isolated large Victorian mountain house without supervision all summer alone —so Harry arranges for his wife’s cousin, Flora Waring, 22 years old, who grew up with his deceased wife in Alabama, to come be Helen’s caretaker for the summer.
Flora had just passed her teachers training — and would be starting her first teaching job at the summer’s end.

But….this summer …. [summer of 1945] …..is THE-summer’ that Helen looks back on…with honest reflection, evaluation, and a heavy heart…..
She tries to understand the complexities between her childhood behavior— childhood assumptions— with more adult clarity.

As the reader — its easy to form early strong opinions about the characters — both positive and negativity.
Both Flora and Helen had enough challenges to tax the patience of a saint.

There is tragedy….undeniable!
There is humor ….undeniable!
There are secrets ….undeniable!

There are flirtations, jealousy, friendships (3 close friends of Helen’s when she was in the fifth grade: Annie, Rachel, & Brian)….
adventures, nature, history, several other interesting supporting characters:
….Earl Quarles was a disliked step-brother to Nonie….
….the town doctor, neighbors,
….Juliet Parker, an African-American women raised with Nonie and Flora.
….Lorena Huff….’sexy ( ha, sorta), mom’ next door

*Finn*
.. the dis-charged Army military solider— grocery delivery guy, pencil drawing artist — a definite favorite character!

Several background stories of being orphaned as a child….
Nonie’s storytelling talents and influence on Helen…
There were pedal pushers and Playing Jacks
Cheese sticks and Lemonade…

My favorite FUNNY line:
“I never go anywhere without my self-rising flour”.

A couple more excerpts (ha… as if this review is not long enough)
“Nonie often remarked that everyone of us needed to get away from other people and replenish our personal reserves”. [AMEN, Nonie]

“There are things we can’t undo, but perhaps there’s a kind of constructive remorse that could transform with incredible acts into some thing of service to life”.

Beautiful written novel….pages turned themselves.
Teary-eyed only once.


*Thank you Lisa for picking a wonderful novel that I’ll think about for some time.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase Colm Tóibín, skilled writers explore not the spaces crowded with words and stories, characters and events; they explore the empty spaces, the quiet that most of us seek to fill with the noise of life.

In her gently menacing Flora Gail Godwin creates a character of the empty space. It hovers just beyond the threshold of every doorway at the sprawling One Thousand Sunset Drive and in the dense North Carolina woods that may someday swallow whole the lodge and its remaining inhabitants. It listens in on whispered conversations behind closed doors, it reads letters tucked in the top drawer of a bureau, and it haunts a little girl’s dreams.

In the summer of 1945, deep in the woods of Appalachia, Helen Anstruther is approaching her eleventh birthday. She comes to us by way of her seventy-something self, looking back on that long-ago summer with tenderness and remorse. We know this little girl is about to face something terrible - Godwin’s careful foreshadowing releases a current of dread from its opening pages. But the narrator takes her time, giving us empty spaces to fill with our own coming-of-age memories.

Helen’s world contracts dramatically as school ends for the summer. Her father is called to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to work on a secret military project and leaves her in the care of her young aunt, Flora. We know, of course, what Oak Ridge means and how the summer of 1945 ends, but to Helen, World War II is in the abstract – something that fills radio hours and sermons. Not long after Flora arrives from Alabama, there is a polio outbreak in town. Helen’s father quarantines his daughter and Flora to the lonely lodge on the mountain. Their only relief from each other is the weekly visit by Mrs. Jones, who cleans Astruther Lodge, and by Finn, who delivers for the town grocer. During these “three weeks in June, all of July, and the first six days of August” we quietly explore the head and heart of a lonely little girl.

But the novel’s title is not Helen, it is Flora. And it is Flora's behavior and essence adult Helen attempts to reconcile with her memories and her excavation of the quiet spaces during the summer of 1945 at One Thousand Sunset Drive.

This is not a novel of events, though the few that occur are earthshattering. It is a work of voices- voices from the past, from the grave, from letters and awkward telephone calls, voices from inside. It is the voice of child who is just discovering her own power but has no idea how to restrain it or use it only for good. It is the voice of longing and regret.

It’s the perfect time to read this novel, on the cusp of these long, warm days filled with such promise. Do you remember how it felt to be a child at the start of summer break, long before today’s hyper-programmed “vacations”? Recall that feeling of freedom and possibility, with just a tinge of loneliness and boredom. Now imagine how your world could turn upside-down in just a few short, golden weeks. Allow yourself some empty space.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4+] At first Flora seems like a sad and quiet old-fashioned coming-of-age story set during the last summer of WWII. But oh - there is a haunting, visceral quality to Godwin's writing! Ten-year-old old Helen is trying to claw herself out of her hole of abandonment and loss and doesn't even notice that her cousin Flora is helping her heal. And Finn. And her dead grandmother. These characters are sticky and are staying with me. And the claustrophobic confinement of quarantine during a polio outbreak is very relatable!

Goodreads friend Elyse and I read this together and I loved our conversation. (yes we actually talked!) There is so much just under the surface in this book and Godwin captures girlhood so well that we both connected it to our own lives.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” For 10-year-old Helen, these words ring true. Living in North Carolina during the tail end of World War II, Helen is devastated by losses – the early death of her mother, the sudden death of her beloved grandmother Nonie, a friend’s diagnosis of polio,another friend's move, and her father’s decision to go to Oak Ridge to engage in secret war work.

In this compulsively readable book, Helen’s 22-year-old cousin Flora – her mother’s first cousin, once removed – moves in from Alabama to care for her during the summer of her fathers absence. The reader learns early on that Helen possesses an attitude of haughty superiority. She reflects, Most days my feelings fell somewhere on the scale between bored/protected and bored/superior. But there were also times when I felt I had to fight to keep from losing the little I had been left with.”

The narrative is written as a reflection from Helen – now an older woman – trying to make sense of that poignant summer. An aura of menace hangs over each chapter; as readers, we know that something really bad happened but we don’t know exactly what. We do know that Helen is a fiercely imaginative child who feels an extraordinary kinship with her deceased (and also haughty) grandmother, who listens to radio shows about the occult, and who has a special relationship with the cleaning woman, who believes in messages from the beyond.

Gail Godwin is a master crafter in revealing the push-pull that Helen experiences – a disdain for all that Flora represents (the overabundance of emotion, the simple-hearted ability to willingly let others in) versus the “hope and promise and mutual development” that sustains them in their best moments together. When another character, Finn, who has suffered both physically and mentally from his part in the War enters this isolated scenario, fate intervenes in unforeseen ways.

The novel lingers on the broad themes of loss, regret, illusions, and how one impromptu decision can undo our lives. Ms. Godwin trusts her readers to know where all this is going (for example, with the benefit of history, we know what occurs in Oak Ridge; we also have a pretty good idea where the book will end up). It’s the journey, not the destination, that makes this wonderful reading. I’m torn between a high 4 star and a low 5 star. I’m going with the 5 star because once I started this book, there was no way I was putting it down until I reached the conclusion.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was walking in the pool lane and ran into Charlotte,a summer friend. We asked after each other. We hadn't seen each other for 10 months, and then asked after our only daughters, girls around 30. Then we got around to books. Each of us had a recommendation . Mine was Flora, by Gail Godwin. Every reader, calls Godwin an old friend. We all have a favorite Godwin novel.
I was only 70 percent done this afternoon, but I recommended Flora. I said, "I think you'll like Flora, but I don't know what happens." I knew that this sleepy little book set in North Carolina during 1945 about 11 year old Helen, a character like Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird spending the summer with her mother's cousin, Flora , a 22 year old innocent who reminded me of Boo Radley , would not end well, but would end beautifully.
I was correct. As I finished this book which is set in a quiet old house haunted by Helen's recently deceased grandmother and her long deceased mother, I was left with a fine pencil drawing of a young girl who thinks too much about appearances and an even finer image of a young woman who thinks nothing of images and concerns herself only with love and nourishing those around her with food and bits of herself which she serves unselfishly, in generous portions.

[☮Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This quiet, atmospheric novel drew me in slowly as the story of a few characters during the summer of 1945 North Carolina unfolds. Ten year old Helen is being watched by twenty-two year old Flora, Helen's deceased mother's cousin. Helen's dad is away working on a secret war project, and her beloved grandmother has recently died. Helen has only three friends, and that summer she loses two of them right off and alienates another. Helen is precocious, somewhat bratty, and very smart. At first she reminded me a lot of another ten year old fictional character, Flavia DeLuce, who I adore. Both can be such smart asses. But Helen was given more of a hurtful, spiteful, slant to her ways; and the reader can only hope it doesn't come back to bite her any more than it already had, as she did have her good moments too.

It is a summer of these formerly-estranged cousins getting to know each other, and then themselves as a result. Although the grandmother is gone, her wisdom is often recalled by Helen and the letters she had exchanged with Flora. The book just would not have been the same without the wonderful character of Finn, a paratrooper in the war, who befriends the cousins.

Grief, regret, guilt, redemption, with the war story in the background, all made this a pretty likeable read for me. 3.5 stars.

[Gary the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are things we can’t undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life.

This is the opening sentence in Flora, Gail Godwin's unsettling gem of a novel about memory and remorse. The narrator, seventy year old Helen, is remembering the summer of 1945, which she spent quarantined with her mother's cousin, Flora. Helen is turning eleven on August 7. Motherless since she was three, she was being raised by her father, an alcoholic and his mother, her beloved Nonie, née Honora. Nonie's death while shopping for a new hat for Easter, leaves Helen not only bereft but without a caretaker when her father deploys to Oak Ridge, TN for a top-secret government job. She barely knows Flora, who arrives from Alabama on the heels of an outbreak of polio in the community.

Isolated on the side of a mountain in a ramshackle abode that had once housed "recoverers" which was Nonie's label for TB patients and alcoholics, Helen learns that Flora and her grandmother had been regular correspondents since her mother's funeral. Flora has kept all of Nonie's letters, using them as her guide for living. Helen desperately wants to see those letters. She reads a few of them surreptitiously, causing her to revise her impressions of her grandmother and to rethink their relationship. Eventually, she gets the letters, but the events surrounding their acquisition are tragic.

Flora is described by one character as simple-hearted and from Helen's perspective she seems simple-minded as well. Godwin manages to create compelling and complex portraits of all her characters-both dead and alive-but there is very little action. Their only other human contacts are a weekly housekeeper, who believes in ghosts, an appealing delivery man with a troubled past and the pastor from Helen's church. The story unfolds slowly, but the tension is there from the beginning. Critics have compared it to The Turn of the Screw and Atonement. There are even some parallels to The Magic Mountain. It is a beautifully-constructed study of the peril and pangs of early adolescence and adulthood during turbulent times. It is fitting that their private tragedy occurs the day after the annihilation at Hiroshima because the world Godwin artfully evokes here is gone forever...except in the realm of memory.

[Maya Panika · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is 1945, and Helen, a spoiled, selfish, self-centred, snobbish, deeply unpleasant ten year old girl is forced to spend her summer at home, trapped by an outbreak of polio. Her father is away working on the atomic bomb so her cousin Flora arrives from Alabama to care for her. Flora is delightful, kind and thoughtful and Helen instantly despises her, dismissing her as an idiot country bumpkin. But then there are very few people Helen doesn't feel are beneath her: the only exceptions - aside from her snobbish and recently deceased grandmother - are her father and the injured soldier Finn, on whom Helen develops a crush. And that's pretty much it. There's precious little plot. There's no doubt that Gail Godwin can write well; the character studies here are wonderfully well done, but the almost complete absence of a story made this tedious reading for me. There is something so lifeless about the prose, so lacking in some thing, some spark of life that sets a good novel apart. I was terribly bored, it's taken ages for me to read. It simply didn't excite me or inspire me to pick it up; reading it became a chore. If I hadn't had to review it, I would have given up by chapter five. It does pick up a little in the last third, when events occur and things actually happen, but the acceleration is too feeble and too late to save this lacklustre tale, so lacking in vim and vigour that even the high points- few as they are - feel glossed over and consequently lost.

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

Gail Godwin is astonishingly good at character development, and this novel is no exception. The plot, however, stumbles along forever before flopping spectacularly.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 This is a novel about regret. a woman looking back at a summer, when she was ten, that had a horrible end. Helen's mother had died when she was three, so she was raised by her father and his mother, Nonnie. They live in a small town in North Carolina in a house the had once been a home for people with physical or mental injuries that were not quite ready to face the world. They called them the recoverers and Helen had grown up with these stories and others. When her beloved Nonnie dies, and her father decides to take a job at Oak Ridge, twenty -two yr. old Flora, a distant cousin, comes to take care of Helen in the house.Helen, who has lost almost everything she loved shows a decided lack of compassion for others, at one point I thought she might be a sociopath, but she was just a ten yr. old girl who has suffered losses and had existed mostly in an adult world. I loved how Godwin uses an internal monologue to let the reader know what Helen is thinking. She also does a wonderful job of evoking the time and place, radio dramas, the racism and snobbery, the making of the bomb and the end of the war. This is a novel about the mistakes we make in our youth that can follow us and change one in ways we cannot know. A quiet novel, with vivid characters and the life of a girl over one summer.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so intrigued by the characterization in the first few pages that I just had to read this book. It’s short and I read it very quickly, but in the end it was something of a disappointment.

Like many first-person narratives, this story is told by an old woman, Helen, looking back on her childhood: specifically, the summer of 1945, when she was ten and left for the summer in the care of her 22-year-old cousin, Flora. Readers are alerted from the first page that the summer will end in tragedy, and in the meanwhile we read about the often troubled relationship between the two main characters, as well as their interactions with others in the community.

While the characterization is the best thing about this book, the plot is the crux of my problem with it. At various points in the story the older Helen interjects discussions of her remorse, such that the ultimate tragedy is quite predictable; but it’s easy to see why Godwin made this choice, because without the promise of something dramatic eventually happening, readers might give up on the mundane account of Helen’s life that precedes it. Personally, I don’t require dramatic events to keep my interest in a story, but I do like more tension and momentum than this book provides: something needs to be at stake, be it a relationship, someone’s position in the community, or a character’s choice of direction in life. Unfortunately, here there just isn’t much; Helen and Flora go about their daily routines, and the bulk of the book leads up to the tragedy only indirectly. Since what happens is an accident, there's only so much building up to it that can be done. Then it ends. This is frustrating because there are two potentially great stories lurking just beneath the surface: one about how Helen’s remorse affects her and her attempts to atone, and the other about Helen and Flora’s family, with its colorful characters and many secrets. We hear almost nothing about Helen's life after that summer. We do learn something about several of the relatives and their secrets, but I wanted more.

Because there are some excellent characters here: the eponymous Flora is one; Helen’s grandmother, father and mother are all fascinating and deserve more page time than they get; Flora’s relatives are intriguing as well, and I was disappointed not to meet them. Helen is a serviceable narrator with a decent amount of complexity, but this was not one of those books that renders a child protagonist so believably as to take me back to how it felt to be her age. Outside of the family, the secondary characters are a mixed bag: Finn, the war veteran who captures both Helen’s and Flora’s affections, was not as interesting to me as he was to them; Mrs. Jones, on the other hand, was vivid and believable. The characters' relationships are believable, and their interactions often fun to read.

Other than that, the writing and dialogue are solid, although the characters have a tendency to sound writerly when they talk for more than a few sentences at a time. I liked the use of the grandmother’s letters to show another side of her character, but for someone meant to be so discreet and reserved, her circumlocutions are awfully transparent; it tends to be immediately obvious to the reader what she’s talking about even when she’s evidently trying to obscure it.

Overall, an okay book, but one that had the potential to be better with some smarter editing. If you’re a big fan of character studies and less concerned about plot, this book may be right for you; on the other hand, I tend to be more interested in character than plot myself, and still found it lacking in momentum. It’s short and decently written, just not as good as I expected.

[Patrice Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel Flora, by Gail Godwin, is a first-person narrative by an author, haunted by the summer she spent with her older cousin. It was the summer Helen Anstruther's grandmother died, her father was called to work on a top-secret job during World War II, and a small outbreak of polio has her captive in the house with Flora. This novel is about regret, trajedy, guilt, and a young girl's journey into adulthood.

Helen lets us know from the beginning that this novel is not going to be one of those lovely tales of summer fun and that some sort of awakening is going to come about by a woman she describes as being layer-less, simple-minded. As Helen and Flora traipse around the huge home that was once a home for recoverers, Helen begins to find herself. She is also confronted with the things that others don't like about her such as the aire of superiority she walks around with constantly.

Godwin delivers a character driven novel that kept me interested until the end. Characters that make the reader love and hate them are the best rounded. Helen is a well-rounded character who I often disliked because of her brattyness yet she won me over at times with her intelligence. Flora was just sunshine in a bottle and represents everything Helen isn't. The need for strong characters is necessary in a novel that primarily takes place in one setting and Godwin excels at delivering on this front.

Overall, Flora is a great summer read that I know fans of Gail Godwin will enjoy. This period novel will remind readers of the summer that changed their lives for the good (or bad). Like Helen, we will wish for a do-over or some sort of try-again in order to get things right; To show appreciation to someone who's only crime was having a simple-heart. The occasions that haunt us help make us who we are today.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Where do I start?? Go up above and read the description of the book. There you go, you have read most of the book. The only significant event in the book happens at the end of the story. Throughout the book Helen acts like a selfish pretentious little brat who acts like 2 year old when she doesn't get her way or when something happens that didn't go her way. She spends a majority of the time making Flora out to be some simpleminded hillbilly who is dumber than a bag of rocks.

I didn't find the book haunting or beautifully written. The beginning was horribly choppy and all over the place. With so many 5 star ratings I began to wonder if I was even reading the same book as everyone else. Alas, I was. I guess this was just not my cup of tea.

[Mij Woodward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Is there such a thing as getting mad at a book one has read?

I'm mad, Flora, and I am not going to take it anymore!!

I am mad because you made me struggle to finish reading you. Started out so hopeful, just like Charlie Brown must feel when Lucy holds the football for him.

Slowly, I began to realize that 10-year-old Helen is not like any 10-year-old I have ever met.

I confess, at age nine, I was capable of calculating and conniving. On one of our family's vacations, I felt sorry for myself because I kept losing at ping-pong to my younger sister, and no one seemed to care. So I staged a "running away" thing. I grabbed food from the fridge in our little cabin, wrapped it in a big red handkerchief that I tied to the end of a stick, ala Huckelberry Finn, and took off down the road with our trusty dog, the stick resting on my shoulder.

When I got back, my father was fuming, and I got my first and last spanking from him.

One thing I remember about that incident--before taking off with our dog and my Huckleberry Finn pouch, I deliberately left the door of the fridge open wide, and left the bread-bag open and out. I wanted my family to see these clues and worry about me, to know I was gone.

I mention this incident to show that I know some 10-year-olds can engage in ruses and plots.

Therefore, I grasp that 10-year-old Helen was not your stereotypical sweet innocent young girl.

But at the same time, under my belt, is the experience of raising four boys, as well as taking care of my grandson at that age. I’ve had experience with kids that age.

With that experience as my guide, I ask you:

*what 10-year-old uses words like “inferiority complex” or even “naive”?

*what 10-year-old talks about not really being “attracted” to someone?

I could offer many other incidents involving 10-year-old Helen that just did not ring true. In her conversations with Flora, she seemed to me to be more like a 16-year-old, or even an adult, in the sophistication of her comments.

I know that some kids are precocious, brilliant, and have vocabularies that can surprise us all, but Helen just did not ever ring true for me.

I googled Gail Godwin, trying to find out if she had ever raised a family. Still do not know the answer to that question, but at least from googling, I could find no evidence that she did.

Then, who was her editor at the publishing house? How old was that editor, what experience had that editor had with 10-year-old kids?

I read all the glowing reviews of Flora. It’s what drew me in to read this book. But now I sort of feel like the boy who points out the emperor had no clothes.

So, I am mad at Flora. (The book, not the character.)

Another complaint:

One of the characters, Beryl Jones, listens to radio programs when she cleans house. Like “Guiding Light” and “All My Children”. Oh please. The story of Flora takes place during the WWII era. “All My Children” was a television show created in the 70’s!

Editor, where were you?

This is an interior kind of novel, about subtleties of motivations and ruminations. Not much happens. Not much action. When something dramatic happens in the end, it turned out to be predictable for me.

On the one hand, I felt for 10-year-old Helen, what she had lost in her young life. On the other hand, she was not likable. Nothing much endearing about her. And I never really got to know Flora. Not enough emotion in these pages.

The liking or not liking of a book is all chemistry. What is gold for one reader is disgusting to another. The chemistry was off for me with Flora. I just got angry the more I read!

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a coming of age novel set in North Carolina in the summer of 1945. The narrator, Helen Anstruther, from the vantage point of old age, tells the story of that formative summer when she was approaching her eleventh birthday on August 6. Helen’s mother died seven years earlier and she was left in the care of her father and paternal grandmother (Nonie); however, Nonie’s recent death and the departure of her father for war work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, result in Helen’s being left in the care of Flora, her 22-year-old second cousin. Except for Finn, a young man who delivers groceries, Helen and Flora are isolated in their mountain-top home because of a polio outbreak in the community.

This novel is very much a character study. Helen is a very precocious and imaginative pre-teen. Flora is preparing for her first teaching position in the fall, and she and Helen play a game of school for which Helen creates and acts out the roles of ten students in a fifth-grade class. She is not, however, always a likeable person. She tends to be moody and has an attitude of superiority; a friend tells her, “’your trouble is you think you’re better than other people.’” Typical of her age group, Helen is very self-centred; again, her friend tells her, “Other people don’t exist when you’re not with them. We’re like toys or something. You play with them and examine them and then you put them on a shelf and go away.’” Indeed, Helen’s behaviour attests to the accuracy of these observations: she doesn’t even write notes to friends unless she is guilted in doing so, and her interest in her grandmother’s old letters is largely restricted to looking for references to herself. Helen also demonstrates the youthful tendency to view the world in terms of black and white; she doesn’t see Flora’s positive traits or her grandmother’s negative traits.

Helen’s judgmental attitude comes to the fore in her actions towards Flora. At various times, she describes Flora as simple-minded and a backward country bumpkin. She derides her willingness to engage others in conversation and her tendency to display emotion which Helen mocks as her “gift of tears.” In her naivety, Helen describes Flora as “prosaic, [and] unimaginative” and focuses on her “eagerness and disregard for what should be left unsaid” and does not see that Flora has “no deceit or malice.”

What is wonderful about the book is that the reader will both dislike Helen and sympathize with her. She is motherless and her father chooses to leave her despite the very recent death of her beloved grandmother. One friend is diagnosed with polio and another is moving away with her family, so she is obviously lonely. She speaks of “times when I felt I had to fight to keep from losing the little I had been left with, including my sense of myself.” It is heartbreaking to read about Helen’s attempts to keep her grandmother’s spirit close to her; she moves into her bedroom and models herself after Nonie, even slavishly repeating her harsh judgments of others: “I seemed to merge with Nonie and came out thinking and speaking more like her.” The only stability in Helen’s life is provided by Mrs. Jones, the woman who for many years has been coming to clean the house once a week, and the large rambling house in which she grew up but which is slowly falling apart around her. Most readers will not have difficulty empathizing because they will have experienced loss and will see something of their youthful selves in her.

I loved the hints throughout that there is much more going on than Helen perceives or misunderstands because of her naivety and inexperience. Helen misses her father and wants him to return; she doesn’t fully understand his comment that his true calling “had been thwarted by the social expectations of others” and doesn’t see the unhappiness evidenced in his behaviour. Tragedies in Flora’s life are hinted at in Nonie’s letters, but Helen is blind to them. Likewise, she interprets Finn’s visits to the house as proof of his feelings for her. Reading between the lines and realizing what Helen does not is one of the pleasures of this book. Furthermore, anyone with knowledge of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and August 6, 1945, will also understand some historical significance to events outside Helen’s immediate world.

There is suspense in the book of course. The reader knows that something will happen; the opening clearly indicates something tragic will occur: “There are things we can’t undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service in life.” What does happen causes Helen to lose her innocence. In this regard, the novel reminded me of Atonement by Ian McEwan. There are certainly similarities between Helen and Briony; they share a talent for writing and their childish reactions trigger events that can’t be undone, actions for which they feel remorse and a need to atone.

The plot of this novel is not action-packed, but there is much to ponder in its examination of human experience. It is a wonderful example of interpretive literature.

Note: I received an advance reading copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book receives a three star rating from me. Although I liked it and don't regret reading it, I wasn't "wowed" by it and I feel no urge to rush back and read it again. The biggest issue I had with the book is one of personal preference - I prefer novels with a more engaging plot rather than character pieces. This book tends to drag and although it is clear to the reader that something is coming, that something comes far too late in the story and is practically skimmed over.

The other giant issue I had with the story (that is not based on my personal preferences) is the unanswered or vague supernatural things that occurred. A large part of the problem is the marketing the book receives, but the writing itself has issues too. At one point, Helen has a nearly suicidal moment where she becomes disconnected from the world while a "voice" speaks to her. Although mentioned again, this is never explained. And adult Helen makes no mention of it towards the end of the novel. Did she ever hear voice again? Was the house haunted? Did she have mental issues? I don't like that this felt like such a big event, only to turn out to be nothing.

I also had issues with the way the book's critical moment happens, but I won't discuss due to spoilers. I was left feeling underwhelmed.

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoy Gail Godwin's writing , I was just so anxious for the book to end . It was in some ways reminiscent of Atonement with a young child not understanding things as they really are or people who they really are and making mistakes that can't be changed . For me it was not a gripping read .

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can’t abide novels narrated by children, stop right now and go enjoy a cigar with W.C. Fields. Nobody could blame you. Those preternaturally ironic kids prancing through too many books can be gratingly false, like bears wearing pants. But for all the precious narrators spouting off unconscious humor and wisdom, a few authors — in a ragged line from Mark Twain to Karen Russell — wear the mask of childhood effectively. They draw us into the eerie dawn of selfhood, that malleable period of possibility when delight or tragedy gets scrawled on the setting concrete of consciousness.

Gail Godwin, the 75-year-old author of more than a dozen books, has just published a short novel called “Flora” that manages the Childhood Problem exquisitely. Helen, the narrator, is a novelist herself, looking back many decades to the summer when she turned 11. The story comes to us in a piquant voice that blends the girl’s youthful precocity with the adult’s long-simmering remorse. The effect — so difficult to carry off without sounding cloying or cynical — is witty and moving.

Among the several spirits haunting this tale is “The Turn of the Screw,” that ghost-free ghost story from 1898. Godwin is pursuing something very different from “the depths of the sinister” that Henry James plumbed, but you’ll catch wisps of his ectoplasm on these pages. Once again, we have a nervous young governess in a spooky old dwelling, while the gentleman of the house is away doing God knows what; there’s even an older maid and a red-haired handyman — and, of course, a character named Flora.

Those echoes of James’s classic, though, aren’t what makes this thoughtful new novel so engaging. The story opens in June 1945, not with terror but with sorrow: “There are things we can’t undo,” Helen says portentously, “but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life.”

The incidents of this plot are daringly few: A boring summer during which nothing happens is a challenge most novelists should avoid. Godwin, though, has the psychological sensitivity to make these still, humid days seem fraught with impending consequence. Although Helen is only 10, all the real drama of her life seems to have taken place before we meet her. Her mother died years earlier; her beloved grandmother has died recently; and her functionally alcoholic father must go off to work on a secret project in Oak Ridge, Tenn. So that she won’t be left alone in her crumbling, isolated house, arrangements are made for her mother’s cousin to care for her.

Helen knows Cousin Flora a little; she saw her weeping sloppily at her grandmother’s funeral — “a typical Flora flagellation.” She’s single, 22 years old, and hoping to get a teaching job in the fall. But there’s something childlike about her. For one thing, she can’t drive, and she’s reduced to tears by any spore of anxiety or sentimentality. Helen suspects she’s “the slightest bit slow-witted.” She’s utterly incapable of delivering or receiving sarcasm, which makes Helen feel both empowered and disarmed. “What if there were ways I was going to have to take care of Flora?” she wonders during their first few awkward days.

A polio scare in town keeps these two trapped in the house — the little prig seething at her callow guardian. There’s an ominous touch of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.” Helen’s father rarely calls; one of her school friends is hospitalized; another moves away after telling her she never wants to talk to her again. Their only regular visitors are a maid and the delivery man, a discharged soldier named Finn, whom both Flora and Helen are attracted to. “There was something about his hair that made him resemble a puppy run through a bath,” Helen says, a reminder that, for all her sophistication, she’s completely inert to the sexual charges electrifying the air.
The success of this trim novel rests entirely on Godwin’s ability to maintain the various chords of Helen’s voice, which are by degrees witty, superior, naive and rueful. Raised on books and her grandmother’s advice, the bright little girl has developed a comically antique manner of speaking — and the snobbery to go with it. It annoys her that Flora is so “indomitably cheerful.” She’s constantly correcting her guardian’s diction (“It’s a study, not an office.”). She’s aware of falling into her “smartypants mode” but usually can’t help herself. It troubles her that her cousin “shows no discrimination about people.” Fed up one afternoon with Flora’s floundering efforts to entertain her, Helen finally suggests, “Why don’t we each go to our own room and replenish ourselves?” Do 10-year-olds talk like that? Well, Helen does — that’s the point: She’s a flawless blend of precocious sophistication and youthful cluelessness. And your faith in the possibility of “her strange childhood” is the measure of this novel’s unsettling effectiveness.

What Helen can’t fathom — as a child or an adult — is Flora’s guilelessness, her complete lack of pride or emotional guardedness, qualities she eventually associates with the old-fashioned term “single-hearted.” Many years later, the narrator asks herself, “Something had been left out of her, but was that something her virtue or her deficit?” How cleverly that question keeps Helen from asking about her own virtue and deficit.

Like Marilynne Robinson, Godwin is repelled by the saccharine psychology of our age. In her finest books, including the three that have been finalists for the National Book Award, we confront spiritual matters in unusually hard terms. With the same disdain she displayed during her formative years, the adult Helen observes, “Remorse went out of fashion around the same time that ‘Stop feeling guilty,’ and ‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ and ‘You need to love yourself more’ came into fashion.” She goes on: “Remorse derives from the Latin remordere: to vex, disturb, bite, sting again (the ‘again’ is important). It began as a transitive verb, as in ‘my sinful lyfe dost me remord.’ ” Such didactic moments are, thankfully, rare in this novel, but that keen intelligence propels Helen into a very uncomfortable place.

Her recollection of that tragic summer, turned over and over in her mind for years, is something between a search for understanding and a mournful confession. But finally it’s a testament to the power of storytelling to bring solace when none other is possible.

Originally published in The Washington Post:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gail Godwin has long been one of my favorite authors and Flora is a fine example of why. All the main characters seem so real it's hard to imagine they're actually fictional, but instead of making them prosaic their fullness, including their flaws, makes them both fascinating and sympathetic, and it's a tense pleasure inhabiting their world. The story's time and place--an isolated mountain home during the final months of WWII--are also well realized and the book held me enthralled.

The story is told by Helen, an older woman looking back on a summer from her childhood when she was in the care of her twenty-two year old cousin Flora, an open-hearted, unreserved woman who embodies everything Helen has been taught to look down her nose at by her dignified grandmother and her cynical father. Both Helen's mother and grandmother are dead, so when her father leaves their once grand, now dilapidated, house to do secret war work Flora volunteers to help. Flora's emotional outbursts embarrass and irritate Helen, but a polio outbreak means their only company is the family's longtime maid, the young man who delivers groceries, and the local priest. With her grandmother dead and her father away, times are changing, but there is a lot of history in the house and Helen is desperate to hold onto the way of life she has always known. The book hints at tragedy from its early pages, but that's a distant storm not yet on the horizon and most of the story deals with the captivating day to day schemes and struggles of Helen as she tries to make the best of her situation.

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunted coming-of-age story set in the summer of 1945, another house novel like A Fugue in Time (but luckily more linear). Godwin grasps Southern culture in a way I have found in few other writers, never in writers who are not from the South. This is one of those bildungsromans about Realizing Things™ and how earth-shattering it feels to have one's self-concept poked as a preteen. I never quite liked Helen, but I sure did understand her. My readerly sympathies lay elsewhere in the book, which made for some painful reading, though thought-provoking. I think the ending could have been significantly better, as the climax felt like a cop-out for a writer of Godwin's skill, and it was rather heavy-handed. Yet, overall, I enjoyed Flora and would read it again, especially to remember what it is like to be ten years old.

Content warnings: an extremely vague mention of rape; character death due to a car accident

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad to learn there's a new Gail Godwin novel out and about. It doesn't disappoint.

This is a story about how a girl locked in a world of pretense is forced--through tragedy that would qualify for the definition a Godwin character supplied in I think The Finishing School--to develop the kind of insight and depth she will need in order to become the writer who can reflect back on these events. We don't see her growing up to become that writer. We see a little girl who is quite smart, quite gifted at making up stories, and quite narcissistic.

All children are narcissistic to some degree, but even this girl's more insightful and interesting friend, also quite brilliant for a 10-year-old in the pre-psychotherapy years of the 1940s, thinks Helen's over the top.

When we leave young Helen though, having accidentally contributed to the death of her nanny and cousin (here again the role she thinks she has played is overdramatized and narcissistic, but I suppose that is better, for her, than facing up to the role her father played--one more adult in her life who is not in fact a member of her glorious family on the hill but just another loser), it's amazing how much has come together without its having to be said. Just as Grandmother Nonie would have devised.

I only objected to: the father's parentage having been explained, because I thought we could deduce that on our own; some of Helen's thoughts and observations seemed WAY ahead of a 10-year-old's capabilities (I was willing to write some of this off due to inevitable blurring in the narration--after all, the older narrator is a character, too, and she is bound to confuse her voice with the younger Helen's, and I was also willing to assume that in some cases kids back then were raised as mini adults, and also that Nonie raised Helen as a little friend rather than as a little girl; still, would Helen have the perspective to dismiss Flora's "adolescent" tears, when she, Helen, is ten? I think a tighter edit might have helped. Finally I wondered about the ending itself, whether it needed to be quite so cataclysmic, after all the other deaths. And if it wouldn't have been worse, somehow, if Helen had messed up Flora's career, or her love.

And, though done with just the right light touch, there is a terrible, wonderful explication of the breakdown of self that can occur when the essential stories that have defined us come apart. At one point, Helen walks through a rip in the world occasioned by something, just a minor thing, really, that Flora has mentioned about Helen's mother, Flora's cousin. "Nobody until Flora had called my childhood strange." Brooding on this, she walks down her driveway, a shredded affair that her grandmother has been able to dismiss as something they will deal with later, after the war is over, but that everyone else in town criticizes mightily. Her line of thought, for various reasons, proceeds to the question of how she, Helen, appears to the outside world. Is she pretty? Beautiful? A friend's mother has said she might be stately, like her grandmother, but her best friend, the one with the biting, insightful comments that always make Helen laugh at everyone else, has said Helen's grandmother looked like a mastiff. Helen had looked up mastiffs in a dog book and not spoken to her friend for a week. Then, after a few more steps, a few more thought, she goes through the rip in the veil of the world. "It was like being conscious of losing my mind at the exact moment I was losing it."

She is saved by a character who nearly saves them all. Perhaps it can even be said that he does save Helen, after all.

Terrific writing throughout.

First line: "There are things we can't undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life."

"That's the thing about the dead. They make you understand that time isn't as simple as you thought."

"The living room was filling was a nostalgic organge light, which made everything look less shabby and more historical."

"When did remorse fall into disfavor? It was sometime during the second half of my life.... around the same time that 'Stop feeling guilty,' and 'You're too hard on yourself,' and 'You need to love yourself more' came into fashion..... Remorse derives from the Latin remordere: to vex, disture, bite, sting again (the "again" is important). It began as intransitive verb, as in my "my sinful lyfe dost me remord."

[Dale Harcombe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve long been a fan of Gail Godwin’s work. This novel took me a little longer to warm to largely, I suspect, because I am not a big fan of coming of age stories. But it was Gail Godwin, so I kept reading. By the end I was thoroughly involved in the story of Helen Anstruther and the summer spent with Flora, the twenty two year old cousin who came to care for ten year old Helen while her father was away on a secret mission. It is three quarters of the way through the novel before the reader finds out what that work involves.
The story is told by the aged Helen looking back in that summer. Helen’s mother died when she was three and her grandmother who virtually reared her since then died, which is why Helen’s father needed someone to care for Helen while he was away. Because of a polio scare in the community, Helen and Flora are confined mainly to the house and each other’s company over the summer, except for the visit of Finn, the local grocery delivery guy.
Gail Godwin has captured the self centred attitude of children, and how children think of everything that happens and the interactions of people in regard to themselves. She is very good are picking up on the small details of life.
There were some points I particularly agreed with including the watering down of language that occurs when some people try to ‘update’ older language in prayer book, hymns etc, about remorse having gone out of fashion and the way people try and make excuses for behaviour and excuse guilt.
This novel is set during World War Two. Reading about the bombing of Hiroshima made me think of A Girl of Nagasaki, a favourite poem by Alex Skovron. I had to go back and re-read it. You can read it here. http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets...#
The ending of Flora is quite startling. While I didn’t adore this book as much as Father Melancholy’s Daughter , Evensong, Evenings at Five, and some of Godwin’s earlier novels, I did enjoy it and thought about the characters long after finished reading, which is why I have changed by original rating from three and a half stars to four. This is not a book where a lot happens, so if you’re looking for an action book it is not for you. But if you like an in depth character study and something that makes you think, you should enjoy it.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Summer

I read her Godwin’s first ten or so books right as they came out but somehow got out of that habit. After reading “Flora” all I can think is, “What was I thinking?” Flora is set at the end of World War II in North Carolina where ten year old Helen, who has just lost her beloved grandmother, is left alone with her twenty-two year old cousin Flora who’s acting as Helen’s babysitter. Her father is away in Tennessee at Oak Ridge hard at work on war work. Helen and Flora are isolated on their mountaintop due to a polio scare in the valley. It’s going to be a long summer. Their only company is a local priest and a grocery delivery man…and the radio of course.

The story is told by Helen reflecting in her old age about that summer and perhaps this accounts for the unchildlike feel of her perspective. Helen is a haughty and even contemptuous ten year old. Flora is open and loving and quick to talk about the Alabama upbringing that she shared with Helen’s deceased mother. Helen previously knew almost nothing about her mother’s side of the family and has been unduly influenced by a loving but status conscious grandmother and a largely absent father. Since Helen’s mom died when she was three and she barely remembers her Flora’s stories are a revelation. As the summer wanes more bits and pieces come out, not all of them flattering.

This a story where not much happens outwardly yet the summer serves as a pivot for both these girls. They’re both forever changed by knowing one another, for better or worse. Flora’s story shows that neglect can be cruel. It’s a mistake I won’t make with Godwin again.

This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.
(Disclaimer included as required by the FTC.)

[Betsy McTiernan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used to be a big fan of Godwin, but somehow I let her recent novels slip by me until I read my sister-in-law's review of Flora. She says: "I was left with a fine pencil drawing of a young girl
[Helen] who thinks too much about appearances and an even finer image of a young woman who thinks nothing of images and concerns herself only with love and nourishing those around her with food and bits of herself which she serves unselfishly, in generous portions." I think this is a perfect description of almost 11-year-old Helen and her cousin--and summer caretaker--Flora. I was caught up in the story from the beginning. The fact that nothing much was happening enticed me: I knew something big (probably tragic) would happen at the end, but I couldn't guess what it might be(no spoilers here). Since finishing, I have found myself thinking about the narrator,the elderly Helen, who grew up to become a writer. I'm wondering why she seemed so removed from her young self. Is it because of what happened at the end of her story, or because the adult Helen was so like her younger self? In any event, I've decided that she is the real protagonist and the character that will stay with me.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gail Godwin has a flair for involving a reader completely. While comparisons have been made to Turn of the Screw, that would imply the possibility of supernatural interpretation, which is not the case here. This novel owes more to Atonement, with its brooding air of regret over life altering bad choices and misinterpretations. Helen tells the story from the remove of over 50 years. Looking back, she is spending her tenth summer at the crumbling family home being cared for by her 22 year old second cousin, who she disdains, while her father is in Oak Ridge doing something she doesn't fully understand. Helen has been coddled due to the early loss of her mother and the recent, of her grandmother. To say anything more about the plot would be superfluous since this novel is more character- than plot-driven. The stultifying heat and atmospheric miasma plays a large part, as most readers won't know what it meant to have lived under the threat of a polio epidemic, and what effect that had on people. Highly recommended.

[Margee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten-year-old Helen might aptly be sketched as a 'piece of work', but however I might describe the plot of this book, it's really about the impulses in ourselves we'd rather not consider, by which we heedlessly inflict damage that boomerangs. I read this in more or less a permanent cringe, but was unable to leave it alone, so sad, compelling, and, yes, dishy, was it. The creaky mountaintop isolation of little Helen's family home, a former rest home during the early part of the 20th century lent just the right flavor of the tragically damaged ghosts that might still haunt the place. The specter of rampant polio, one of the reasons for Helen's summer of isolation with her 22-year-old cousin, Flora, conjures sepia-toned visions of terrible small coffins and iron lungs.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This nicely told coming of age novel is about a almost twelve-year-old girl living in North Carolina who is put under the guardianship of her older cousin for part of one summer (1945). I've read Ms. Godwin's fiction and heard her give a reading and talk. Her Southern characters and settings appeal to me since I'm also from the region. There is a historic subplot of the Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge, TN. The narrator is the snarky type of young girl who still has a lot of things to learn about life. Her lessons begin that summer. It's an easy read and worked just fine for me on this cold wintry day.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one really grew on me. Like any good novel of character as you continue to read the characters of Helen, her mother, and grandmother grow and develope. What at first seems like narrowmindedness and snobbishness turns out to be deeper feelings as young women try to outdistance their past. The character of Flora is true of heart, but not so simple as Helen believes.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story....the narrator tells you over and over that things will not come to pass as expected. They warn you and you are still crying like a baby when it all takes place. A "heartbreaking" story...beautifully written. This is my first Godwin book and I truly enjoyed all of it! It definitely pulls at the old heart strings.

[Julie Durnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written coming of age story in the South during the summer of 1945. Helen, the 10 year old and her older cousin, Flora spend the summer together basically isolated by the fear of contracting polio in a rambling old house on a mountaintop. Their relationship with each other and a few other characters are great reading!