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The Evening and the Morning
Where polite society weighs heavily against extramarital dalliances, why do some people insist on acting against their own best interests? Ah, the complexity of the human heart! Virginia Sorensen seems to be saying in this dark novel about a 1940s Utah housewife, Kate, and a young violin maker, Peter, a man who elicits from her the first shock of overpowering attractions. Considering the circumstances of Kate’s rural life, her marriage to an older man, and the trouble she has raising two stepchildren, readers may forgive her errant desires. Yet her husband has been good to her, and the new object of her eye has a devoted wife and a handicapped son. So, why should these two decent, if all-too-human, people be struck by this other side of human passion? Ultimately, Kate decides to abandon her Utah home and her adopted family rather than risk disruption to Peter’s household. However, decades later she realizes her error and embarks on a pilgrimage back home to see her Peter once more, to determine finally what meaning this romantic interlude held for her.Virginia Sorensen was born in Provo, Utah, and lived much of her adult life in Morocco and Florida with her husband, British novelist Alec Waugh. She is the distinguished author of eight novels (see, for instance, A Little Lower than the Angels), a collection of short stories (Where Nothing Is Long Ago: Memories of a Mormon Childhood), and as many children’s books; and winner of the Newberry Medal, an O. Henry award, and two Guggenheim fellowships. She spent a lifetime telling stories, many of which she offered to her Mormon community as their own. Literary critics have hailed her as “Utah’s First Lady of Letters.” She died in 1991.
- GenresFiction
350 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
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57 people want to read
About the author
Virginia Sorensen
16 books24 followersVirginia Louise Sorensen (February 17, 1912-1991) was an American writer. Her role in Utah and Mormon literature places her within the "lost generation" of Mormon writers. She was awarded the 1957 Newbery Medal for her children's novel, Miracles on Maple Hill.
Sorensen was born in Provo, Utah in 1912, and it was her family's own stories that influenced her early novels of the American West.
Sorensen was born in Provo, Utah in 1912, and it was her family's own stories that influenced her early novels of the American West.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 1, 2013
This is a beautiful, beautiful book, with a very interesting backstory. Sorensen (born in 1912) was raised LDS in rural Utah, but went on to travel the world with her second husband (Evelyn Waugh's brother), becoming a Guggenheim-fellowship-winning writer in her own right. The novel meanders through the big and heavy themes of religion, culture, infidelity, and parenting from the perspective of a thoughtful yet imperfect heroine coming to terms with the world she grew up in, fled from, and then attempts to come to terms with. I feel quite grateful to have had this recommended to me by a dear friend, as I'm unsure I would have stumbled across it otherwise.
One of the most interesting things about the book is how Sorensen's exquisite descriptions of Utah still resonate:
"Sometimes, away, one forgot the austerity of this country and its rocky slopes. One remembered only blue of heights melting at skyline, receiving first snow while summer was still hot in the valleys. One forgot the semidesert alkali-ridden outskirts of irrigated villages, sparse brush-and-sunflower-covered slopes, spraying crickets at every step. One forgot that scrub cedar looked ragged and twisted like trees by the sea deformed by constant wind. One forgot summer-dry creek beds, ravines empty but for gray rocks, and remembered only water running. One remembered the beauty of sheep and lambs and forgot the deep dust they left, and manure, and the stiff stripped stalks of nettle and wild clover. Today Kate thought of how quickly, given war or devastation of any kind, this country would be wild again. The villages were, from above, literally cries in a wilderness."
One of the most interesting things about the book is how Sorensen's exquisite descriptions of Utah still resonate:
"Sometimes, away, one forgot the austerity of this country and its rocky slopes. One remembered only blue of heights melting at skyline, receiving first snow while summer was still hot in the valleys. One forgot the semidesert alkali-ridden outskirts of irrigated villages, sparse brush-and-sunflower-covered slopes, spraying crickets at every step. One forgot that scrub cedar looked ragged and twisted like trees by the sea deformed by constant wind. One forgot summer-dry creek beds, ravines empty but for gray rocks, and remembered only water running. One remembered the beauty of sheep and lambs and forgot the deep dust they left, and manure, and the stiff stripped stalks of nettle and wild clover. Today Kate thought of how quickly, given war or devastation of any kind, this country would be wild again. The villages were, from above, literally cries in a wilderness."
December 21, 2009
If you are a Mormon woman or are trying to understand one, I would recommend this book. I think it would be a v. successful book club pick if your group is composed of a lot of Mormon women. (By the way, it's written by a Mormon woman who can actually WRITE.) Basically it's a story of a Mormon woman (I am going to try to use that phrase 72 more times in this review) who has an affair and of her daughter and her daughter's daughter. The action occurs over six days in which she returns to the small Utah town where it all took place. Here are some quotes:
"perhaps it was because she knew that if there is rebellion at all, it is better in a man. It is necessary that you be a man, she thought, without so many soft places on you. But if nature had got mixed up somehow, and you were not a man and yet you had the rebellion in you and you lived in a place where women were women and they had a place to stay and must stay there--then something had to happen, and it happened, and when it happened it was all wrong. But there was nothing you could do. It was better now than it had been, with all the talk and writing about Women and Freedom and now the franchise was real, but it was hard to see any difference, looking at women themselves; or at Dessie--afraid of ideas. But rebellion was in Dessie in spite of herself, in spite of her declaration against it. If you were a woman and a rebel the only thing you could tear to pieces was your own life. So you turned upon yourself. There was no institution you could rend except at the place where it touched you; and so always you were the thing to be cut apart. You struck where church tied you close with obligations, duties, terrors, the promise of blessedness. You struck where family held your arms pinned in a place around certain ones, where a house like every successive child, bound with its constant dirtying, dirtying. And you struck the thing that tied you most mercilessly, the very longing that took hold of your body in the night and sometimes made you feel beautiful and assuaged but in the morning had left you with a fresh burden which did not diminsh but grew, grew, grew for the rest of your days...the doctor had said, For us men, it is all spit out and gone and we think of other things, he said, but the woman receives and keeps and remembers. . ."
About missionaries, "It occurred to her that she had never before perceived this aspect of the missionary system; just as the restlessness set in, the young men were given new places, new work, a sea voyage--and the repsonsibility of men and a feleling of being part of the world and involved in bettering it, the old good dream of the young; but in this case tied firmly to old things so the wanderers dragged their heavy roots with them and returned to sink them securely again into familiar earth."
About Love and Polygamy: "I've decided most of it's in a woman getting rid of the idea that a man can't love her at all if he's capable of loving anybody else. Almost every woman I knoew seems to have the notion that if a man is able to embrace anybody other than herself, she must have failed some way--and her pride is all cut to pieces. And of courseI, of course I know why. Love seems so beautiful to begin with--sometimes I suppose for years and years, sometitmes until people die. And it would be ideal if that was always the way. There's something so singular and private about love--it seems final, as if you had got somewhere at last." When love has seemed beautiful and final, she thought singular with the marvelous singularity of two become one in the dead of night, hearts beating together and breath coming and going together, teh whole struggle seems to have meant something. And after that, after being together like that with somebody, it is hard to face being alone again. Terror of that disruption is like terror of death. And if another woman has caused the disruption,added upon the pain of loss is the terror of having failed at the very heart of beauty, even with the central olbligation of womankind. "But when polygamy was given up, the whole shape of pride changed again" she said, still lightly, "So now OMormon women are just like the rest. The ones who marry and hold onto their men are the lucky ones--the old chase is the same here as anywhere. The women who don't happen to find men just have to go without anything at all--except if they do anything about it, a very bad reputation."
The affair:
"Even now when she was going to see Peter after all those years, it was hard to face what was probably the most simple fact about him and her relationship with him. Perhaps she alone had felt the need for more. From this difference, perhaps, came the necessity for virtue in woman, who was possessed of the great hollow which retained the fruit after the man had relinquished it. She recalled a mural she had seen somewhere, two great lined hands protecting a fragile leaf bursting from a more fragile seed. Whatever people, whatever valley, everywhere in the world this was the same. The forced fertilization was quickly accomplished but nurture afterward went on and on...and the culture was right which forced the father's acknowledgment by law before the time of nurture was upon his mate. The woman was wrong who permitted herself fruitfulness without sanction. Yet something was the matter here, recognizing neither joy nor love nor desire as it sometimes happened suddenly."
"With a man a woman really loves and desires there is no pretense possible. She goes simply to him when he speaks to her. With men who desire her and speak to her, but whom she does not love, she is able to take refuge in that old matter of lowering the eyes and lifting the brows and murmuring that she is a lady, and in this way if in no other a prevalent notion of propriety is useful. There is a proper face to make, and while a woman is making use of these ancient things she actually feels dignified and justified as if she represented Decency and Integrity and many other capital things in society. What she has done for her lover the hour before or may accomplish the next hour is another thing, set apart, so sacred to her fascinated vision that she perceives it as no part of society at all but a separate thing hovering above the earth, as irreproachable as a rainbow and as fantastically capable in her mind, of providing rich reward where it touches the earth."
Utah landscape: "Sometimes, away, one forgot the austerity of this country and its rocky slopes...One forgot the semidesert alkali-ridden outskirts of irrigated villages, sparse brush-and-sunflower-covered slopes, spraying crickets at every step. One forgot that scrub cedar looked ragged and twisted like trees by the sea deformed by constant wind. One forgot summer-dry creek beds, ravines empty but for gray rocks, and remembered only water running.."
Guilt: "She had heard that we go about blind to our own shortcomings, blaming others and justifying ourselves in order that we may continue to live with decent contentment in our own bodies; she knew this was true, for she did it herself constantly. But there was something else, kept deeply in a place so central that we ourselves did not visit it often--abitter knowledge of ourselves that will not be denied."
It had sometimes come to her that she had lost God too early, when she still needed the sustenance of belief, and she had given love the reverence she must give to something, had been loyal to it, made sacrifices to it, believed in it without proof.
"perhaps it was because she knew that if there is rebellion at all, it is better in a man. It is necessary that you be a man, she thought, without so many soft places on you. But if nature had got mixed up somehow, and you were not a man and yet you had the rebellion in you and you lived in a place where women were women and they had a place to stay and must stay there--then something had to happen, and it happened, and when it happened it was all wrong. But there was nothing you could do. It was better now than it had been, with all the talk and writing about Women and Freedom and now the franchise was real, but it was hard to see any difference, looking at women themselves; or at Dessie--afraid of ideas. But rebellion was in Dessie in spite of herself, in spite of her declaration against it. If you were a woman and a rebel the only thing you could tear to pieces was your own life. So you turned upon yourself. There was no institution you could rend except at the place where it touched you; and so always you were the thing to be cut apart. You struck where church tied you close with obligations, duties, terrors, the promise of blessedness. You struck where family held your arms pinned in a place around certain ones, where a house like every successive child, bound with its constant dirtying, dirtying. And you struck the thing that tied you most mercilessly, the very longing that took hold of your body in the night and sometimes made you feel beautiful and assuaged but in the morning had left you with a fresh burden which did not diminsh but grew, grew, grew for the rest of your days...the doctor had said, For us men, it is all spit out and gone and we think of other things, he said, but the woman receives and keeps and remembers. . ."
About missionaries, "It occurred to her that she had never before perceived this aspect of the missionary system; just as the restlessness set in, the young men were given new places, new work, a sea voyage--and the repsonsibility of men and a feleling of being part of the world and involved in bettering it, the old good dream of the young; but in this case tied firmly to old things so the wanderers dragged their heavy roots with them and returned to sink them securely again into familiar earth."
About Love and Polygamy: "I've decided most of it's in a woman getting rid of the idea that a man can't love her at all if he's capable of loving anybody else. Almost every woman I knoew seems to have the notion that if a man is able to embrace anybody other than herself, she must have failed some way--and her pride is all cut to pieces. And of courseI, of course I know why. Love seems so beautiful to begin with--sometimes I suppose for years and years, sometitmes until people die. And it would be ideal if that was always the way. There's something so singular and private about love--it seems final, as if you had got somewhere at last." When love has seemed beautiful and final, she thought singular with the marvelous singularity of two become one in the dead of night, hearts beating together and breath coming and going together, teh whole struggle seems to have meant something. And after that, after being together like that with somebody, it is hard to face being alone again. Terror of that disruption is like terror of death. And if another woman has caused the disruption,added upon the pain of loss is the terror of having failed at the very heart of beauty, even with the central olbligation of womankind. "But when polygamy was given up, the whole shape of pride changed again" she said, still lightly, "So now OMormon women are just like the rest. The ones who marry and hold onto their men are the lucky ones--the old chase is the same here as anywhere. The women who don't happen to find men just have to go without anything at all--except if they do anything about it, a very bad reputation."
The affair:
"Even now when she was going to see Peter after all those years, it was hard to face what was probably the most simple fact about him and her relationship with him. Perhaps she alone had felt the need for more. From this difference, perhaps, came the necessity for virtue in woman, who was possessed of the great hollow which retained the fruit after the man had relinquished it. She recalled a mural she had seen somewhere, two great lined hands protecting a fragile leaf bursting from a more fragile seed. Whatever people, whatever valley, everywhere in the world this was the same. The forced fertilization was quickly accomplished but nurture afterward went on and on...and the culture was right which forced the father's acknowledgment by law before the time of nurture was upon his mate. The woman was wrong who permitted herself fruitfulness without sanction. Yet something was the matter here, recognizing neither joy nor love nor desire as it sometimes happened suddenly."
"With a man a woman really loves and desires there is no pretense possible. She goes simply to him when he speaks to her. With men who desire her and speak to her, but whom she does not love, she is able to take refuge in that old matter of lowering the eyes and lifting the brows and murmuring that she is a lady, and in this way if in no other a prevalent notion of propriety is useful. There is a proper face to make, and while a woman is making use of these ancient things she actually feels dignified and justified as if she represented Decency and Integrity and many other capital things in society. What she has done for her lover the hour before or may accomplish the next hour is another thing, set apart, so sacred to her fascinated vision that she perceives it as no part of society at all but a separate thing hovering above the earth, as irreproachable as a rainbow and as fantastically capable in her mind, of providing rich reward where it touches the earth."
Utah landscape: "Sometimes, away, one forgot the austerity of this country and its rocky slopes...One forgot the semidesert alkali-ridden outskirts of irrigated villages, sparse brush-and-sunflower-covered slopes, spraying crickets at every step. One forgot that scrub cedar looked ragged and twisted like trees by the sea deformed by constant wind. One forgot summer-dry creek beds, ravines empty but for gray rocks, and remembered only water running.."
Guilt: "She had heard that we go about blind to our own shortcomings, blaming others and justifying ourselves in order that we may continue to live with decent contentment in our own bodies; she knew this was true, for she did it herself constantly. But there was something else, kept deeply in a place so central that we ourselves did not visit it often--abitter knowledge of ourselves that will not be denied."
It had sometimes come to her that she had lost God too early, when she still needed the sustenance of belief, and she had given love the reverence she must give to something, had been loyal to it, made sacrifices to it, believed in it without proof.
September 19, 2018
Having just finished this book I'm adding Virginia Sorensen to my list of go-to authors. I find her writing very readable. But I have to say that this is a very sad book, that is to say, the story is sad. Kate, a very decent person is almost all ways, is a failure in a most important way, and the sad part is that she justifies herself, apparently not really considering her actions a failure of character except in rare occasions of insight. This is one of the reasons I really like this book; the characters are real life with their virtues and their vices.
April 12, 2011
Kate is married at sixteen to a much older but wonderfully kind man, mother to many, including two of his from his first marriage, and unfaithful with another married man (with whom she has a child - Dessie) all by the time she is in her late twenties. Kate is hard for me to like. She blames everyone else, leaves her children (her daughters) and holds on to her romantic fantasy of Peter. Not until she is old and many lives have been deeply hurt does she begin to see reality. She is selfish and prideful...which she admits. I so didn't like her but was vested enough in the other characters and the story to finish the book.
October 11, 2007
this book grabbed on and didn't let go.
October 16, 2020
A classic of Mormon literature. I think Sorensen is a genius. I hadn't read this one in 20 years, so it was fun to pick it up again as an "older" woman!
May 27, 2020
Stegner + Virginia Woolf = Virginia Sorensen.
June 15, 2015
When I finished reading this I was emotionally wiped out and had the sense I had read something extraordinary. Best Mormon novel I've read (so far).
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews