The Blue Hour

by Elizabeth Evans

What is the Blue Hour?

For Penny Powell, it's the time when Father doesn't Know Best. It's the morning after Queen for a Day. It's 1959, the year when she becomes the family barometer, absorbing for later reflection every rise and dip in the homefront weather. When her parents buy a house that matches her father's ambitions--if not his wallet--her mother must reinvent herself to keep up with the Joneses. Later Penny will remember everything about that time, so tightly wound around her father's hard-driving ambition and judgment that it all broke loose and spun out of control.

Genres: Fiction

347 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Elizabeth Evans was born, raised, and educated in Iowa. She attended Cornell College and the University of Iowa, where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Evans is the author of six books of fiction: As Good As Dead (March 2015), Rowing in Eden, Carter Clay, which was selected by the Los Angeles Times Book Review for the Best Books of 1999, and The Blue Hour, which the Washington Post Book World called "very much a Great American Novel." Her two short story collections are Suicide's Girlfriend and Locomotion. Recent stories appear in the journals Ploughshares and Cutthroat, and the collection xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths.

Evans is Professor Emeritus for the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, and frequently teaches for Queens University of Charlotte's Low-residence MFA Program in Creative Writing. She makes her home in Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Innocents Go Abroad, Encounter Fast Crowd; One Dies

I think this banner headline pretty much frames the plot of this story. Except the innocents in this case are the adults, the parents of the narrarator, 10-year old Penny Powell, in the late 50s/early 60s.

Dad is a dreamer trying to create his own way in the world, constantly falling in with the wrong sort of business partners. Chubby, dowdy Mom seems to be a rather inept and infantile sort, constantly rushing about trying to keep Dad feeling wanted and valued, sometimes at the expense of her relationship with her daughters. Older daughter Nancy is a (typical?) teenaged girl, too good for both her parents and her sister. Penny, on the other hand, is an empath to the point of annoyance, picking up on and reacting (in odd ways) to emotional undercurrents that everyone else steadfastly ignores or denies.

The family is in a socially awkward position, having money in their background, but always on the verge of losing it all due to Dad's failing business ventures. It is this latest venture that brings them to the town of Meander, where they take up in a house they can't quite afford and begin mixing with the town's top social circle, with quite....unforeseen... consequences.

I can't say "disastrous", although disaster does indeed happen eventually. It's more a portrait of the movement of change in people, as this family encounters, and gradually assimiliates to, a lifestyle not quite within their grasp - and quite different from the one they had originally hoped and pictured for themselves.

I found the character of Dorothy to be the most compelling as a 1950's housewife who begins to look outside her family for the vision of "self" that eroded away when she married and became a mother.

Is Dottie merely succumbing to the evils of peer pressure through her actions, or is she growing, displaying an act of self-will in her dieting and shopping and learning French? Does she become just another adultrous housewife when she has sex with neighbor Chan (in my opinion, a one-time event) or is she recognizing a need left unfulfilled for years by her husband, who teases just a little too much, and a little too publicly about her faults (when he's around that is), but then fails to recognize the changes happening to her before his eyes?

[Kaethe · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is the kind of book Shannon likes. Can���t say I blame her. The story of a ten-year-old girl who���s family moves into the good part of town, a famous house, in Meander, Illinois maybe? Midwest, anyway. Her father has rather erratic luck in his business: some of his new projects work out fine, others crash and burn. This is a family of women used to placating the man. Dotty, the mother, is overweight, shy, and constantly apologetic. The elder sister is struggling with a weight problem of her own and with a lack of prettiness. Penny, the narrator has the same unattractive looks, but isn���t yet troubled too deeply by it. The move into the house because Chan, the previous owner is building a new house to live in by himself, now that his wife has taken his children and run off with his best friend. Dotty becomes captivated by Chan, a man who doesn���t think she���s stupid or incompetent or unattractive. He, in turn, admires her as being such a very normal sort of woman. While these new friendships are developing Daddy���s business���a new door factory, is failing to get off the ground. His partner is a gambler and a thoroughly charming man who���s lied about his background, his experience, everything else. Penny develops some weird habits. Even as the apparent standard of living for her family has greatly increased, the possibility of imminent bankruptcy (which is what her father occasionally threatens) scares her into hoarding food and learning penny-pinching tips. Dotty, at every crisis, volunteers to give up the Meander life and go live on the country farm they own. As things come to a crisis Dotty and Penny are spending the summer alone at the cottage���older sister has gone off to camp, Daddy is running around trying to find the dirt on his partner. Dotty takes ���diet pills��� that work wonders, works on her tan and her French, and emerges at the end of the summer a beautiful woman. Penny becomes even more eccentric but deeply attached to her mother.
On the day they return home Daddy can���t come with them to pick up the older sister at the station. Dotty goes next door with Chan and stays past time to go to the station. By then a camp counselor has called about Nancy being plastered and somebody better come get her. Daddy���s business partner, Archie, shows up and runs off to get her, leaving his coat. Dotty comes home finally with her sweater on inside out and rushes out to the station to pick up Nancy, but can���t find her purse anywhere (it���s hidden under Archie���s coat) and so leaves without her glasses. Archie brings Nancy home, Penny puts her upstairs, and then the cops show up to let her know her mother died in a car crash.
I loved reading this because the language is such a pleasure. Evans writes beautifully. It all seems to fall apart for me at the end, though. I hate the clich�� of the fallen woman dying, particularly when the divine retribution comes so quickly. It just doesn���t seem right to leave Penny with this horrible secret about her mother. Besides, I find it more interesting to see how marriages survive despite the infidelity. Here���s my problem: Evans spends an entire school year setting up the problems in this family and then she has this weird summer interlude that is really only Dotty and Penny, then Dotty sleeps (we assume) with Chan and dies instantly. Daddy sells off everything (turns out to have a good supply of businesses to sell off) and takes the girls to live on the farm. I enjoyed reading about the repressed woman of the fifties and the way she tiptoes around her husband. I would rather see what coming home svelte and admired would do to her relationship with her husband that what death does to it. Irving can get away with that kind of melodramatic plotting, but I don���t think Evans can. Dotty���s death seemed a cop-out to me.

[Ivy Bernadette · Rating 1 out of 5]

My classmate gave it to me for our Christmas party back in third year high school. She was the one who picked my name, and gave me two books from Book Sale. I doubt if she even spent the actual cost we agreed on for them, because honestly, those are pretty bad books.

The Blue Hour was boring. Didn't finish it.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most extrinsic child ever, Penny soaks up and overreacts to everything that goes on around her between adults in her life. The plot drags a bit, but the last hundred pages fly by. The Blue Hour is a wonderful character study and is very nuanced.

[Pam]

10 year old tells of life in 1959 Sad family falls apart

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago, the story and characters have stayed with me.

[Brian Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice beach read