Roxanna Slade

by Reynolds Price

Not since Reynolds Price's award-winning, bestselling novel Kate Vaiden has he told a woman's story in her own voice. Roxanna Slade is this woman.
Roxanna begins her story on her twentieth birthday -- a day that introduces her to the harsh realities of adulthood and changes the course of her life forever. From this day on, Roxanna is quick to share with the reader the intimate details of ninety years of life in North Carolina. Her beguiling tale is one that boldly reflects the high and low moments in the development of the modern South and the nation as well as the inner strength of a woman possessed of a piercingly clear vision, forthright hungers and immense vitality.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, Southern, 20th Century, Novels

301 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 1998

About the author

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

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

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

Reviews

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel was just incredibly good!!!

[Karenbike Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ordinary woman with an ordinary life sounds dull, but she had many of the same crisis that we face: a cheating husband, a bout with her "torment," a mean mother in law, a daughter who got pregnant at 13, and the satisfaction of complete love. I've never read a description of depression as full and deep as this. Reynolds Price captures the subtleties of aging perfectly and for a man to be able to speak in a woman's voice so well is genius.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second go-round with Roxanna Slade. I wanted to do it justice, so I read it again. Though Reynolds Price is one of my favorite writers, the experience was no better the second time. This just isn't up to some of his other books. Roxanna is an interesting character, but she comes across badly regarding her mother-in-law. If Olivia is a monster, Price hasn't fully shown it. The events in the novel unfold languidly, with the exception of the beginning. Price's writing is as beautiful as ever:
"He was as quiet as warm dust under your feet."

"I honor good looks as a gift from God, especially when the looks endure long years which means that the heart behind them is sound. But I'm also drawn to numerous people as plain as dry rice when they concentrate on causing sweet laughter in those nearby or when they truly need me."

"The whole time, understand, was innocent as birds too young to fly."

Price's motive for writing Roxanna's story may appear in a reflection near the end: "I got the idea of writing down my story in time ... an honest voice left over from a whole other world where women especially (but some men as well) labored through every day of their lives with far more careful intelligence and judgment than the beasts of burden they're widely considered now to have been."

Good stuff, but not his best book.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is difficult to achieve what Price has here. Open this book to any line and you will find a music in that sentence which is rich and thoughtful, deep and life changing. And therein lies the problem. This is tough book to get through. To be sure, it is well worth it, but it takes an exorbitant amount of time and concentration.

It’s about Roxanna Slade, a no nonsense, get to it kind of woman from North Carolina. She has led a self-proclaimed unremarkable life, and yet every thought she has is remarkable. From her description of suffering depression, to her life as a disgruntled daughter-in-law and onwards into her nonagenarian years.

But that is also the problem, the book is told from her prospective as a 90-something-year-old. And while her stories are well worth telling, there is only so long a person can hear them. I would have been happy with less commentary and a little less foreshadowing. Still, Price is a master and never a waste of time.

[Lorma Doone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. It took me a really long time to read this book - the public library can attest to that. I read it on the suggestion of my 11th grade English teacher, Ms. Allen, whom I loved dearly. She was a huge Reynolds Price fan.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Reynolds Price's extraordinary book Kate Vaiden several months ago and have been wanting to read another by him. This is not as good as Kate Vaiden but still quite good. It is told by a ninety plus year old woman named Roxanna Slade about her life. The story starts out on her twentieth birthday when her brother introduces her to his friend, Larkin. Larkin had seen a photograph of Roxanna several weeks previously and had fallen immediately in love with her. She was unaware of this but was also immediately attracted to Larkin when she met him. Over the next couple of hours they got to know each other and ended up agreeing to marry. However, fate stepped in and tragedy happened after Roxanna had only known him for a couple of hours. From this point the story follows Roxanna throughout her life with its many highlights and downfalls. The story is set in the South beginning in the 1920's and is told with a very Southern feel. Interwoven in the book are stories that involve the relationship between the black and white races but, even though this takes place in the South during a time of extreme racism, there is not the overt racism that is often expressed in other books. This relationship between Roxanna and her family with black people seemed to be only a small part of the book at first but as the story went on it became more and more a factor. Reynolds Price writes in extraordinarily masterful prose and creates fully fleshed out characters with very distinct personalities which makes for an excellent read.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

Two words: Reynolds Price.

This slow, gentle story of Roxanna Slade has been sitting on my bookshelf for years. I finally decided now was the time and I'm so glad. The story, set in North Carolina is told in Roxanna's voice--from a 20-year old--through 90!

So much in it--some now resonating with the times. Not for everyone, but for me, a lovely read.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Advice: put your engine in LOW gear!!! Slow yourself down and THEN open the book. Thoroughly engaged in this first person narrative. A life well lived; an ordinary life, of course, filled with her 90+ years of her extraordinary life events shared with the fortunate reader. She is both Insightful and introspective

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took my time and read almost every word of this densely written book. It was worth it. We really get to know the character and thoughts of an “ordinary” Southern woman throughout the course of her 90+ years. I did think there was a little too much summing up at the very end, but overall it was a good read.

[Carrie Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reynolds Price is one of my favorite southern fiction authors. His prose flows smoothly, and he captures the facets of growing up in the south perfectly. His stories are heavy and sometimes difficult to read but each one makes me think, which is why I love his work.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written....but a little slow in pace.....The New York Times wrote that "reading Roxanna Slade is like sitting through a long and languid NC evening and listening to an intimate summing up of a hard life." That is exactly the feeling I had, only I also had to take a nap every once in awhile....

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quotable:

People in general didn't thank black people that often back then. They could cook and clean and make every bed for a household of twenty, and nobody thought that was anything amazing to earn the world's thanks. It was just assumed that black people did what you told hem to do and were compensated for it like willing plow mules with food and the chance to rest a few hours in something approaching a dry warming stall.

I held on as I'd done and would still do all my life. I somehow generally manage to think One person here has to stay upright, and I'm the one chosen. Chosen by whom I've never been sure.

The lack of anything solid for young white respectable women to do would leave a girl so bone-shattering bored that she might easily turn out a demon of world-sized meanness, just for something to do with the endless of frost or boiling swelter.

From the time I turned eleven years old, when the Civil War was not far behind us, I'd silently figured out - from people's stories of Southern glory and fame and starvation, not to mention worse - what an idiot waste of everything it was. It didn't take a genius to recognize the wrong, just a watchful child with a child's sense of fairness.

I've always secretly despised those women and occasional men who can never say I but must always say we, I can honestly claim that what I felt I was getting on with was truly our life.

He worked on in Raleigh at his library job, and we never heard of complaints from that quarter. Apparently you can hunt and shelve books satisfactorily without the use of fully sober mental faculties.

In those days white peoples hadn't bit down as hard as they have now on the idea hat children belong with their own blood-parents every minute of the day and night. In big old families children were reared by numerous hands of sisters, aunts, old bachelor uncles. And mostly I think they benefited from it. They didn't get hipped on two lone creatures might suddenly fair them as modern parents so often do - divorce, death, drugs, or drunkenness.

[Joel Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reynolds Price is one of my favorite Southern authors - as well as a fellow North Carolinian. The writing is superb. You can hear the Southern accent coming through the cadence and flow of the narrative. The characters are flawed and believable. I loved it.

[Nicole Northrup · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it. Reynolds Price is a great Southern Author!!

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to believe a male author wrote such a beautiful, thoughtful description from a Southern woman's viewpoint at age 90, covering her whole life. The book is full of interesting commentary on life "then/now" on subjects such as marriage, childbirth, divorce, women's clothing, faith/God, etc. I decided to look up the author (to be sure it was a man), and wasn't surprised to see that he had been a poet and essayist also. Beautiful writing.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was our community's 'one book' selection. I try to read these and attend the events because I believe in reading as a way to bring us together and help us understand each other. Initially, I despised this book. The main character seemed whiny and lazy. I persevered and ended up glad I did. I didn't end up liking the character or the writing style very much, but I feel like I gained some empathy and understanding about the insipid racism I feel around me here. Glad I read it, and glad it's over.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roxanna was a very slow and deliberate read. I enjoyed it very much on some levels - I enjoyed the lyrical tone of the writing and the subject matter in places. I did not like it some levels - it was tedius and sometimes confusing, requiring several re=readings, sometimes still refusing to give up meaning to the reader.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Reynolds Price, but for some reason this book took a bit longer for me to begin feeling connected to the characters. It wasn't until the last 1/3 of the book that I began to really get interested in the storyline.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fictional story from the 1920's of a couple who marry after his brother drowns. The sentence structure the author used made the story a slow read. The book had its high and low parts. Hard to believe it was a best seller.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I REALLY liked this book. Read it years ago and plan to read it again.

Read it again February 2013. Still liked it. Can't explain why. May even read it again to try to figure that out.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very few novels have moved me in such a way. Reynolds Price wrote this exceptional story with an uncanny depth and breadth that I found lyrical and haunting and thoroughly gripping.

[Lisa Mcbroom · Rating 1 out of 5]

Journal of a whiny women who ages to 90. "Let me go in the back yard and eat worms" Also I hate the writing very cold and technical.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strength of this slender volume lies not in the plot but in the language. Price is a master of subtlety, and his decision to write this book in first person allows us to see deeply within Roxanna's mind-- often, I think, deeper than she herself is aware. Some of the reviewers here seem not to have grasped these subtleties. To be honest, I'm not sure that I grasped all of them myself, but I got enough. I didn't feel much like stopping my reading to enter quotes on Goodreads this time, but if I had, there would have been many of them. There is some beautifully wrought sentence on almost every page! If you enjoy other subtle writers like Kent Haruf or Gail Godwin, you should give Price a try.

[Eglizard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depressed but sensitive woman married Palmer Slade in 1921 (the brother of her intended) in North Carolina. She has a sister Leelah and brother Ferny; there are 2 children, Larkin Augustus and Dinah. Her recovery resulted from throwing herself out of a moving car (shock treatment). Subtle slights and silences between Slade family and Danas, interweaving with lives of black people. The things women weren’t supposed to know in the South, but did. “Sometimes it’s very slim consolation to notice how few human beings of any sex or background are called to anything grander than dinner.” Nine decades in the hard life of a Southern woman.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slow meditative look at a woman's life in N.C., from about age 20 to 94, from her viewpoint, well-written and full of family secrets, problems like dark depression, and thoughts on race relations, forgiveness, etc. I recommend it, but it's the only fiction I've read by him. I've heard his novel, Kate Vaiden, is good also. This may not be for those who want something fast or exciting. (Totally opposite from the last book I've read.) The author passed on in 2011, but I once heard him speak in a library.

[Dana Monroe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written w interesting language but SLOW & meandering; many odd issues 4 me:
1)The repeated focus on ‘dutiful’ sex & her later remorse for not having enough gave away the writer as a man
2)The portrayal of Olivia as the evil mother-in-law was not believable, in fact, i found her to be the most interestin character Their tumultuous relationship was something Rox created & used 2 get her way
3)Lark....really? Lovesick for 70+ years after one afternoon together????
I could go on Unfortunately this is the first & likely only book i will read by this otherwise prolific & admired author, bought at used bookstore, will donate 2 senior center

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an extraordinary author! I cannot think if any man who wrote a female character better than he did, but ALL his characters were well written and became very real to me. The story, set in the Carolinas, is riveting and still very relevant in spite of being written several years ago (in 1998.) I was so impressed with his writing that I’m eager to read more books by him.

[Lindapinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Reynold Price’s prose. While parts of the end were strong, the last ten pages seemed to wander… the strength of his writing wavered and seemed lost. Also I don’t really understand the characters discord with her mother in law. Other than that I loved the premise of the story and the characters

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I live in central Virginia and occasionally want to do something that connects me to the South. Well, it couldn’t be politics and it couldn’t be religion. The South is hopeless for me on both counts. But reading Southern authors is something that I can do now and then. So, when my daughter-in-law mentioned a past connection with Reynolds Price and that he had just died, I asked her to recommend a book by him. This book, Roxanna Slade, is one she suggested. I have already read and reviewed Clear Pictures (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) so this is my second dip into the work of this author who wrote based on his life in rural North Carolina.

Except for three years he spent in Britain as a graduate student at Merton College, Oxford, Mr. Price lived all his life in northeastern North Carolina, and he would work his home ground in 13 novels and dozens of short stories. Inevitably he drew comparisons to William Faulkner, much to his annoyance, since he regarded himself as a literary heir to Eudora Welty.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/boo...

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, NC in 1933. His first novel was published in 1962. He died in Durham, NC in 2011. He taught at Duke University for 53 years. Price taught courses on creative writing and the work of 17th-century English poet John Milton.

This book is the fictional story of Roxanna Slade as told by her. She was born in 1900 and lived to her mid 90s. This is the story of her life as she looks back as a nonagenarian at the end of her life spanning the 20th century. This is not an action packed novel. It is about the development of family relationships through several generations. It is the interrelationships and common struggles of women and men who we see as they live ordinary lives in a Southern, rural culture with racial and sexual and gender tensions.

The problem of trying to tell the story of a human life is easy to state. People’s lives – from the wildest lover’s to the bravest scout’s – are uneventful for way over three-fourths of their length. If you don’t believe (and I know I don’t) that every instant in a life is urgent to that person’s fate, then you could write a satisfactory life of the busiest man or woman who ever lived in less than two pages, often on a postcard. Most things that happen to a person leave no more trace than last month’s raindrop.

Chapter One: Roxanna’s story starts when she is twenty years old and falls in love. There is tragedy, some apparitions and fate at work as Roxanna will tell you.

Chapter Two: Roxanna contemplates suicide but marries the brother of her true love.

Chapter Three: It is 1921; Roxanna has a husband and a very strong, determined and scarred mother-in-law who will play a crucial role in her life for many years.

Chapter Four: With her newborn son Larkin, Roxanna asserts her own strong and determined character. She carefully and uncertainly approaches feminism, a word not yet coined, with her husband. Race and sex are slightly bent from the norm of the day. There is betrayal and reconciliation.

I certainly had no noticeable longing to write soothing hymns, design safe bridges or better wedding cakes or liberate a young man doomed to die for a crime he never planned. But then I’m fairly sure I had no gifts that might have aimed me at such worthy callings. Sometimes it’s fairly slim consolation to notice how very few human beings of any sex or background are called to anything grander than dinner.

Chapter Five: Roxanne struggles from the mid 1930s to the mid 1940s. Children grow up. Parents die. Mental depression and war come again. Severe depression.

Chapter Six: There is violence and tense race relations. It is 1952 when Roxanna’s husband dies. It is 1953 when Roxanna’s young daughter is pregnant. Solitude. The clash of three generations.

Chapter Seven: A new generation. Clearing out the accumulated refuse and riches of past generations from the homeplace. Discovering lineage. Making things fair and right in the future.

But the point is that I’m as old as humans get to be with rare exceptions. And the main hint that I’ve picked up on the subject of immortality has come with my age in the past ten years. I’ve watched a few dozen people through their long lives and I see that, unless they go crazy or are addicts, they just stay who they were from the day they were born. I’m speaking of friends live and dead like Leela and Simon, Mally and Palmer, even poor Ferny Dane who’s been gone so long I can barely see his face. I don’t mean that people learn nothing from life, but the hearts and souls they bring here with them as they leave what Miss Olivia called “their mother’s fork” are extremely persistent. With a naturally good soul, that’s excellent news, not so with the bad.