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A Long and Happy Life #1
A Long and Happy Life
On its initial publication in 1962, Eudora Welty said of A Long and Happy Life, "Reynolds Price is the most impressive new writer I've come across in a long time. His is a first-rate talent and we are lucky that he has started so young to write so well. Here is a fine novel."
From its dazzling opening page, which announced the appearance of a stylist of the first rank, to its moving close, this brief novel has charmed and captivated millions of readers since its publication twenty-five years ago and its subsequent translation into fifteen languages. On the triumphant publication of Kate Vaiden, his most recent novel, in 1986, there was almost no review that -- praising the new book to the skies -- didn't also mention in glowing terms the reviewer's fond recollection of the marvelous first novel, the troubled love story of Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers and its beautifully evoked vision of rural North Carolina. It is a pleasure now to restore to print the clothbound edition of this truly enduring work as a companion volume to his brilliant book of essays, A Common Room, published simultaneously.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1962
68 people are currently reading
943 people want to read
About the author
Reynolds Price
218 books122 followersReynolds 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
August 19, 2020
Here is the story of Rosacoke Mustian, a young woman living in rural North Carolina, who is as sensitive as any poet and as deep as a spring well. She loves a boy who does not understand or need her, nor does he call her by name very often. For Rosacoke, Wesley “hadn’t seen that every question she asked was aimed for the one she couldn’t ask, which was did he love her or didn’t he.” This seems to be the emotional crux of the plot , which is woven through scenes of country life that are vivid and beautiful: a funeral, a church-sponsored picnic at a lake, a baby’s death, the visiting of neighbors both white and black, watching deer, and a Christmas play. Simple stuff, but the nuance and subtle perceptions of Rosacoke’s world view are profoundly human. The flight of birds marks her emotional growth – which a reader can follow in Rosa’s internalized conversations with cardinals and hawks. In contrast to nature’s birds is the mechanical swoop of airplanes and motorcycles that seem to define Wesley’s passions. His apparent disregard for Rosacoke’s heart might have something to do with that “machine between his legs” that he rides “like a snake,” speeding around corners and leaving a wake of dust behind him. Or perhaps he is just an unsentimental practical young man who cannot fathom the complex mind and heart of this girl who wants something from him. The resolution of their relationship is interesting and maddeningly weird.
The writing is brilliantly Faulknerian. Rosacoke reminds me of Darl from “As I Lay Dying” in that her eyes follow the land, watch the birds, and try to make contact with the gaze of others while creating visionary poetry in her own mind.
The colloquial speech of the characters is beautiful and hilarious. After Rosacoke arrives at a picnic via Wesley’s motorcycle, her mother describes her thusly: “You look like you rode in on a circular saw.” You gotta laugh; what a perfect description! Later there is: “he didn’t have no more will power than a flying squirrel,” and “money got scarce as hens’ back teeth,” and Willie Duke’s breasts while swimming as “God’s own water wings.”
I was very happy reading this book.
The writing is brilliantly Faulknerian. Rosacoke reminds me of Darl from “As I Lay Dying” in that her eyes follow the land, watch the birds, and try to make contact with the gaze of others while creating visionary poetry in her own mind.
The colloquial speech of the characters is beautiful and hilarious. After Rosacoke arrives at a picnic via Wesley’s motorcycle, her mother describes her thusly: “You look like you rode in on a circular saw.” You gotta laugh; what a perfect description! Later there is: “he didn’t have no more will power than a flying squirrel,” and “money got scarce as hens’ back teeth,” and Willie Duke’s breasts while swimming as “God’s own water wings.”
I was very happy reading this book.
March 22, 2011
This is a tender story but not an easy book to read. The late Reynolds Price writes in a lyrical Southern idiom where the run-on sentences, parenthetical expressions, and rich metaphors abound. So, he's not everybody's cuppa. I went to his readings in the late-1980's when he sat in a wheelchair from an illness. This heroine Rosacoake Mustian reminds me of the intrepid but sensitive Kate in RP's KATE VAIDEN, one of the best books I've read this year. The book is short. So, if you like romantic novels set in the 1930s South and written with a literary depth to them, this one might do it for you.
May 8, 2024
Nienachalna historia z gnuśnego, zaściankowego amerykańskiego Południa jakieś 60 lat wstecz, którą pewnie idealnie czytałoby się na bujanym krześle na jakiejś zacienionej werandzie. Z widokiem na pobliską piaszczystą drogę, po której przemknąłby czasem jakiś pontiac. Jest to subtelna opowieść, traktująca o zderzeniu dziewczęcych marzeń i planów z rzeczywistością - z bardzo młodą bohaterką, której już na starcie w dorosłość życie chce podstawić nogę. Rosacoke gubi się we własnych wyobrażeniach, przytłoczona szarą codziennością, której rytm nadaje jedynie praca i wizyty w kościele. Przystojnemu chłopcu z sąsiedztwa, w którym jest zakochana, nie spieszy się do jakichkolwiek deklaracji, a swojski krąg małej lokalnej społeczności daje jej poczucie pewnego bezpieczeństwa, ale to też pewnego rodzaju klatka, dla bogatego wewnętrznego życia Rosy przyciasna, niewygodna.
Historia jakich wiele, ale na swój sposób wyjątkowa i wnikliwa, łącząca w sobie prostotę i dużą wrażliwość, delikatny smuteczek i dawkę podnoszącej na duchu nadziei. Coś sprawia, że choć nie jest to mega pasjonująca lektura, czytasz ją do końca z zainteresowaniem i szczerym przejęciem.
Historia jakich wiele, ale na swój sposób wyjątkowa i wnikliwa, łącząca w sobie prostotę i dużą wrażliwość, delikatny smuteczek i dawkę podnoszącej na duchu nadziei. Coś sprawia, że choć nie jest to mega pasjonująca lektura, czytasz ją do końca z zainteresowaniem i szczerym przejęciem.
September 27, 2011
Price is what used to be called a "writer's writer", which means (more or less) that his command of diction, style, voice, and such is high and his command of plot/narrative momentum is low. When I first read one of his novels nearly 40 years ago (and now recall little of it), I was dazzled by the skill set. In "A Long and Happy Life", he writes in the classic Southern hothouse ways: in love with place, with atmosphere, with eccentricity, with wanderingly offbeat characters, and, of course, very much in love with language.
This is a novel of consciousness and imagination. And it is 19 year old Rosacoke's c. and i. we spend all our time in. She is a half-appealing/half-annoying character, in that Price's evocation of her inner and outer worlds is brilliant, but also in that we spend too much time in those worlds, without relief and without enough story to carry us along. It takes half the book for something significant to happen to Rosacoke, which is too long to languish in the forests and rivers and bird-conscious regions of her ploddingly step-by-step point of view. Rosacoke's "problem" is that she is "over-the-moon" about Wesley, a few years older than her, a fella who's now out of the military and selling motorcycles. These two are okay characters but not all that inherently fascinating as people. What holds us is the vision and the language and the style, not the story and the plot and the what-might-happen next.
Wesley is fatally inert, a dead cliche of a character. We want to know more about him and should but Price never gives us that and the story's overall effect/balance is badly compromised by this lack. What might've made the novel memorable is if Price had found the imaginative wherewithal to write half of it from Rosacoke's p.o.v. and half from Wesley's. But he isn't up to that.
All Rosacoke all-the-time becomes narratively oppressive. I'm all for beauty in prose and sensibility ("Beauty, Beauty, Beauty! by God") but it's not enough to sustain a too-languid story, nor particularly to hold the modern reader in place. Price's interest in the poetic/emotional dynamics of Rosacoke's inner life is one thing...but it's not enough things.
The ending is muddled, unconvincing, unsatisfying, abrupt. Price makes a hash of it (Wesley comes through, quite against character). He doubtless had the ending in mind all along but once the page count told him he was there he didn't really know how to pull it off...so he just stopped. We're left out on a limb, a bit baffled, and there's old Rosacoke with us...sorta confused her own self.
This is a novel of consciousness and imagination. And it is 19 year old Rosacoke's c. and i. we spend all our time in. She is a half-appealing/half-annoying character, in that Price's evocation of her inner and outer worlds is brilliant, but also in that we spend too much time in those worlds, without relief and without enough story to carry us along. It takes half the book for something significant to happen to Rosacoke, which is too long to languish in the forests and rivers and bird-conscious regions of her ploddingly step-by-step point of view. Rosacoke's "problem" is that she is "over-the-moon" about Wesley, a few years older than her, a fella who's now out of the military and selling motorcycles. These two are okay characters but not all that inherently fascinating as people. What holds us is the vision and the language and the style, not the story and the plot and the what-might-happen next.
Wesley is fatally inert, a dead cliche of a character. We want to know more about him and should but Price never gives us that and the story's overall effect/balance is badly compromised by this lack. What might've made the novel memorable is if Price had found the imaginative wherewithal to write half of it from Rosacoke's p.o.v. and half from Wesley's. But he isn't up to that.
All Rosacoke all-the-time becomes narratively oppressive. I'm all for beauty in prose and sensibility ("Beauty, Beauty, Beauty! by God") but it's not enough to sustain a too-languid story, nor particularly to hold the modern reader in place. Price's interest in the poetic/emotional dynamics of Rosacoke's inner life is one thing...but it's not enough things.
The ending is muddled, unconvincing, unsatisfying, abrupt. Price makes a hash of it (Wesley comes through, quite against character). He doubtless had the ending in mind all along but once the page count told him he was there he didn't really know how to pull it off...so he just stopped. We're left out on a limb, a bit baffled, and there's old Rosacoke with us...sorta confused her own self.
October 10, 2009
To put the age of this novel in perspective, both "A Long and Happy Life" and Barack Obama were born about the same time. I find the fact that Obama is now POTUS, this novel and Obama's similar age, and this book finding its way to me at this moment in time all very ironic. Just wanted to clear the air up front.
While I'm clearing the air, I have to concede that I've read Mr. Price's most recent novel "The Good Priest's Son." I thought it competently written but it left me with a strange feeling, like having walked through a downpour without getting hit by a single drop of rain. This feeling was even more vivid in Mr. Price's first novel. There is a plot, there is some tension and drama, but the reader never hits the issues head on. Instead we creep up on things, or strike them with a glancing blow before moving on. I've seen comparisons with Faulkner and Hemingway mentioned, and disagree on this point alone: Faulkner and Hemingway drove straight to the point and hammered it home. Price has a more genteel, and gentle, approach to storytelling which Eudora Welty adored and which I admire, even as I feel like I've missed out on what could have been something more... It isn't fair to compare Price to Faulkner - there's a difference between Mississippi South and Piedmont South, Faulkner of course representing the last gasp of antebellum charm and Price representing the vividly clinging to life ways of the hill folks. All Southern, but Price being Northern South, and Faulkner Southern South. Maybe its a distinction you have to grow up in to appreciate; but I digress...
The novel is very well done, and the better of the two novels mentioned above. The portrait of Rosacoke was especially well done. Old Mr. Isaac from "A Long and Happy Life" is an older version of the Good Priest from "The Good Priest's Son." Sam makes an appearance in both novels, becoming Aubrey in the later novel. I'm wondering too if Gwyn is an older boozing version of Rosacoke. Perhaps its the lack of detail about the players from "Long and Happy Life" that I'm missing - the idiosyncrasies that flesh out a mental picture and breathe life into a character. This diminishing of detail makes it easy to transpose the characters from each novel with almost no conflict... a remarkable achievement considering the novels were written forty years apart.
Results of my hoard/share/donate test: I'll actually hoard this one. I like it, and expect I'll return to it again soon. I understand there is another novel and short story that continues the Mustian saga, and I would love to see what Price has done with Rosacoke.
While I'm clearing the air, I have to concede that I've read Mr. Price's most recent novel "The Good Priest's Son." I thought it competently written but it left me with a strange feeling, like having walked through a downpour without getting hit by a single drop of rain. This feeling was even more vivid in Mr. Price's first novel. There is a plot, there is some tension and drama, but the reader never hits the issues head on. Instead we creep up on things, or strike them with a glancing blow before moving on. I've seen comparisons with Faulkner and Hemingway mentioned, and disagree on this point alone: Faulkner and Hemingway drove straight to the point and hammered it home. Price has a more genteel, and gentle, approach to storytelling which Eudora Welty adored and which I admire, even as I feel like I've missed out on what could have been something more... It isn't fair to compare Price to Faulkner - there's a difference between Mississippi South and Piedmont South, Faulkner of course representing the last gasp of antebellum charm and Price representing the vividly clinging to life ways of the hill folks. All Southern, but Price being Northern South, and Faulkner Southern South. Maybe its a distinction you have to grow up in to appreciate; but I digress...
The novel is very well done, and the better of the two novels mentioned above. The portrait of Rosacoke was especially well done. Old Mr. Isaac from "A Long and Happy Life" is an older version of the Good Priest from "The Good Priest's Son." Sam makes an appearance in both novels, becoming Aubrey in the later novel. I'm wondering too if Gwyn is an older boozing version of Rosacoke. Perhaps its the lack of detail about the players from "Long and Happy Life" that I'm missing - the idiosyncrasies that flesh out a mental picture and breathe life into a character. This diminishing of detail makes it easy to transpose the characters from each novel with almost no conflict... a remarkable achievement considering the novels were written forty years apart.
Results of my hoard/share/donate test: I'll actually hoard this one. I like it, and expect I'll return to it again soon. I understand there is another novel and short story that continues the Mustian saga, and I would love to see what Price has done with Rosacoke.
March 6, 2024
7.2/10
Mam bardzo ladne wydanie tej ksiazki i glownie ono przekonalo mnie do przeczytania jej gdy zobaczylem ją na półce u mojej babci. Nie żałuje przeczytania tego lecz było to zdecydowanie przybijające przeżycie, książka jest bardzo smutna i daje mało powodów do radości, lecz jest prawdziwa i ładnie opisuje życie na wsi amerykanskiej w latach 60tych.
Mam bardzo ladne wydanie tej ksiazki i glownie ono przekonalo mnie do przeczytania jej gdy zobaczylem ją na półce u mojej babci. Nie żałuje przeczytania tego lecz było to zdecydowanie przybijające przeżycie, książka jest bardzo smutna i daje mało powodów do radości, lecz jest prawdziwa i ładnie opisuje życie na wsi amerykanskiej w latach 60tych.
September 18, 2010
This first novel by Reynolds Price uses a close-in, sympathetic third person omniscient narrator to tell the story of Rosacoke Mustian, a young girl from a back-woods North Carolina community, as she evolves into womanhood. What struck me as brilliant and most instructive for writers who look for examples to shape a novel--especially a short novel--are the set-piece scenes that build, block by block, the narrative arc: a funeral, a church picnic by a swimming hole, a letter (that runs for 12-pages in text!), a homecoming, and finally, a Christmas pageant in a local church. The narrative patience builds a world that one leaves at the end of the book with regret, so fully has the author animated his characters through his empathetic, close-in, omniscient narrator.
June 5, 2023
This is a somewhat dysfunctional love story between Rosacoke Mustian and her seemingly uncaring boyfriend Wesley Beavers. Beautifully written by Reynolds Price, he uses a very heavy Southern accent in the dialog and captured the feel of rural North Carolina.
April 4, 2020
“Meticulously observed, beautifully told, [this work] strikes too deep to fuss around with analysis. You can say only … it is indeed a lasting novel, a story of the South … done with no violence…. Only the firm brilliance of its writing [keeps] its loveliness from sticking to your fingers.” Dorothy Parker, Esquire 1962
January 31, 2021
A very quiet and beautiful book that lingers for sure in the mind. My first time reading Reynolds Price, and I will return to him again.
April 28, 2013
A long and happy life is something we all want, and it is foremost in Rosacoke's young mind when she thinks that's what Wesley can give her. Set in the rural mountains of North Carolina, a couple of years after WWII. Wesley comes back from the war and takes a job selling motorcycles. Rosacoke will risk her life by riding on the back of Wesley's bike, because she wants to know if he loves her. Rosacoke tells the story from her perspective full of poetic and descriptive detail. Wesley's aloofness about a romantic relationship with Rosacoke is frustrating not only for Rosacoke but the reader as well. I found myself anxiously turning each page to see if there would be some sort of awakening about these character's feelings for each other. Rosacoke keeps her emotions bottled up and even ends up losing her virginity to Wesley in an attempt to get a commitment from him.
Other surrounding characters and scenes that fill the story give Rosacoke plenty to reflect on. The funeral of a young black mother, leaving behind an orphan baby, Rosacoke's brother and sister-in-law's stillborn child, and finally Rosacoke's unplanned pregnancy that brings Wesley around to doing the right thing. I loved the Christmas play scene where Rosacoke is recruited to play the part of Mary. Her mind is not on the script, but somehow she pulls it off ... on auto-pilot, I guess. While holding the baby who represents the Christ child she draws on emotions she has after realizing that she, herself, was with child.
Our book club read this novel and had some mixed views. I found it a slow start, but once I was inside the mind of Rosacoke, I began seeing the world through her eyes and it was thought provoking. She self-analyzed and projected her opinions about everyone else in reflective thoughts. I enjoyed her stream of consciousness. I look forward to reading other novels that Price has written about Wesley and Rosacoke's life together.
Other surrounding characters and scenes that fill the story give Rosacoke plenty to reflect on. The funeral of a young black mother, leaving behind an orphan baby, Rosacoke's brother and sister-in-law's stillborn child, and finally Rosacoke's unplanned pregnancy that brings Wesley around to doing the right thing. I loved the Christmas play scene where Rosacoke is recruited to play the part of Mary. Her mind is not on the script, but somehow she pulls it off ... on auto-pilot, I guess. While holding the baby who represents the Christ child she draws on emotions she has after realizing that she, herself, was with child.
Our book club read this novel and had some mixed views. I found it a slow start, but once I was inside the mind of Rosacoke, I began seeing the world through her eyes and it was thought provoking. She self-analyzed and projected her opinions about everyone else in reflective thoughts. I enjoyed her stream of consciousness. I look forward to reading other novels that Price has written about Wesley and Rosacoke's life together.
September 10, 2011
Had it not been for a book group discussion of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet and the suggestion by one of our members that this novel would make a good companion piece I might never have heard of this title or its author. But I'm so glad I did. This is Price's debut novel & it won the William Faulkner Award for a notable first novel. Some reviewers have compared Price's style to Faulkner's & while Price does occasionally write a sentence as long as a paragraph or a page and then some, his prose for me was far easier and more pleasant to follow.
But it's the story that grabs the reader; a simpler time in rural North Carolina perhaps in the late 1940's or 50's. References to a time frame are limited to a photograph of FDR, and we know that motorcycles and cars - not to mention a plane - are forms of transportation. But the plot turns on the simple acts of life and death and how a sense of place forms a persona. For Rosacoke Mustian, the young twenty something protaganist, birds matter as do the deer and the neighbors. She stands on a principle of kindness and yet cannot communicate with Wesley, her perhaps boyfriend. It's a conflict that continues from the first page to the last.
The story and plot are spare but the details are rich as is the language. And it's not an easy task to write dialogue that is parochial but full of nuance. Price does a brilliant job.
I'm drawn to southern authors and this author does not disappoint. I'll have to check out more of his work (and there are lots in print) in the near future.
But it's the story that grabs the reader; a simpler time in rural North Carolina perhaps in the late 1940's or 50's. References to a time frame are limited to a photograph of FDR, and we know that motorcycles and cars - not to mention a plane - are forms of transportation. But the plot turns on the simple acts of life and death and how a sense of place forms a persona. For Rosacoke Mustian, the young twenty something protaganist, birds matter as do the deer and the neighbors. She stands on a principle of kindness and yet cannot communicate with Wesley, her perhaps boyfriend. It's a conflict that continues from the first page to the last.
The story and plot are spare but the details are rich as is the language. And it's not an easy task to write dialogue that is parochial but full of nuance. Price does a brilliant job.
I'm drawn to southern authors and this author does not disappoint. I'll have to check out more of his work (and there are lots in print) in the near future.
December 1, 2008
What a delight to re-read this gorgeous story of troubled young love set in a precisely-evoked rural North Carolina. Coming from nowhere near there, geographically or culturally, I remember finding this short novel exquisitely exotic when I read it at age 20-ish. It's probably what caused me to move to (well, not-rural but near-rural) South Carolina right after grad school, to *see*. Rosacoke Mustian waits six long months to determine whether her maybe-boyfriend Wesley Beavers is indeed hers. Six months of woods and death and the curt profound hospitality of her people, the intimacy between white and black folk within their strict social hierarchy, the centrality of church if not, always, of God. Oh this is such a beautiful book.
January 17, 2019
Hate to admit that a debut book written in 1962 by one of the most formidable and respected southern writers of all time just made it to my reading table, but I am so happy that death did not find me first. This is the kind of book I pray for every day. Price’s prose is like licking a thesaurus made of honey. Not a word wasted, not a word unused.
This story of the struggle of a young woman living in mid century rural America rings of dust and sweat and resolve and resignation. I won’t spoil your pleasure in allowing this plot to creep up and surprise and thrill and horrify you.
And now, of course, I have to read all the 40 or so novels of Price’s that I’ve not yet devoured.
This story of the struggle of a young woman living in mid century rural America rings of dust and sweat and resolve and resignation. I won’t spoil your pleasure in allowing this plot to creep up and surprise and thrill and horrify you.
And now, of course, I have to read all the 40 or so novels of Price’s that I’ve not yet devoured.
January 28, 2010
Another 50 cent bargain book, but how amazing!
Wonderful dive into the stifling world of a young woman in small town in the South. Fantastic feeling for the anguish and confusion surrounding her love for a carefree boyfriend who never provides what she needs.
Similar in some respects to "Lie Down in Darkness," though too brief to create monumental portrait of tragedy.
Had some problems with the ending. Found Christmas play a bit metaphorically heavy-handed and not completely effective. Though maybe I just wanted a substantially more tragic ending to fit my mood.
Wonderful dive into the stifling world of a young woman in small town in the South. Fantastic feeling for the anguish and confusion surrounding her love for a carefree boyfriend who never provides what she needs.
Similar in some respects to "Lie Down in Darkness," though too brief to create monumental portrait of tragedy.
Had some problems with the ending. Found Christmas play a bit metaphorically heavy-handed and not completely effective. Though maybe I just wanted a substantially more tragic ending to fit my mood.
July 20, 2015
Rosacoke Mustian lives a carefully observed life in Appalachian North Carolina, responding to the web of obligations of family, church, and an undeserving suitor. This is a novel for people who like novels, thick with the rhythms of rural life and the delightful cadences of a local dialect.
November 16, 2017
Early short novel by the late North Carolina author focuses on Rosacoke, a young adult and her on-again, off-again relationship with Wesley, a slightly older, more worldly young adult in rural Virginia. Hard to read; long, obtuse sentences; unclear ending. Not my favorite.
January 16, 2021
I grew up for the most part in Raleigh, North Carolina, and studied at Broughton High School--my 12th grade English teacher had taught Reynolds Price, and raved about him. Almost 50 years later, I have finished Price's first novel--set in rural North Carolina of 1960--about a small community, of African Americans living side by side with Scotch Irish Tar Heels. The plot of the novel is whether the female protagonist--Rosacoke Mustian--is able to "hold" a neighboring boy she had grown up with, and get him to marry her. One may wonder today whether Reynolds Price is accurate in his writing about what Rosacoke felt--but he does write beautifully, evoking rural North Carolina--where Raleigh is the closest "big city" and many boys join the military as the only way of leaving their small communities. Social life revolves around the Churches--the "black church" for the African Americans and the Baptist segregated "white church" for the white community. A real advantage of describing this small community is that the reader learns the few families that play a role in the book. The book does come to its peak conclusion, which is hopeful despite it's pointing to life in rural North Carolina as imperfect-- the community is portrayed believably as strong and ultimately supportive on the one hand, even if self-destructive and unambitious on the other hand. The bonds among the community's families at the end of the day matter, and through the Christmas pageant at the Delight Baptist Church at the end of the book, we see that a kind of love exists and permeates the community. Maybe not Prince Charming and castles in a fairy tale kingdom, but happiness and this kind of love as accessible when one grows beyond one's own selfish demands. Worth reading, especially if you are from the South.
March 10, 2023
On a recent trip to Eudora Welty's home in Jackson, MS, I picked up Price's book because of Welty's rave reviews of him. How I managed to skip over this iconic author in all my Southern lit reading is a puzzle, but I'm glad I finally found him even if it's a few decades belated. This story reads like some of my favorite southern fiction, rambling story told in perfect voice and set in a time and place that seems somehow woven of both memory and new discovery. I wanted to wring Wesley Beavers' neck more than once, and sometimes Rosacoke's for good measure. Even so, I KNEW these characters and their actions were consistent with Price's creations. Loved, loved, loved the cadence and pacing of the book, matching the time & place as perfectly as its vernacular. Reminded me of Faulkner quite a bit.
June 10, 2020
Quarantine means going back to reading the books I bought, but did not finish. The hardcover version, first published in 1960, of novelist Reynolds Price and his first early book, set in and around rural Applachian North Carolina. (Overall score: 3-3.5 stars), This is the story of Wesley Beavers, and the woman he woos, young Rosacroke Mustian. From the opening set piece (the first 3 pages), the novel shows the unique writing style of Reynolds Price. There is much moping by the lake here, and what not between Wesley and Rosa. There are dinner tables being set, babies being born, and other attempts at distractions; ultimately, they kind of sink the book deep into the swampy weeds of southern idiom and dialogue.
December 3, 2023
This is a lovely, fairly short novel about a girl coming of age in a small town in North Carolina in the 30s? 40s? 50s?. Rosacoke's best friend has very recently died in childbirth. What does this mean for her dreams of marriage and children? Detailed portraits of relationships in the town, as well as her family and their friends.
I added this book to my list of novels in 2013, but it had been published in 1962.
In January I'll start on those added in 2014--I've caught up to where I'm only 10 years behind now!
I added this book to my list of novels in 2013, but it had been published in 1962.
In January I'll start on those added in 2014--I've caught up to where I'm only 10 years behind now!
February 28, 2025
Girl has an unrequited crush on boy, gets into trouble, and heads into a long and, um, unhappy life--not exactly original or gripping as far as plots go. Oh, but the language! Dialogue dripping with southern culture, descriptions of birdsong and seeping springs and pecan trees, and the slow, psychologically astute unfolding of Rosacoke's thoughts... I could have lingered in those North Carolina hills for longer than the pages of this novel.
December 7, 2020
Read for Grapes creative writing class. WOW. Not my typical go to read but am so overwhelmed and impressed by the writing. Expert soft soothing with inner dialogue creating speed and a change in beat. If I wasn’t studying the writing as a fit for my reading life I probably would have rated 3 but as a work it’s a 5. Rosacoke and Wesley.
July 28, 2021
Not sure how to review - I enjoyed reading this book, except when I didn’t, and when I didn’t, I really didn’t. I skimmed more than I like to admit - the LONG letter to Wesley… But I liked the language and the imagery, I’d not the characters. Agree with some that W was underdeveloped, and it was odd that twice and only twice we read his perspective. Nevertheless, I’m glad I read it.
February 27, 2018
A small story done in a big way. The author is new to me -- I think I picked this one up because of the NC locale, which is my homeland. I loved the characters and the style, and I would like to read more of him. I'm thinking of skipping from his first to his last novel, just for a fun shock.
June 30, 2018
I fell in love within the first 10 pages of this book. Price is a beautiful writer, evoking time and place so clearly that, as a reader, I live with his characters, who are as finely and deeply drawn.
June 15, 2024
4.5 stars rounded up. A beautifully written, character driven novel. The main character Rosacoke has some amazing inner dialogue. This reminds me of accessible Faulkner. Not a lot happens, but then again a lot does happen, if you know what I mean.
July 10, 2024
Price: A long and happy w
First- the book is beautifully written. Glaringly clear and very meandering. Not much plot. Just a quiet story of the ordinary life in the back woods of Virginia.
First- the book is beautifully written. Glaringly clear and very meandering. Not much plot. Just a quiet story of the ordinary life in the back woods of Virginia.
May 11, 2018
I loved this book. The atmosphere it evokes is palpable. The writing made me read slowly to linger over the sentences and re-read passages. Beautiful.
December 10, 2018
Loved the language here. The first sentence alone is worth the whole book.
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