Fortunate Lives

by Robb Forman Dew

The Howells family are revisited in the summer of 1991. David, 18, is preparing to go to Harvard and Sarah is now 13. A young woman, Netta Breckenridge, enters the family's lives and creates a fragile domesticity for the Howells.

Genres: Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Granddaughter of US poet, essayist and political writer John Crowe Ransom. Godfather was US poet, essayist, academic Robert Penn Warren. Grew up between Baton Rouge, LA and Ohio, well-connected to Kenyon Review writers and artists. Attended but did not graduate from Louisiana State University.

Her first novel - Dale Loves Sophie to Death - won the 1982 National Book Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and has received Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007 she was awarded an honorary degree by Kenyan College.

Since 1977 Robb Forman Dew has been living in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where her husband Charles B. Dew is now the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College. They have two sons.

Reviews

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story of a complex family. Each one is trying to deal with the sometimes shattering, the unexpected and just the evolution of family life.
The Howells are still trying to deal with the death of a son; and now are trying to adjust to the fact that their oldest son is about to depart for Harvard. They have a teenage daughter who is also trying to find herself and how she fits into the family. Their home is a place where everyone seems to meet: friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc. Sometimes there is no time for themselves.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, not great. A subtle psychological profile of a family over the period of one summer. Good characterization, a bit of drama, but somehow something is missing. Not sure what. Perhaps it's just too predictable. Still, I enjoyed it. Quick read.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A family in a small college town in New England recovers from the death of their teenaged son. I really liked the author's style and her insight into the complexities of family life. Well-balanced, descriptive, and engrossing.

[Boyce · Rating 1 out of 5]

I seem to be on a rocky run of reading. Kay and I took four books with us to read during our week in Mexico. Two were good, one poor and one (to me) unreadable. I'd read Dew's Dale Loves Sofie to Death and liked it. This book is the sequel. Whereas I stopped reading Thomas Mallon's Dewey Defeats Truman after 100 pages (which I rarely do), I finished Fortunate Lives because I'd run out of books. What unpleasant people. What impossible dialogue. What a non-existent plot. What a drag.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book! It is about a family whose middle child was killed in an automobile accident 6 years earlier and now their oldest son is getting ready to go off to college. It's told mostly from the point of view of the mother but I particularly liked the parts told from the son's and father's points of view. Lots of great insights into the ways in which families are so complex and how things change as children grow up. Loved it!

[Lisa Currier · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up because I had read a review of another of the author's books and it praised her writing style. What a disappointment! The plot was thin, and jumped around. None of the characters were even likeable. I finished it because I assumed eventually it would have a point, it didn't.

[Rhonda Mcgarry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fortunate Lives was a good enough book. Not fantastic literature, but it kept moving and the story was interesting. I would read another book by this author.

[Sue Kozlowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this. Is about the Howell family. Toby died, David is leaving for Harvard.