Women's Classic Literature Enthusiasts discussion

We begin our discussion of Lamb in His Bosom in this thread.

Charlotte Lamb won a Pulitzer Prize in 1934 for Lamb in His Bosom. This book is about poor farmers who lived in Georgia before the Uncivil War. These farmers did not own slaves or have any vested interest in the slave trade. She said this about this book: "Almost every incident in Lamb in His Bosom actually occurred. Some of them I heard from my uncles and aunts, some from my mother. I got most of the local color from hereabouts, but the facts from family history and history of other families. I could hardly tell where fact left off and fancy began."

If anyone knows how to pronounce Cean, please let us readers know!

The first chapter has the same flavor as the first chapter of The Good Earth. Both start with poor farmers beginning a new life on their wedding day.

I'm looking forward to this; should have my copy early next week.

Still waiting for my copy as well and cannot wait to get started.

☯Emily wrote: "The first chapter has the same flavor as the first chapter of The Good Earth. Both start with poor farmers beginning a new life on their wedding day."

I agree that it has that same flavor as The Good Earth does. It feels quite different though in terms of how the characters seem to think of themselves, particularly the women.

☯Emily wrote: "If anyone knows how to pronounce Cean, please let us readers know!"

I believe that would be CEE-ANN judging from the mother's cautions to the Father on how to say the name.

I have made it through Chapter 7 and am very much in love with the book so far. I come from a family of tenant farmers in Georgia, so I find my roots are here in this novel. I can recognize some of these people when I think about my father's uncles and my own grandfather. It is interesting to me that the echo is there when these characters are set in the mid 1830's and my grandfather would have been starting his family in 1900.

I'm only at Chapter 3, but I like the style of storytelling so far. I'm reminded of pioneer stories in the details of day-to-day life and the young couple's progress in building up their farm.

I've just completed ch 7.

This book I believe is going to be a 5-star read for me.

I like the characterization. For example, part of showing the reader Margot, CM tells us about her (Margot's) mother to explain Margot's history.

I'm struck by how little need there is for money itself.

The description of the lives of people, meaning their daily routines and activities is amazing and just what I like in HF. I like detail about "mundane" everyday things, what people ate, how it was prepared, how clothes were laundered etc.

Another thing that I noticed is CMs use of changing POVs. It's very well-done. I've read some contemporary books where this technique for telling a story was a failure (to me).

Also, when CM is using a specific character's POV by telling the reader their thoughts (internal dialog?) she uses the words they would use and spells the way they would pronounce them. I have read bad reviews for a book where the MC had a stammer and the author wrote her dialog in that way. I disagreed.

I also love the way she paints people as part of a continuum and lets us see how the mothers/fathers affect the daughters/sons. The use of details is part of what makes this book come alive. I can feel how tired these people must be, feel the sweat pouring off of them in the fields, see the thinness of the bodies and the toughness of the skin. By showing us how things were done, she takes us outside our world of conveniences and plops us right down in their world of saving the feathers of the geese for the stuffing of the feather bed.

Dialect is not an easy element to portray well and CM does do a great job with it. I never feel that she is condescending toward them and I can hear them speaking in my head. I have a lot of personal reference for this. My grandmother could not pronounce my name "Sara", she always called me Seree. It has the ring of an endearment for me, now that everyone says my name properly, but no one says it with that much love and affection.

I like that it's a story of life in the South without the focus on plantation folks. These are the lives of ordinary, hardy people who worked and settled the land. I love how we're introduced to them and how their characters are revealed through the description of their daily lives and interactions.

I find the writing deeply sensual without being sensational. The sex scenes are some of the best I have ever seen. The wedding day in the first chapter was lyrical and very passionate. Then Lias' first lustful encounters with Margot:

"..and she went with him down under the live-oaks that spread their limbs over the bluff. The gray moss swung in the heavy, steady breath of the tide that came in, pressing closer and fuller onto the land, downing the tidal creeks and the spongy mud-banks for a time in water that came to its full, then washed back, and back, and back, to the sea until tomorrow."

Ginny wrote: "I find the writing deeply sensual without being sensational. The sex scenes are some of the best I have ever seen. The wedding day in the first chapter was lyrical and very passionate. Then Lias' f..."

I agree. There is a lushness and poetry to her writing. It almost reads in a cadence or rhythm so that you feel the pulsing of bodies and the sea in the quotation you have used.