Unravelling | Elizabeth Graver | Not easy for a girl to break out in the 1800s in New England

Unravelling | Elizabeth Graver | Perfect

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Unravelling

	Unravelling Elizabeth Graver Harvest Books, 1999 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From a small, bogside cabin in rural New England, 38-year-old Aimee Slater unravels the story of her life, attempting to make sense of the tangled thread that leads from her mother's house-a short, unbridgeable distance away-to the world she now inhabits. It is soon after the Civil War; Aimee lives alone, but is graced with visits from two friends, a crippled man and a troubled eleven-year-old girl. She is perpetually caught between the sensual world she so desires and the divine retribution passed down to her by her mother's scorn. How Aimee ultimately creates a life for herself and bridges that distance makes for a moving story of love and loss. Told in a voice of spare New England lyricism, Unravelling is a remarkably haunting account of the power of redemption.

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Not easy for a girl to break out in the 1800s in New England

Aimee Slater lives on a farm in New England, but she's got a modern girl's desire for a bigger life. Against her parents' wishes, Aimee goes to work in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. What happens between then and when we see her again in her 30s living alone in the woods with only 2 other outcasts for company forms the meat of this utterly simple and graceful story.

Perfect

Elizabeth Graver should be very proud, this is a beautifully written novel, she is an amazing story teller.

It is the tale of Aimee Slater, who is 14 years old in 1843, and longs for something more than her mother's life. She and her family, she has five siblings, live in rural New Hampshire. They farm. Aimee wants to go to the city to work in the textile mills. She dreams about seeing the world.

It is the story of her wish to be alone, the story of her loneliness and the story of her relationship with her mother. Her struggle to be near her mother and her longing to be separate from her.

It is the deeply moving account of a young girl's innocence, sorrow and guilt and how they shape the path of her life.

Have the tissues handy for this one.

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thoughtful impressions

I can appreciate this novel, despite not always liking what the character of Aimee undergoes or what she actively does. It's a sad novel in many ways and nothing is completely fleshed out, so that you are left feeling somewhat dreamy and haunted yourself. My favorite character is not Aimee but rather Plumey, who I think is a great creation, very real. The parts of the book I enjoyed deal with motherhood in various forms. My only complaint is that Amos isn't well developed. But perhaps that was the author's intention.

half of the tale

I recommend this book, paired with Judith Rossner's "Emmeline." - I don't believe I can read either book without the other, now. I enjoyed "Unravelling," but can't help but compare it to "Emmeline," which is also the story of a girl sent from home to work in the Lowell mills. "Unravelling" is beautifully written, but "Emeline" gives the reader a better sense of the time period, and a more realistic impression of the repercussions of the heroine's similar plight.

Aimee's sensibilities are too modern to ring true. The shocked reactions of others involved in her life are experienced at such a distance, that Aimee seems to exist in a vacuum, her world feels at times unreal, nor is Aimee completely shunned by the siciety she lives in, as one might have expected. Most of Aimee's suffering is internal, it seems, and her reactions are those of a twentieth-century woman, rather than one brought up in the 1830's and '40's. But Graver's style is vivid, memorable, and her words are carefully chosen. The characters are alive--and the facets of the mother-daughter relationship in this book was its highlight, with the growing tenderness between Aimee and Amos coming in a close second. One of the things I like so about this book is the way the secondary characters are as fully formed as Aimee herself is; we aren't only given a narrow view of events. Half of the story is theirs as well.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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