The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster (Random House Large Print) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Kaye Gibbons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 2005 | Series: Random House Large Print

This sequel to Gibbons' beloved classic Ellen Foster, stands on its own as an unforgettable portrait of a redoubtable adolescent making herself up out of whole cloth. Now fifteen, Ellen is settled into a permanent home with a new mother. Strengthened by adversity and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation for herself, she still feels ill at ease in the world. Her sole surviving ritual --a visit to the county fair --takes on totemic importance. While she holds fast to the shreds of her childhood --humoring her best friend Stuart who is determined to marry her, protecting her old neighbor, slow-witted Starletta, she negotiates her way into a larger world --selling her poetry for money to pay her way to a camp for gifted students. With a singular mix of perspicacity, naiveté and compassion, Ellen draws us into her life and makes us fall in love with her all over again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The cynical view of Kaye Gibbons's The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster would be that the Poor Little Match Girl has morphed into Cinderella. Ellen Foster, a book anointed by Oprah's Book Club®, was the tale of young Ellen, daughter of a neurasthenic twit of a mother and a drunken abusive father, who was tossed out of her wicked aunt's home on Christmas Day (Shades of Dickens!). Plucky Ellen fetcheed up at the doorstep of her chosen foster mother and life settled down.

This book begins with a too cute, aggressively innocent letter to Derek Bok, President of Harvard University, asking for early admission. Now that Ellen is 15, she believes that she is ready for a larger world, a better education and a different life. That pursuit becomes an incidental subtext to ongoing events. The next two-thirds of the book feels experimental, with a jumpy, jerky style, information left out, information left in that goes nowhere--not easy reading. Then, Gibbons takes control of her story and turns everything upside down, in Ellen's favor.

There are some priceless exchanges in the book. Regarding an insight that comes to one for the first time: "It didn't matter if a thousand scholars studied how Madame Bovary probably wouldn't have had to rot from the inside if she'd read better books in her girlhood, if the idea strikes you in Baltimore in a room full of people who say they already know, my theory is it's still your personal view." And this, when she is annoying her friend, Stuart: "Stuart, I said, I never know what to do when you decide to let me in on an argument you've been having for us."

So, what does all of this add up to? A good, not great, sequel to the quite good Ellen Foster that is only an adjective away from mawkishness and sentimentality. If we adopt the aforementioned cynical view, the story becomes a treacly fable where the good prevail--and even get rich. A more generous view is that Ellen has suffered enough and it's her turn. Read it and take your pick. --Valerie Ryan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In this folksy sequel to the 1997 Oprah pick Ellen Foster, Gibbons's plucky heroine is 15 and hoping for early admission to Harvard on account of "all the surplus living that was jammed into the years." Having survived trauma and tragedy, Ellen has found safety with a loving foster mother. She sells her poetry to underachieving classmates, thereby paying her way to a camp for the gifted at Johns Hopkins, where she realizes she doesn't know "how to feel at home out in the world or at home either." She returns to North Carolina, goes to the fair, negotiates a marriage proposal from her best friend and learns that her aunt has cheated her out of her inheritance. The plot is minimal; the pleasure for fans will be in Ellen's idiosyncratic worldview and signature syntax ("The rhythm of the world out here picks up when the farmer across the road begins plowing.... Crossing the wide ditch and walking... as the ground's being turned over to expose arrowheads, which you may find one or several of, I was getting dirty in the good clothes I shouldn't have been over there in"). Even as good guys falter, readers can trust that all will be right in the end in this extended curtain call for a fondly remembered character. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Random House Large Print (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375728511
• ISBN-13: 978-0375728518
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,430,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ellen Foster is a hard act to follow..., January 3, 2006

By 

VoraciousReader (Kirkland, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster (Hardcover)

Kaye Gibbons is one of my favorite authors. I have worn out three copies of Ellen Foster and given several other copies as gifts so I was VERY excited to see that Ms. Gibbons was writing a follow up.

But.

I found this book not at all up to her standards. It rambles and the voice isn't as clear and as perfect as it was in the original. Instead of having a plot, Life All Around Me is more of a collection of Ellen's random thoughts and it was hard for me to get interested, possibly because I have such high expectations for this author's work. All in all, it was sadly disappointing.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If I Could Give This Three and a Half Stars, I Would, January 11, 2006

By 

Diane B. Wilkes "Diane Wilkes, Voracious Reader" (Oreland, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster (Hardcover)

I read Ellen Foster when it was first published and fell in love with the straight-talking, clear-eyed spunky protagonist. I gave this book to many people and was delighted when it was chosen as an Oprah book.

I had high hopes for this sequel and I like the premise, that of Ellen completing an essay, as only Ellen can, for early entrance to Harvard.

The narrative voice is still very strong, but some of the exchanges with Ellen's odd friends were difficult to follow and seemed rather extraneous. Additionally, there were some "happy endings" and situations that, as a reader, I found unrealistic and inconsistent with some of the characters' behavior.

A quick read and necessary for those who must know "what happened" to Ellen Foster, but mostly disappointing.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars disappointment, January 25, 2006

By 

Book It (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster (Hardcover)

I have loved all of Kaye Gibbons previous books. Therefore, I was greatly disappointed with her new one. It was the most disjointed book I have ever read. I finally stopped reading on page 86 in the middle of a paragraph. Not only would I not recommend buying this book, I would not suggest checking it out of the library either.