Charms for the Easy Life [Import] [Paperback]

Kaye Gibbons (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Abacus (1994)
• ISBN-10: 034910557X
• ISBN-13: 978-0349105574
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't be misled by the negative reviews!, December 3, 1999

By 

Janice M. Hansen (California United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charms for the Easy Life (Mass Market Paperback)

This book has more substance to it than some of the readers have recognized. If midwives and stories about medicine in the early to mid 1900's interest you, try this story. Or, if exploring mother-daughter relationships that are positive and make you feel good, try this story. If you love learning how people who love each other interact and take care of each other, read this. If you have ever longed for someone that could have the insight to tell you what is best for you and have a riotous sense of humor, read this. If you enjoy a read that takes a difficult time (WWII) and weaves it through the lives of some incredible women, try this story. You can make it very complex, if you must, or simply take the story as it is, and as it was meant to be. You will find yourself thinking back to these characters often, and wishing for that charming life that made living with each other easy. When you have that, you just may have what it takes for an "easy" life. This book can help in the meantime.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lovely book, June 11, 2000

By 

"hatedmom" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charms for the Easy Life (Mass Market Paperback)

I have seen negative reviews of this book, but I loved it. My teenage daughter's margin notes made it even more special.

While the story may be unrealistic, it is fiction, and why do we read fiction? I read it for escape, and this book "escapes you" to a place where women are strong, where your grandma can tell you everything you need to know, where there are some bad, lost, and abandoning men, but not all men are bad, where life is full of hope and magic is possible.

It is literate, with references to many authors we should all read. There is some social commentary, some sadness, some things everyone should know (papaya tablets for digestion, aloe for burns, etc.)

Charms for the Easy Life ("depending on your definition of easy" should have been a subtitle) was wonderful. I will be reading more of Kaye Gibbons books in the future.

A lovely novel.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rare and Beautifully Worthwhile Read., January 29, 2006

By 

Reviews No More - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charms for the Easy Life (Mass Market Paperback)

Kaye Gibbons has one of those rare gifts that not all writers possess: the ability to take the lives of fictional people who are seemingly nothing in a high profile society and make them sparkle with with more interest and more reality-based magic than any heavily financed publicity machine could ever do.

You come to believe these three beautiful, strong women and the reasons for why they stand together--not because--but in spite of the unworthy men they've encountered. Grandma Charlie Kate, a smart, literature loving, though uneducated woman, is gifted in natural healings and believes that when a person dies and purges (foam at the mouth), it is all their hopes, dreams, and things left unsaid. She is odd by others' standards, outspoken, and that's what makes people respect her!

Daughter Sophia is the more openly dreamy side of Charlie Kate, hopelessly romantic in spite of a disappointing marriage to a man in yellow shoes, and she loves high fashion. She faints easily at the sight of infections when she helps her mother on housecalls, and is mad for a man named Mr. Baines who takes his sweet time going to the altar.

Sophia's daughter Margaret tells the entire story of the family's somewhat Hemingway-like suicidal history and recounts their lives mainly around WWII. Margaret is more like Charlie Kate, but she still has enough of her mother in her to fall in love with a wounded soldier who comes from a good home, having broken the circle of bad men on the first crack.

Everyone makes such a big deal about the Vietnam soldiers suffering more than any others, and I know that they did their share, but if you read this book and the life breathed into it, you will see that no war and what it does are any good. Beautifully written, easy to accept as nonfiction, and full of bittersweet richness, this is easily a book that should reap rewards for its quiet grace, humility, and strength of character. I love this book dearly, and urge you to read it because of the human interest. You will never forget it long after you are finished.