Customer Reviews

Foxes of Harrow

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first time I read this book I was fourteen years old-- forty-two years ago. Reading it then partly inspired me with a love of literature that led to my becoming a professor of literature and a novelist. Yerby never fails to seize the reader's imagination. Even though his works have sometimes been referred to as pulp fiction, he does essentially what is required of the writer-- he seizes the reader and takes him on a pleasurable, thrilling journey through the imagination. As a black reader, I never even guessed from his writing that Yerby was black. His writing, as in The Foxes of Harrow, is color blind-- refreshing in a world increasingly obsessed with race. This is a "must read" for those in the next generation.

This is the man: Stephen Fox - born out of wedlock, banished from his homeland. He came to the New World ragged and starving, with just one possession, a thing he could not sell, his pride! His body, his mind, his soul, burned with one overriding ambition, one day he would be a gentleman! And these are the women who knew his passions: Odalie - the pearl of the South, rich and beautiful, desired by man men but won by Stephen. She loved her husband with all her heart but could not love him with her body. Desiree - the lovely, tempestuous quadroon. She was a virgin when she came to him, just sixteen years old; she was his mistress from then on. Her vibrant body was everything a man could ever long for, but her love brought death and decay. Aurore - his wife's sister. She loved Stephen from a distance, always faithful to a love she couldn't know, waiting for a chance to share his life. This is the tremendous best seller about one of the greatest plantations of the Old South - the man who built it, the women he loved, the glory and decadence of a passionate age.

Sex sells, and Frank Yerby gave it to his readers in droves. This steamy soap opera of a book, like other Yerby works, tells of a self made man who, in the end, is still a hostage to his hormones. The story begins with the adventures of the illegitimate Irish gambler, Stephen Fox. He's worked his way around Europe and America and has now settled near New Orleans. He schemes and gambles until he establishes himself as a wealthy planter, building the great hall of Harrow. But money doesn't buy happiness.

He marries local beauty Odalie, but she turns out to be frigid in bed. After years of going without he finally takes on a quadroon mistress, Desiree, whose voice is like a soft, golden gong. Did I mention her voice is like a soft, golden gong? Mr. Yerby mentions it several times. Eventually Odalie learns about Desiree and this causes even more conflict in the marriage. Both women turn up the heat in the competition over this man until there's an eventual tragic end.

The next part of the book takes up with Stephen's son, Etienne. With Etienne's cruelty to animals and his disregard for other people's feelings, he has the classic makings of a serial killer if given half a chance. He's a totally despicable person who may get what he deserves when he marries the half-wild Ceclie.

Then at last the Civil War breaks out just when the book looked like it was losing steam. Yet we kind of breeze through the war, just touching upon high points, and before you know it it's over. (The war AND the book.)

This is my second book by Yerby that I've read. I just can't come to care about any of his main characters because they're simply unlikable when they're not downright stupid. Yet it's the secondary characters who are more interesting. There's the venerable old slave woman Tante Caleen, and her grandson, Inch, who makes a daring bid for freedom. There's roly-poly neighbor Andre Le Blanc, who jumps into action to avenge his friend. Even the plight of golden gonged Desiree and her brother are as interesting, if not more interesting, than the sexscapades of the main characters.

It's still readable stuff that moves at a steady pace and is littered with tidbits of historical facts. Oh, and it has sex.

It was interesting to read The Foxes of Harrow again, as a "senior citizen, since I was only in my early teens the first time I read...and enjoyed...the book. It is quite sensual, considering the year it was written. It has held up fine during the years. I probably understood the nuances better as an adult than as a teenager. Frank Yerby was a brilliant writer, and in this book he presents a balanced view of what white slave owners and their slaves faced during that pre-civil war era. I couldn't help comparing it with Gone With the Wind as I read it.

I swiped my stepmother's copy of Vixens from 1947 when I was just a kid in the 70's and remembered almost the entire manuscript, it stuck in my mind so. Especially where Denise, Laird's real love, not his wife, on his wedding night, sadly told him, that she knew his wife was mad, then proceeded to stand in for her, with the classic line, "everyman deserves a wedding night". Laird was the hero, Hugh,the villian, Sabrina's Laird's sterotyped nuttier than a fruitcake spoiled southern belle post war, & to me, Denise is the all time REAL WOMAN IN BOOKS. Foxes of Harrow was just as mesmerizing and complicated. I just noticed something too. There is an Etienne Fox, Stephen Harrow's son in Foxes name. He too was a sick, cowardly dirty white sheeted redneck. I wonder if Yerby had Vixens in mind when he did Foxes of Harrow? [...]My father, a loyal KKK sicko, blew a fuse and humilated me in elementary school for being assigned to do a report on Dr.Martin Luther King. I was all for it, and he refused to let me do it, because of Dr. King's race. BUT HE BOUGHT MY STEPMOTHER YERBY'S BOOKS, NEVER KNOWING THAT YERBY WAS BLACK, and around 20 years ago, my school book that I was to reference for Dr. King, somehow turned up in his home. Strange things happen in the name of justice. I think Oprah should discover Mr.Yerby's outstanding history and especially as most black writers had a very hard time getting contracts back then. Foxes of Harrow, however, sold for a grand price of $3 & Vixens the same in hardcover, for a whopping 75 cents in paperback, plus, he was a book club's pick on several occasions. I think that is magnificent history that should be wider known and told that he could acheive all that in a time, when that when it just didn't happen.
Try some of his other books, like the Girl from Storyville, A Woman called Fancy, etc. You'll love them and see why he succeeded so well.

I first read this book in 1962. Today, I can remember the characters as if I had read the book yesterday. A beautiful love story written in a gentler time. A story that will tear at your heart and conscience. Very moving!

What an eye opener of how things were way back in the days of slavery. Great read - frustrating at times realizing the behaviors of the people back then.

Having spent my life in south Louisiana, I am familiar with the culture of the "bayou country". The "Foxes of Harrow" brings to life a bygone era of plantation life in the deep south. Sugar cane is still the main stay of southern communities, and great plantation homes still abound. This story gives one a sense of how things may have been during a time long past. I know this because... my great grandfather's plantation stands proud along the banks of the bayou Teche, just to the east of my home town of Jeanerette. The "Foxes of Harrow", though fictional, is a testament of plantation life... the good, and the bad.

Great book, in great shape. Nice to purchase a first edition for such a low price.

In the years when my friends were sneaking peeks at "Peyton Place", I was secretly devouring "The Foxes of Harrow". This was after seeing the B-movie version starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara. To me it was every bit as good as "Gone With the Wind" and has stuck with me lo these many years. FYI, Frank Yerby had his picture on the jacket of my aunt's Book Club edition, quite interesting for that time, as other readers have pointed out.