Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (North Coast Books) [Paperback]

Glenway Wescott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996 | Series: North Coast Books

Glenway Wescotts poignant story of nineteenth-century Wisconsin was first published in 1927 as the winner of the prestigious Harper Prize. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Wescott left the Midwest behind to live as a writer in 1920s Paris. In this novel, based on Wescotts own life and family, the young Alwyn Tower leaves Wisconsin to travel in Europe, but finds himself haunted by a family of long-dead spiritshis grandparents and great-uncles and aunts, a generation whose young adulthood was shattered by the Civil War. Their images were preserved in fading family albums of daguerreotypes and in his own fragmented memories of stories told to him by his strong and enduring grandmothers. To disinter and finally lay to rest the family secrets that lingered insistently in his mind, Wescott writes, Alwyn was obliged to live in imagination many lives already at an end. The Grandmothers is the chronicle of Alwyns ancestors: the bitter Henry Tower, who returned from Civil War battlefields to find his beautiful wife Serena lost in a fatal fever; Rose Hamilton, robust and eager, who yearned to leave the cabin of her bearded, squirrel-hunting brothers for the company of courteous Leander Tower; the boy-soldier Hilary Tower, whose worship of his brother made him desperate; fastidious Nancy Tower, whose love for her husband Jesse Davis could not overcome her disgust with the dirt under his fingernails; Ursula Duff, proud and silent, maligned among her neighbors by her venal husband; Alwyns parents, Ralph Tower and Marianne Duff, whose happiness is brought about only by the intervention of a determined spinster.

From reviews of the first edition: The Grandmothers is made out of thick, rich layers of human problems and personalities. To read The Grandmothers is to be washed by waves of cleansing pity.Harry Salpeter, New York World, 1927 Distinguished by sensitive interpretation . . . an epic of the pioneer family. . . . It was the grandmothers who made America, and the grandfathers submitted to them their own and the nations destiny.John Carter, New York Times Book Review, 1927

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Wescott drew on his family's history for this 1927 saga of American pioneers. His goal was to show his characters not as noble trailblazers who suffered in silence to tame America but as flawed individuals who were less than honest, brave, and self-sacrificing.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Distinguished by sensitive interpretation . . . an epic of the pioneer family. . . . It was the grandmothers who made America, and the grandfathers submitted to them their own and the nation's destiny."-John Carter, New York Times Book Review, 1927 A North Coast Book -- John Carter, New York Times Book Review, 1927 A North Coast Book

"Glenway Wescott was part of a Midwestern movement in American literature during the first decades of this century-the era of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Willa Cather's My Antonia, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, and O.E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth. . . . [Wescott] remains an appealing and distinctive minor master."-The Washington Post Book World -- The Washington Post Book World

"One of the few notable American novels of these times."-San Francisco Chronicle, 1927 -- San Francisco Chronicle, 1927

From reviews of the first edition "The Grandmothers is made out of thick, rich layers of human problems and personalities. To read The Grandmothers is to be washed by waves of cleansing pity."-Harry Salpeter, New York World, 1927 -- Harry Salpeter, New York World, 1927

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299150240
• ISBN-13: 978-0299150242
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,235,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Novels within a Novel, November 24, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (North Coast Books) (Paperback)

Reading a book like this is like trying to consume a banquet of innumerable courses. "The Grandmothers" is a book of stories, all true, all passed down as oral history or experienced directly during Glenway Wescott's boyhood. This is a book of vignettes, each vignette demanding attention and wrenching gut reaction. Overwhelming at times, dense with a particular brand of old-fashioned writing ornate, yet deceptively simple, it must be read slowly to be fully understood and savored. Almost every paragraph in this book is so dense with action and information it could easily be expanded into a novel. And in every paragraph, the reader is transported into an era of unrelenting labor and unforgiving illness, of breathtaking ignorance and blind social injustice. Survival was all there was, and this was the kind of life everyone lived. A note: this book was extensively quoted in Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip," a first hand, harrowing account of life in rural Wisconsin at the turn of the last century, culled from newspaper clippings and documents. "Wisconsin Death Trip" in turn inspired Stewart O'Nan's "A Prayer for the Dying," another exceptional, bleak, truthful look at life in the "good" old days. I recommend these three books highly.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, compelling family history, August 14, 2006

By 

Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (North Coast Books) (Hardcover)

With the heightened interest in the memoir genre recently, this brilliant novel about a family's history should find a substantial audience. Although told in the third person, it's really about how Alwyn Tower becomes obsessed with his family's history, and from stories told and family albums, puts together the chronicle that becomes the novel. The characters give the book a saga-like quality: some fail in business or in love, some encounter terrible tragedies, some display deep human weaknesses, some find happiness and some don't - but most reveal a heroic make up, a strength of character, or the simple need to deal with adversity the best way they can and then move on, that makes them truly fascinating and worthy of our attention. Westcott is a master at recounting these powerful human stories almost poetically so that they touch us at the deepest emotional levels. The book is profoundly sad and poignant, but also amazingly life affirming and memorable. It's a beautiful book. Those of you who enjoy reading memoirs should definitely get hold of this book and give yourself a treat. It might end up finding a permanent spot on your shelf.

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight, April 24, 2010

By 

David Wihowski (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (North Coast Books) (Paperback)

The two previous reviewers have made excellent points about this book which I will not repeat.

I would like to add that if you live in Wisconsin (or the upper Midwest) this book will give you an insight into and an appreciation for the people who settled the place where we live. If you have older relatives or friends I imagine they might appreciate this book, as well. If you have known some of the gritty, older rural Midwesterners, this book gives you a bit of insight into what formed their character, even though their character may have been formed by their parents' or grandparents' experiences.