Customer Reviews

Green Bay Tree: A Novel

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I've been interested in female protagonists created by male authors ever since I read Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Michael Dorris.

In Green Bay Tree, Louis Bromfield creates several women who personify the extremes of the female personality. While they are a bit cartoonish, they are interesting and difficult to discount. Lily is the voluptuous one, meant to be a lover, and prefers living in, where else, France. Her dry sister, Ilene, never loves and, indeed, reviles fleshly pleasure She devotes her life to fanatically saving her soul and denouncing her sister Lily who had the gall to have sex. The mother of these two women personifies tough female shrewdness. There are cousins who personify motherhood and the arts.

My guess is Bromfield, in this his first novel, was creating an homage to womanhood by separating the feminine aspects he venerated. At least that's what one hopes. Some readers could find his characterizations satirical. The men in this novel haven't a chance; they are clip art embellishing the women.

What I found surprising is the author's take on environmentalism, quite contemporary. And there are characters who speak about immigrants like they've written the speeches for right wing Americans railing against those who aren't "real Americans".

The plot is what kept me turning pages. I really did care about these characters. My only annoyance was some of Bromfield's repetitive language. How many times did I have to read about Lily's "soft white skin"?

If you are an occasional fiction reader, this probably isn't your book. If you are a geek like me, you might want to give it a try. We all know where we fall on the book geek spectrum.