Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A charming and realistic portrayal of small-town USA, December 23, 2005
This review is from: The New Woman: A Staggerford Novel (Hardcover)
Jon Hassler published his first Staggerford novel in 1977. That event set the scene for the subsequent books that tell the stories of the events that touched the lives of its inhabitants. When asked in an interview about his choice of locale he said, "I've been rooted in northern Minnesota all my life; I've never moved." Clearly this is his "place" and that is where he set his latest novel, THE NEW WOMAN.
THE NEW WOMAN is the story of Agatha McGee, an octogenarian who taught sixth grade for almost 50 years in Staggerford. At 87 her health is good and her mental faculties are as sharp as they were when she was a much younger woman. She still lives in the house she grew up in, and until recently she managed very well. "She has carried around the image of Staggerford as a bucolic, serene little hamlet, and she was under the false impression that she was still acquainted with all its citizens, as she had been in her teaching days." For years she had based that view on what she was able to see from her windows in "her house on River Street."
We meet her three days after she's moved into the Sunset Senior Apartments. And as she gazes from the window of her new home she stares at the Kmart parking lot across the street. She is amazed at the number of cars coming and going. "...she realized that there were hundreds of people living in this town whom she didn't know." When her lifelong friend Lillian, also a resident of the building, pays a call, Agatha thinks, "Oh, dear, this move was certainly a mistake." She "had feared that living here would compromise her independence."
But in Hassler's imaginary Staggerford, things don't always turn out as expected, and as the story unfolds Agatha moves back and forth from the present to her past. And these journeys give the richness and texture of what otherwise could have been a novella without much punch. When one considers Hassler's words in another interview, a real connection is made between the writer and his theme and the reader and his message: "I spent seven years visiting my mother in a similar place in a small town in Minnesota," Hassler recalls. "I'd go up there once a week and we'd have our peach delight and our coffee. I got to know these people pretty well. I just felt so at home with them that I wanted to write about them. People get outspoken at that age, and I like that. I just love people talking at odds, going off in their own directions." Add to these flights of verbal disconnects the eccentricities of each member, and sparks fly.
Over the course of a few weeks Agatha slowly works her magic and gains the respect of her fellow residents, realizing that since she retired what she missed most was being taken seriously. She really is the "grand old lady" of the town, and when she starts reaching out to her former students who are now the movers and shakers of Staggerford, she realizes that she was never forgotten.
Hassler stages several scenes in which one or more of the characters experience an epiphany. Agatha touches people who felt neglected and ignored, which gains their everlasting loyalty. They come to honor her for who she is and was, and how she affected their lives.
At some points the plot seems to be on the verge of unraveling, but Hassler manages to pull the loose ends together. Without being sentimental, melodramatic or gloomy, he writes in a conversational style that is charming and real. He doesn't romanticize getting old and being alone or having to leave the comfort and security of one's home. He doesn't sugarcoat the difficulties inherent in meeting new people under conditions that one didn't necessarily choose. Yet he manages to give the reader an honest portrayal of his characters and his message.
Agatha is a strong-willed, pious woman who is as devoted to her church as she is to doing good and living a charitable life --- despite the dark days. The supporting cast knows that bad things happen. All of them have experienced different kinds of hard times. Of this Hassler has said in the past: "I'm not sure that the optimism and the success of my characters in overcoming darkness is really connected to my religion. I think it's connected to a belief I have in the ongoing quality of life. People survive and are stronger for their suffering. It's just the feeling I have about life."
Those notions are the major thread in THE NEW WOMAN. Agatha is surprised and delighted when she finds her niche as the leader of a support group that over 10 months grows so large that the meetings are held in the high school gym. At the end of a long meeting, when Agatha is exhausted, she says: "I believe 'range of motion' applies to our psyches as well as our bodies. If we shut down parts of our thinking, we'll never get them back, and so you might say these [meetings] are my psychological therapy."
Jon Hassler infuses today's literary scene with a book that reflects small-town style, USA. He clearly sees teachers as heroes, friendship as a special gift, optimism as the anecdote to the blues, and aging as an opportunity to continue to grow as an individual. We are never too old to learn --- and if someone is willing to teach, all of us benefit.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Minnesota's Miss Marple, December 15, 2005
This review is from: The New Woman: A Staggerford Novel (Hardcover)
Agatha McGee, the protagonist of THE NEW WOMAN, will remind you of Agatha Christie's Miss Marpel. Miss Marpel had a certain arrogance as does Miss McGee. Miss Marpel reveled in gossip; Miss McGee wouldn't miss the Friday afternoon "coffee" sessions at Sunset Senior Apartments.
Unlike Hassler's fabulous textured, thematic novels STAGGERFORD, GRAND OPENING, and NORTH OF HOPE, this is an episodic work. It begins when Miss McGee, Staggerford's most revered former teacher, is forced to move from her house on River Street to a senior citizen's home. Almost immediately someone steals the diamond brooch she was given upon high school graduation. She accuses retired farmer John Beezer. He's so taken with her he doesn't seem to mind. After a week, Agatha moves back into her house on River Street, but when her volunteer housekeeper and lifelong friend, Lillian Kite, dies, she realizes she must move to Sunset Senior Apartments permanently.
Agatha finds her brooch; she'd misplaced it while unpacking. She apologizes to Beezer, then sets about reforming him. He has terrible table manners, can't speak proper English etc. Surprisingly, he's grateful. Beezer is the most interesting character in the book. When one of Agatha's friends at Sunset misplaces what she thinks is a winning lottery ticket, in Lillian's coffin, Beezer helps her dig it up, in below-zero weather. In the process we learn how to dig through frozen earth. In the next episode, Beezer's son kidnaps his daughter from his slatternly wife, getting Agatha in trouble in the process. In the final episode, Agatha forms a mental-health group with unforseen consequences. Beezer's sister, coincidentally the same woman who murdered teacher Miles Pruit of STAGGERFORD fame, is one of the participants.
Compared to Hassler's other novels, this is a very short work, only 214 pages, but it has a certain Garrison Keillor hominess about it, and it's good to hear from Agatha again.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"'Range of motion' applies to our psyches as well as our bodies...If we shut down parts, we'll never get them back.", November 11, 2006
With warmth, gentle humor, irony, and repeating characters, Jon Hassler has kept readers fascinated with life in Staggerford, Minnesota, for nearly thirty years. Friendships, loyalties, gossip, and jealousies--all the raw material of smalltown community activity--come to life in the relationships among the characters, many of whom have been featured throughout the twelve Staggerford novels. The 87-year-old grande dame of Staggerford, Agatha McGee, formerly a teacher at St. Isidore's school, has finally moved out of her house along the river and into the Sunset Senior Apartments, where she finds the closeness of her neighbors to be stifling, at times.
When her diamond brooch turns up missing, Agatha looks carefully at her neighbors, trying to figure out who might have taken it. As always, Agatha's opinions reflect her strict world view--she is appalled at John Beezer's eating habits, at Big Edna's crassness, at the decline in grammatical speech, and at the general loss of civility she remembers from the old days in Staggerford, but she cannot imagine who might have taken her brooch.
A twenty-year-old magazine article about an MX missile, ready to fire, which the US government once mounted on a train and moved around the country each night, inspires Agatha and her friend Lillian to create an "MX Box," into which each resident puts his/her valuables, to be moved around the complex in the care of a different resident each night. Hassler's gentle, wry humor devolves into dark humor here when the box is "misplaced" by a forgetful resident--everyone knows where it is, but no one knows how to retrieve it, and the resulting farce is black humor at its hilarious best.
Plot is not Hassler's primary concern as he recreates the lives of Staggerford's elderly residents. His characters are believable, their dialogue is pitch-perfect, and his elderly readers (especially) will undoubtedly see themselves in the characters. Events are realistic and often poignant. Two long-time residents die. Agatha finds herself in charge of a young kidnapped child. Her visits to the local school leave her appalled at the lack of order, but her decision to set up a support group at the apartment complex meets with enormous success.
No world-shaking events occur here, but Staggerford is not a world-shaking community--just a typical Midwestern, middleclass town observing the commonplaces of everyday life. It is these commonplace observances--and celebrations of the lifestyle they represent--that make Hassler's novels so winsome, nostalgic, and beloved. n Mary Whipple
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
|
