The Optimist's Daughter [Hardcover]

Eudora Welty (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Franklin Library (1986)
• ASIN: B000IAPHOQ
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,171,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Work Designed To Please The Mature Mind, May 14, 2002

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Optimist's Daughter (Paperback)

At the time of her death, Eudora Welty of Mississippi was generally considered America's greatest living author. Although Welty made her reputation with and is best remembered for her remarkable short stories, she also wrote a number of novels, including THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

As seen in reviews posted here, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER provokes a very divided response in readers. This largely due to the nature of the work, which is character rather than plot driven, and which although quite short requires a slow reading in order to develop clearly in mind. Perhaps more so than in any other work, Welty writes "below the surface" here: the story itself, which concerns a daughter who returns to her tiny Mississippi home town when her respected father dies, is quite slight--but Welty endows it with a surprising depth of meaning, transforming what would otherwise be pure character study into a sharply focused and deeply moving statement on the nature of love, loss, life, and the passage of time we must all endure.

Although written in a deceptively simple style, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER is the mature work of a master. Given the nature of the piece, I do not think it can be much appreciated by young adults; one requires the perspective of at least middle age to fully grasp both its delicacy and beauty. But once that perspective is acquired, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER should move immediately to the top of every serious reader's list. Strongly recommended.

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Complex, March 13, 2000

By 

Eric Brotheridge (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Optimist's Daughter (Hardcover)

The sentence from this book that best describes it is: "Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams." What a beautiful piece of writing! I am so thankful for growing older and maturing. Having done so, this book can truly be enjoyed. It is about maturing, deepening, remembering, and honoring. It is about relationship with the persons in one's life, with the past and with the future. Obtrusively thrust in the middle of all this is Fay and the Chisom family, representing all the possible ugliness, crassness, uncaring and unfeeling meanness of today's world.

I could write that there is little that happens in this book...on the surface, but as in all truly rich experiences, one has to go deeper and reflect to see the richness. After slowly enjoying the first 160 pages or so, the last 10 pages explode in complexity and interaction and meaning. Those pages comprise one of the finest endings to a novel that I have read.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eudora Weltys The Optimists Daughter, May 7, 2001

By 

Wendy Wehmueller (Arlington, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Optimist's Daughter (Paperback)

It is no great surprise that Eudora Welty received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for the novel The Optimist's Daughter. Welty masterfully creates a journey through the heart of a daughter who loosens her grasp on the past while embracing the future after the death of her father, a beloved judge. The author uses motifs to reflect the past versus present theme, and symbols, and metaphors to add drama to the overall plot through insights into the characters. Eudora Welty uses the "judge and jury" metaphor through out the novel to keep the theme of the novel progressing. The metaphor describes Fay's judgement of Laurel's visit during her father's hospital stay, and like wise Laurel's judgement of Fay `s resentment towards Becky. The metaphor is once again used after the funeral when the garden club, Becky's friends, sentence Fay to be the outcast of the town. This metaphor is the core of the novel's struggle for the truth. Welty uses numerous symbols to aid her writing. The author uses birds to signify death, every time a bird enters a reference to or an actual death occurs. Black also symbolizes death and demons, whether they are people or inner thoughts. The black clothes at the funeral symbolize the morning that accompanies death. Welty also uses a breadboard in the last chapter that symbolizes Laurel's love for her husband and her past. The motif of the mountains is the most apparent in the novel. Laurel's mother Becky never felt more alive than when she was in the mountains. The mountains are where Becky McKleva drew her strength, hence why she wanted to return to her beloved West Virginia Mountains when she was on her death bed. The mountains are also the key to unlocking parts of Laurels past which aid her in her quest for happiness in the future. Eudora Welty masterfully created an insight into America's growing trend of the second wife syndrome in this novel. Her motifs, metaphors, and symbols made her flashbacks into the past easier to understand, and aided in the understanding of the characters. Through the judgements of Laurel and the town Fay's character is revealed, and in the end the past is resolved and the future is just beginning.