Fair and Tender Ladies (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Lee Smith (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0345383990 | ISBN-13: 978-0345383990 | Publication Date: June 1, 1993

"A TOUR DE FORCE"
- Los Angeles Times

"The story of Ivy Rowe, born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountain enclave of Sugar Fork, is told completely through letters that Ivy is forever writing family and friends...Lee Smith exhibits her own understanding and affection for the traditions of the Appalachians. She is at home with the down-home speech and ways of her characters. They come vividly to life, and none more so than Ivy, whose voice and heart and humor sustain Fair and Tender Ladies."
- Philadelphia Inquirer

"Because of Ivy's narrative ability and her zest for living, Fair and Tender Ladies opens for us like a flower with a gloriously unexpected center. There are unforgettable characters...Few readers will be dry-eyed as they watch this extraordinary woman disappear around that last bend in the road."
-Chicago Tribune

"These beautiful letters...display Ivy's soul up close, the way a just-caught firefly illuminates a jar. So real does she become that it is hard to believe that Ivy did not actually live to write her letters."
-USA Today

"This is about a moving a work of literature as has ever been written." ANNIE DILLARD

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers will be thoroughly captivated by Ivy Rowe, the narrator of this epistolary novel, and will come to the end of her story with a pang of regret. Smith ( Oral History , Family Linen ) has produced her best work here, creating a fully rounded heroine and other vivid characters who inhabit Virginia's Appalachia region. The letters begin around the turn of the century when Ivy is a child living with eight siblings on the family farm on Blue Star Mountain. Written with quaint misspellings and in the vernacular of Southern speech, the missives reflect the harsh poverty of farm life, as well as the simple beauties of the land: "This is the taste of spring," her father tells Ivy, and she never forgets it, even when the family must move to the boom town of Majestic after her father's death. Ivy's talent as a budding writer is recognized early on, but just as she is about to realize her dream of going North to school, she is betrayed by her passionate nature. Though pregnant and "ruint," she marries a childhood friend who takes her back to the family homestead, where she bears several children and endures the endless toil of a farmer's wife. Just when life seems drearily predictable, she succumbs in middle age to an irresistible passion that brings tragic consequences. Ivy is a woman of bewitching appeal and endearing faults: bright, with a poet's eye and soul; spunky, impetuous, sensual and proud. Following her heroine over seven decades, Smith conveys the changing conditions of life in Appalachia, during which time, as Ivy laments, "everybody has took everything out of herefirst the trees, then the coal, then the children." In the old tradition of oral storytelling, Smith has fashioned a dramatic, magical, poignantly true-to-life tale. Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA-- Ivy Rowe, Virginia mountain girl, then mother, wife, and finally, "Mamaw," writes letters "to hold on to what is passing." Her story tumbles out in words that are colloquial and sometimes misspelled as she pens letters to her family and friends throughout her long life. Although her attendance at school is sparse, the teachers encourage her, believing that she is exceptionally gifted in language. As a teenager, she thinks that she does not want to have children "as they will brake your hart." But have them she does, a process which makes her "bones screech," but she comes to see that "children swell up your heart." She learns the difference between lust, "a fiery hand in the vitals" (as in Jane Eyre, a book to which she often refers), and love, which she finds with her husband Oakley. Readers will savor many passages of this novel. On the electrification of Bethel Mountain ("a lovely lady's necklace laid out"), or the invention of birth control pills ("the greatest thing since drip dry"), and many other matters, Ivy writes with a verve and immediacy which prove that her creator, Lee Smith, is a storyteller supreme.
- Keddy Outlaw, Harris County Public Library, Houston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (June 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345383990
• ISBN-13: 978-0345383990
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Moving!, August 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Fair and Tender Ladies (Mass Market Paperback)

I picked up this title while reading another review on the book "Gap Creek" By Robert Morgan. Which I also enjoyed. Once I read the reviews on this book I couldn't wait to read it. When I began reading Ivy Rowe's letters I could not stop and when I did stop I was still thinking of the things she had written all through the day. I grew so close to her. I laughed and I cried. Her voice & hands will wrap around your heart and stay with you long after you read the last page. This is truly my best read of the year 2000. I borrowed this particular book to read but I plan to buy a personal copy for many more years of pleasure. Thank you Lee Smith for enlightening my life through Ivy Rowe.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lee Smith's best book, April 2, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fair and Tender Ladies (Mass Market Paperback)

I'll read anything by Lee Smith, but this is her best. It's a saga, the chronicaling of a child's (as she grows to old age and death) Appalachian life in a cabin 'up a holler.'
Rich with loving detail, philosophy, and the indications of the passing of time not only for the protagonist but also for her community and the country itself, it'll make you laugh and cry and sigh.
Read it, if you haven't already!

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delight!, April 3, 2001

By 

Theresa Mcdonald "Terri McDonald" (new orleans) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fair and Tender Ladies (Mass Market Paperback)

This book was a dream to read. The main character, Ivy Rowe, seems just like an old Auntie or neighbor or someone everyone who grew up Southern would have known. She is a cut up. Her life was not an easy one, but she remained fairly optimistic throughout. It was a sweet and very touching book and it was extremely well written. The way Ms. Smith wrote the dialect was impecable. It was as if someone were telling you a story in your ear rather than reading pages in a book. I was truly transported to all the mountains and towns she writes about in this book. Now I cannot wait to sink my teeth into some of her other works.