Tennyson [Hardcover]

Lesley M. M. Blume (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2008 | Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

It’s 1932, the Depression. Things are evening out among people everywhere. Tennyson Fontaine and her sister Hattie live in a rickety shack of a house with their mother and father and their wild dog, Jos. There is no school, only a rope swing in the living room and endless games of hide-and-seek in the woods on the banks of the Mississippi. But when their mother disappears and their father sets off to find her, the girls find themselves whisked away to Aigredoux, once one of the grandest houses in Louisiana, and now a vine-covered ruin. Under the care of their austere Aunt Henrietta, who is convinced the girls will save the family’s failing fortunes, Tennyson discovers the truth about Aigredoux, the secrets that have remained locked deep within its decaying walls. Caught in a strange web of time and history, Tennyson comes up with a plan to bring Aigreoux’s past to light. But will it bring her mother home?

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6–8—Emery has dumped his two daughters at his family's ghostly, crumbling ancestral plantation home with his peculiar sister and brother-in-law who are most unhappy to host the girls while he searches for his wife, who has left the family. The house itself seems to respond to the needs and fears of the sisters and begins to slowly draw 11-year-old Tennyson into its legacy through dreams of its past grandeurs and sorrows. The story is set during the Great Depression when the South is still reeling from the economic devastation of the Civil War. Tennyson is desperate to find her mother and hatches a scheme to reach her by having articles published in her mother's favorite literary magazine. Blume has an impressive command of the English language, but the story is too contrived. The manuscripts Tennyson sends to the magazine are written on old sheet music, so it's highly unlikely that a distinguished literary magazine would even consider such work. The characters run the gamut of Southern stereotypes, from the cruel white master and the silver-stealing slaves who appear in Tennyson's dreams to the aunt and uncle who are trying to get restitution from the federal government for losses incurred during the Civil War and a faithful retainer who is a descendant of the family's slaves. It's unfortunate that the author's considerable writing talent lacks a stronger plot.
Nancy Reeder, Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, Columbia, SC

From Booklist

The year is 1932. Eleven-year-old Tennyson Fontaine and her younger sister, Hattie, have grown up running wild, but that ends when their mother leaves without warning. While their father searches for her, the siblings stay at the Fontaines’ crumbling ancestral home, Aigredoux, once a wealthy Louisiana plantation. There, Aunt Hattie and Uncle Twigs live in the shadow of the past, holding tight to false hopes of restoring the family fortune. The precocious and sensitive Tennyson begins dreaming of her Civil War ancestors and is swept into their dark history of greed, betrayal, and pride. She begins writing down this history and publishing it in her mother’s favorite literary magazine, but this plan to connect with her missing parent has unexpected consequences. The Fontaine history is complex, evoking horror and sympathy; by contrast, a subplot involving Tennyson’s haughty New York editor feels jarringly cartoonish. Still, many readers will respond to this novel’s Southern gothic sensibility, especially Blume’s beautiful, poetic writing about how the past resonates through the generations. Grades 4-6. --Krista Hutley --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375847030
• ISBN-13: 978-0375847035
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,373,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lesley M. M. Blume is an author, journalist, columnist, and cultural observer based in New York City. She did her undergraduate work at Williams College and Oxford University, and took her graduate degree in history from Cambridge University, where she was a Herchel Smith fellow.

Ms. Blume has authored three critically-acclaimed children's novels for Knopf. Upon the release of her third novel, Tennyson, reviewers and critics placed her in the same class as writers Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and Truman Capote ("Brilliant, unusual writing."--The Chicago Tribune). Ms. Blume's first collection of short stories, Modern Fairies, Dwarves, Goblins, and Other Nasties, was published on September 14, 2010.

As a journalist, Ms. Blume began her career at The Jordan Times in Amman and Cronkite Productions in New York City. She later became an off-air reporter and researcher for ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel in Washington, D.C., where she helped cover the historic presidential election in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and countless other events and topics.

Now writing full-time, Ms. Blume covers culture, media, politics, and fashion (and sometimes the thorny politics of fashion). Her work has appeared in many publications, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, and The Daily Beast, among others. She co-created and served as founding editor of The Window, Barneys New York's online fashion and culture magazine, where she remains editor-at-large; she is also The Huffington Post's longtime contributing style editor.

On November 1, 2010, Chronicle Books released to great acclaim Let's Bring Back, a book by Ms. Blume based on her popular column of the same name for The Huffington Post. Starting in 2012, Chronicle will release a series of topic-specific editions of Let's Bring Back, as well as a line of ancillary products.

Ms. Blume lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and their French bulldog, who was a featured character in Ms. Blume's bestselling book, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters.

Sadly, most of her heroes and heroines are dead or fictional. They include but are not restricted to: Diana Vreeland, Marlene Dietrich, Isak Dinesen, Katharine Graham, Zero Mostel, Royal Tenenbaum, the Marchesa Casati, Oscar Wilde, Elsa Schiaparelli, Anthony Blanche, Flora Post, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lee Miller, Edith Wharton, and Collette.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars remarkable...., January 9, 2008

By 

mimagirl "Miss Erin" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tennyson (Hardcover)

Tennyson is a remarkable book. Remarkable in the sense that I don't think I've read any other book like it. The best way I can describe it is by giving you three keywords: Gothic + Southern + Writing. It's sort of a bizarre little book. The writing is very stark and vivid and dark; the characters odd but lovable. Parts of it made me laugh, parts made my heart ache. Sometimes Aigredoux and its occupants seemed ridiculous and absurd, sometimes they were frightening. Oh, how do I say this. It's not the sort of book you can describe. It's like a distant memory that you want to lose yourself in, but at the same time you're afraid that if the characters are hurt in any way, you will be, too. My reaction when finished wasn't a loud, bubbly, "I loved it!!" - more of a quiet, solemn, "I liked that. Yes, I did. Very much."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories New and Old, January 29, 2008

By 

Little Willow (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tennyson (Hardcover)

The year is 1932, and the Depression is running as deep and wide as the Mississippi. Tennyson is eleven, her younger sister Hattie eight, and they have never known nor needed anything outside of their home at Innisfree. They have stories and schooling from their gentle, loving father Emery. Their mother Sadie is a frustrated writer and poet. A wild dog named Jos comes in and out of their house whenever he pleases. It is a happy house.

The girls often play hide-and-seek in the woods, the soles of their feet thick as hide, the sound of their laughter filling the air, but they always come home at dusk. One night, their mother doesn't come home. Just like that, she is gone, having left by choice for parts unknown. Tennyson doesn't know where her mother is, but she knows why: "Because she's like Jos . . . She's wild and she doesn't really belong to us." Tennyson, also a writer, has been aware of her mother's discontent for years, so though her leaving hurts, it comes as no surprise.

So that he may search for his wife, Emery must leave his daughters with his sister Henrietta at a colorless Louisiana house called Aigredoux (pronounced Aag-reh-do). He tells them to pretend that they are actresses in a play, to mind what Aunt Henrietta says, and to be brave. He promises that he will be back soon with their mother. And then he, too, is gone.

Aunt Henrietta has little tolerance for her nieces' dirt-and-tear-streaked faces, appalled by their old clothes and lack of manners. She considers herself to be a lady and her crumbling, faded house a castle. Her husband Thomas, aka Uncle Twigs, is more concerned with his role as the president of the Louisiana Societ the Strict Enforcement of the Proper Use of the English Language than his supposed job as caretaker, and their housekeeper Zulma is as no-nonsense as Henrietta. The young sisters get by, for they have always been thick as thieves, with Tennyson looking after Hattie since they were little.

Tennyson begins to dream in detail. She sees her ancestors' tragic wedding take place on the same grounds she now lives, then later scribbles down the entire story on the back of old sheet music. If she could just get this published in her mother's favorite magazine, The Sophisticate, she knows her mother will read it and come back home. The only person who knows of her new plan is Zipporah, the gentleman at the local post office. As Tennyson continues to have these big dreams, readers will be drawn further and further in, turning pages until they reach the impactful conclusion. Afterwards, the book's appendix offers a family tree and history as well as song lyrics and poems noted in the story, including some by the protagonist's namesake, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

In her third novel for young readers, Lesley M.M. Blume has woven ancestral tales together in one finely-spun Southern story. With the Gothic elements illuminated by history and known to be dreams, this is not a horror story and will not frighten young readers. Rather, like young Hattie (who finds Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass to be more interesting than history), the dreams will make them curious and keep them reading. Instead of being outright haunted by ghosts, Aigredoux would appear to be haunted by memories, by the loss and destruction seen by the previous generations. Their faces are captured in portraits on the walls, their lives in Tennyson's dreams, and Tennyson's story is just as important as theirs. This is how and why and when she transitions from an intelligent child into a young adult.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars evocative; provocative, June 17, 2008

By 

bhr "birdwoman" (Bryn Mawr, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tennyson (Hardcover)

This is the novel of Tennyson Fontaine. Tennyson is an old soul in an 11 year old body. The setting is the deep south, mostly during the depression, though we do have flashbacks to the civil war.

Tennyson and her sister, Hattie, have been left in the care of their aunt in a delapitated plantation manse. Their father has gone off to find their mother, a selfish cow of a woman who is only a mother in the biological sense, because she has run away in pursuit of her writing muse.

Tennyson doesn't have to run off... she has plenty of muse. She attempts to bring her scattered family back together by telling the story of the history of her family and the house they treasured. Both stories - the one in the nineteenth century and the one in the twentieth - are full of the details that bring a picture to life in your head.

The characters - from the precocious Tennyson to the narcissist-turned-empathetic character, Bartholomew - are well drawn and full of life.

This is an excellent read for an adult or a young teen. There are moral lessons a plenty, and, at the same time, a child hero who just gets it right (even though she does make some mistakes.)

(*)>