Customer Reviews

The Three Miss Margarets: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I started this book on the recommendation of a friend and couldn't put it down once I started. The titular Three Miss Margarets are fascinating women, described in beautiful detail by Louise Shaffer. There is a good old-fashioned mystery behind the secret the three women share, but I read the book not just to find out what they were hiding but to get to know them better. And I did. Some moments in their lives broke my heart, some ticked me off. But I always felt. It's a wonderful writer who can not just pique your curiosity but move you emotionally, and Louise Shaffer does just that. I've passed this book along to a number of friends and family members who have all shared the same opinion.

Not often am I moved to write a review of a book, even though I read constantly, but there was no question I had to write in for "The Three Miss Margarets." This book is outstanding in every way: the quality of writing, the story, the characters. Never has a story so well portrayed the strength and character of the women of the south. They have to make this into a movie, it is THAT good.

I certainly hope that Ms. Shaffer writes more like this one!

The Three Miss Margarets is an outstanding novel that keeps the reader turning pages into the night. While it could be called Southern gothic, it has a different plot twist that is totally unexpected. The characters are marvelous--surely they live just down the street; we know them all. The writing is crisp and clear, the dialogue and settings realistic, and the cliff hangers at the end of each chapter make it difficult to put the book down. I enjoyed this novel more than any I have read all summer--and I read a lot. Great job. I hope we hear more from Louise Shaffer.

By the end of Louise Shaffer's dazzling debut Southern-gothic novel, The Three Miss Margarets, one heartbreaking mystery is solved and another, far more puzzling one is presented: Where in tarnation has the author been until now? Yep, she's that good. Not only do the steel magnolias of the title form a ya-ya sisterhood whose secrets are truly divine, but in spinning a yarn that spans three generations, Shaffer creates an instant classic that is sure to be revered for at least as many decades. Take the book to the beach and dive right in.

I really liked the characterizations in TTMM. The author has a handle on fleshing out the population of her little southern town. She also has a good sense of interesting dialogue and plot. So many of the novels that I've read lately are either one or the other, and it was nice to get more than one facet in this book.

I would have given this book 4 stars had it not been for the ending. I was expecting more of a dirty-little-secret kind of revelation, but that's not what I got. In fact, it seems like the story was leading up to something really wham-bang, but the payoff was lacking.

Overall it was a good novel and Shaffer is a real talent.

Old Southern reticence is penetrated and old Southern secrets are revealed in dribs and drabs as Laurel and boyfriend Josh struggle to make sense of what Maggie, Peggy, and Margaret (the 3 Margarets of the title) will and won't reveal about their own pasts as well as that of their town. It all starts when Laurel spies the three old ladies huddling in a 'deserted cabin' and then later the body of a famous African-American geneticist is discovered in the cabin. Dum-de-dum-dum.
It's great.

Cold Sassy Tree fans have a treat in store. Louise Shaffer's Miss Margarets offers the strong narrative and intriguing characters that have made Olive Burns' novel a perennial favorite. This is one of those books you force yourself to read slowly because you don't want it to end. Pray for a sequel, and in the meantime give this book to friends--or those whom you wish were friends.(They will be after they read it!)

THE THREE MISS MARGARETS sweeps the reader into the deep south world of the title characters. Leap-frogging through time, the plot unfolds seamlessly. All the players are fully realized into living, breathing people. This novel, thankfully, lacks the hand wringing and whining of some other books of this genre. THE THREE MISS MARGARETS depicts characters of extraordinary resolve as their darkest secrets are exposed. From the first sentence to the last page THE THREE MISS MARGARETS will captivate you. I can't wait for the sequal or the movie!

Three old women, pillars of their community and intimate friends, bear the burden of a tormented past and a decision which haunts not only their relationship with each other but their capacity to face themselves. As Miss Peggy, Dr. Maggie and Li'l Bit wrestle with their consciences -- struggling to define the elusive ideas of justice, obligation and self-respect -- they invite the reader into their world, a place where race, sex and social class define life's possibilities and inform self-definition. Louise Shaffer's enthralling "The Three Miss Margarets" crackles with dramatic tension and vaults the reader in an engrossing saga of personal endurance, private tenacity and redemptive sacrifice. The novel's pace is fast, but not so fast as to compromise Shaffer's exeptional talent in depicting the human heart in conflict with itself and how that heart learns to heal itself despite and because of friends, history and disappointment.

Each of the five women who comprise the core of "Three" bears the scars of loss and heartbreak. The talented Dr. Maggie forsakes her sexuality to return to her childhood community; doll-like, Maggie's iron-bound will permits her to substitute service for personal joy and fulfillment. Li'l Bit, gigantic and homely, accepts her status of town pariah but compensates with insight, tolerance and an abiding passion for natural beauty. When Li'l Bit initially interviews for a position with Dr. Maggie, Li'l summarizes her self-image: "I'm not pretty...don't tell me I'm handsome in my own way. I can look in a mirror. I know what I see." Li'l also senses Maggie's differences when she tells the doctor that "being important...useful" is "the standard way for people like us."

This sense of singularity consumes the third member of this unusual friendship circle. Miss Peggy, the youngest of the three, has only a spectacular figure and smoldering sexuality to define her identity as a teen. That sensuality provokes pain, recovery and determination -- ingredients which also define Laurel, the illegitimate daughter of the town's reprobate floozy. Laurel's anger at life's unfairness and her unflinching need to discover the truth of her family's past compel her to intervene in the life of the three older women. Tied to Laurel's search is Vashti, the granddaughter of Dr. Maggie's African-Ameican childhood friend. The brilliant Vashti has paid a high price for her exceptional talent, a price which brings her home a final time to set the stage for confrontation with a tormented and repressed past.

Shaffer slowly peels away the facade of the three Margarets, and with each successive layer of truth exposed, resolution becomes more complicated. In this respect, the author turns the aphorism about truth setting us free on its head. The Margarets, Laurel and Vashti pay a terrible price for the truth, and though it may be liberating, a sequestered truth may have served them better than an honest accounting. How truth reconciles with lies, how proud women use the tools given them to combat sexism, racism and class prejudice, how love, reluctantly learned and eagerly embraced, gives courage and vision to the bereft are elegantly displayed in this marvelous novel.

"The Three Miss Margarets" satisfies Faulkner's wise description that literature must be of the heart and not the glands. Louise Shaffer demonstrates that our best literature explores the human heart in conflict with itself.

Spend a little time in the company of the fine folks of Charles Valley, and you'll never want to leave. This book has it all... from the feisty main characters, each of whom comes with an intriguing back story, to a long-buried secret and a writing style which lures the reader in from the very first page. Personally, I'm hoping the author plans to take us on another trip back to Charles Valley, because when this book ended, I felt as if I'd been on a lovely trip to a place I certainly did not want to leave. This is sure to become one of those books that the moment you finish reading, you'll want to tell everyone you know to read it... although you'll make them pick up their own copy rather than risk losing yours!