Customer Reviews

A Virtuous Woman

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Here'a wonderful, basic story of heartfelt love. There was something about Ruby from the first day Jack saw her at the picnic table where all the migrant workers met before work. Ruby Pitt was a woman that bore her share of crosses.
This story follows Jack's love for his wife through their marriage, through Ruby's illness and beyond.
It's a sweet story that will pull at your heart strings and I have to say, it had me crying at one point til I couldn't see through the tears.
You will love Ruby and Jack. You'll want to take their hands and help them. And there are some characters that you just won't like at all! Some truely mean people.
This is a quick read and a very enjoyable, hard to put down book. I strongly recommend reading this book. It's just plain old fashioned love and tenderness between two good human beings and the struggles they endure.

The first book I read by Gibbons, Ellen Foster, was really impressive. So when i picked up The Virtuous Woman, I was naturally anticipating more of the same. The story centers around a man named Jack who, at 40, falls in love with and marries Ruby, only 20 and already widowed. According to the back of the book, the main focus is their intense love for each other. While the book was interesting to read and very easily finished in a few hours, I find that I am left with more information about the neighbors, the landlords, Ruby's first marriage, Jack's years of work... everything else except Ruby and Jack's life together. This seems odd considering Gibbons speaks through the couple individually from chapter-to-chapter. One would think I would have ample information about their life together yet I do not feel as if I do. I don't want to say it was a bad book because it kept my attention and I enjoyed the plot. It just seemed a bit bland. Also, Ruby never consults her parents about any of the important decisions in her life (decisions made at 18, 19 and 20) nor does she ever live independently. She just sort of makes decisions without thinking and then hopes for the best. So, although she has a big heart, I can't really respect her as a woman. All in all, I would say it is a good book that could use some polishing to make it a great book.

Beautifully written, A Virtuous Women, is the quiet love story of Ruby Pitt Woodrow, daughter of a rich farmer, and Jack Stokes, a tenant farmer. At first they seem an unlikely match, Ruby, although 20 years younger than Jack, is already widowed, Jack, unattractive and unsuccessful, has never been married. But both have had tough lives. Ruby is alienated from her parents due to her brief marriage which was a disaster. She is working as a maid when she meets Jack. Jack has never had much, although his dream is to own a piece of land. Together they find, if not what they were looking for, a sense of completeness.

The book is written in first person narration with both Jack and Ruby narrating alternate chapters (except the last chapter which is written in the third person). This technique helps make both characters seem real. For me, personally, Jack was the character I most cared about, mostly because we know from the very beginning that Ruby dies and we see that Jack is lost without her.

This is one of those simple, quiet kind of books where there is little action or plot, just the story of two people who come to love and care for each other. Yet, it's the kind of story that will stay with you long after you've read it.

This is a story told in two voices.
One is Ruby's...kind,beautiful Ruby, who happens to be at the right place at the right time when she meets Jack Stokes. The opposite of her abusive, drinkin, womenizin first husband. Ruby tells us how Jack takes her away from all that dysfunction, promising her a decent life, caring for her, treating her like the lady she is.
Jack devotes himself completely to Ruby, gives his heart to her, showing his love in unique ways. For instance, buying her a mule!

He isn't the best looking man, or the smartest...but that was enough for Ruby.

Then there's Jack's voice. Jack is a man after my own heart. I couldn't help thinking...this book could have just as well been called, "A Virtuous Man"
40 yrs old when he sets eyes on Ruby sitting under a pecan tree...He says, "now that's a girl I could marry."
And after those eyes meet hers, nothing is the same. Everything afterwards begins and ends with Ruby.

I adored Jacks narrative, his kindness, the love he expressed to Ruby. After Ruby dies, the only thing keeping him going is wishing and hoping she comes back...laying next to him in bed, her skin touching his skin, smelling of lavender, and eating her usual dish of yogurt.

Gibbon's gives us other memorable characters also, like Little Fran, who is the devil dressed as a fat woman.
She gives up Mavis, who is hired when Ruby dies to help around the house but mostly helps herself to orange candy and soda and breaks the toilet seat.

I enjoyed the book, but the 4 star rating is for Jack. His voice makes the story much more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

In my opinion, this book was certainly not a must-read or a "rare gem" or a highly-recommendable book, as the earlier people who reviewed this book wrote. Neither is it a book that is so horrible it can't be finished, or one that damns Oprah's selections forever (though I must say I don't let daytime talk show hosts dictate my book selections), as more recent reviewers leaned.

First of all, I'm shocked by all of the reviewers who seem to be equating a depressing book with one that's not worth reading. Some of the best books ever are quite sad. To all those people, I say: go buy a magazine, a trashy romance novel or a comic book. Furthermore, although I did almost cry a couple of times, I didn't find this book depressing at all. It was a sad story--of Ruby's abuse and then of her dying--but the love between Ruby and Jack made this more of a love story than anything else. I liked the switching back and forth of narrators, and I especially liked that Ruby and Jack were speaking from different time periods, too. I liked reading about Jack's life following Ruby's death in one section, and then reading about Ruby preparing for her death in the next. I found her preparation of months' worth of food for Jack touching, and it was very clear throughout how much the couple loved each other. Whether this was based on true love or on need, as some reviewers suggest, is debatable, but does not speak to the strength of the connection between them, which I felt was very powerful.

I think a lot of Southern literature is tough for readers from other parts of the country/world, and this novel is no different. However, isn't that why people read? To learn about experiences not just of people and surroundings very similar to their own, but of different types of people from different parts of the world, with different lifestyles, perspectives, vocabularies, accents, values, interests and lives?

I'm planning on reading "Ellen Foster," as that seems much better received.........

If you are looking for a quick love story then this is it for you. This book is short, but has all the makings of a wonderful book. The love, the sadness, the pain, the drama and more.

Ruby at a young age marrys a man whom she later realizes that she doesn't love, but when she thinks that she is going to leave something happens that she doesn't expect.

When she meets Jack she knows that is a really wonderful man and that he could make her happy, so when things happen to her she spends her time with Jack and ends up marrying him and being happy with him. But when Ruby gets some bad news she knows that things are going to be diffrent.

Jack has never been without someone he loves and can't picture life with the love his life Ruby. when Ruby finally does die Jack trys to live his life the way he trys to but eventally he finds that he can't be as strong as he wants to be.

This love story is sad in ways and also wonderful.

Within the short span of 165 pages, Gibbons is able to capture the psychological and emotional dynamics between Ruby and Jack. Listening to their alternating voices, I was able to delve deep into who these people are and how much they love each other. (I laughed, I cried, I read sections to my husband, etc.) And though some have disparaged it for being "depressing", I think what some are really disappointed with is the lack of a "happily-ever-after". Life is rarely a fairytale, with love riding in on a white horse, trumpets hailing, and rose petals falling. Instead, Gibbons shows us what "true" love in real life can be-something that endures and warms us even after the person has gone.

This is a love story about Ruby and Jack, two simple people who appreciate the kindness that the other has to offer. There is no great passion between Ruby and Jack, and their lives are quite ordinary and middle (if not "lower middle") class. Ruby is a heavy smoker, a habit that she picked up from her abusive first husband. Jack is a quiet and uneducated man who likes Ruby's bad cooking. When Ruby is diagnosed with lung cancer, Jack's whole world falls apart. Perhaps a psychologist would label the two as "co-dependent." In fact, Ruby and Jack have discovered the key ingredient that makes every good marriage work: Ruby takes care of Jack's needs, and Jack takes care of Ruby's needs. They give eachother comfort and strength, and it is a heartbreak when Ruby dies and leaves her aging husband to fend for himself. The alternating first person perspective works quite well, and the book is enjoyable. Why 4 stars and not 5? Like one reader, I must admit that there was a certain spark missing from this book.

A VIRTUOUS WOMAN is about Ruby Pitt Woodrow, who was only 20 when she met and married Jack stokes. He was her second husband, after she had been married to an abusive drifter named John Woodrow, who she met on her father's farm.

The story starts with Jack reminiscing about Ruby, and then goes into detail the life she lead and how she met Jack. Ruby's life as a child was one of ease, since her father owned a farm and they were comfortable. But she chose to marry one of the migrant workers on the farm and from there her life turned for the worse. Her first husband was abusive emotionally and physically and finally left her for a girl much younger than Ruby. She meets Jack shortly after her husband dies.

The book starts with her death (from lung cancer) and back tracks to her childhood, her first marraige, and then to happier years with Jack. Each chapter has a different narrator, switching back and forth between Ruby and Jack. I liked this method of story telling, although at first I found it confusing.

I recommend A VIRTUOUS WOMAN for the story content and the writing style.

This is not a detailed, engrossing novel. It is a very simple and short story of a man and woman who are married, almost out of convenience, who are secure and happy, but perhaps not "in love". It is apparent though, that they do love each other and find great comfort with each other.

They are country folk and the story surrounds their life together as the wife is dying of cancer. Although that sounds like a downer, her cancer and dying is not the focal point of the book as the story line dips back into the past and meanders about.

Many characters and stories and introduced, yet in a simple and short-storied way.

Very nice short read!