Customer Reviews

The Woodsman's Daughter

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

While it is true that The Woodsman's Daughter is a story of women struggling against the oppressions of late-19th/early 20th century South Georgia society--and a covincing one, making us feel the effects of that oppression in nearly every aspect of these women's lives--it is far more nuanced and complex a novel than such a description suggests. Rubio never reduces her characters to simple victims and oppressors. "Power, pure power," Dalia says, observing the beauty of her own body in the mirror. And it is. She has power over men's reputations, men's hearts, and men's ideas of themselves. With a near Flaubertian refusal to romanticize, Rubio allows her characters the ignorance that inevitably leads to such power's abuse. Male sensitivity is regarded as weakness, and male weakness is deplorable (Rubio makes female disgust palpable with her prose): it is a mistake, as Anais Nin once wrote, that nearly doomed our culture. The tragedy it brings upon these characters feels inevitable. Men--fathers, husbands, sons--who are too broad-spirited to fit the increasingly narrow ideals of what a man should be are cast into the shadows, where they remain like invisible presences, loving but mostly unloved, while the charlatans take the spotlight and abuse their position with increasingly cruelty. One feels especially for Monroe, who is both charlatan and man, and whose dilemma seems everyman's, as what drives his wife and children away from him seems not only the excesses of work or alcohol or sex, nor even the disease (blown up into all the proportions of Sin, as it is sexual) with which he afflicts them, but the audacity and drive from which these flaws result, and without which he too might very well have remained half-invisible shadow, unnoticed and unloved.

The concluding reconciliation makes one wish that these people, women and men alike, had had more courage to empathize--a courage that this novel seeks to give.

I found The Woodsman's Daughter to be a work of deep understanding of the conflicts and conditions that threaten our lives. Rubio is both insightful and understanding of the advocacy of the issues that break people's hearts such as abortion, marriage and the family.

Dahlia's trials of childhood neglect, sisterly love and her lifetime of hard choices and heartbreaking moments all made for a most believable and absorbing read. The tribulations of lifetimes of hard living left Monroe, Dahlia and Clara Nell with unresolved wounds that were often inflicted on others as well as themselves.

The characters struggled but faced the tensions of their lives in familiar and often dangerous ways. Thank you Ms Rubio and I look forward to more afternoons of pure enchantment with another of your novels.

Ms. Rubio has outdone herself. I enjoyed "Icy Sparks" very much but it was a fast and hilarious read with lots of heart. This novel has to be read slowly to appreaciate its tightly woven themes and its rich language. One is there with Dalia every step of the way as she courageously lives her flawed life--your mind may be ambivalent about her decisions but you heart is always rooting for her. Exquisite!

The Woodsman's Daughter reads as if the author wrote three separate stories years apart, and then tried to bind them together with Elmer's glue. The first part, which deals with a stereotypical drunken Southern father (please! can we get any more banal?) and his family, is mildly interesting. The second part focuses on the surviving daughter, Dalia, left penniless, who determines to marry for money and of course, ends up well-off but with an abusive husband. The third part highlights Dalia's daughter, who turns into a rebellious "flapper" and outrages her mother completely. Through a totally Gothic turn of morbid events, most lives get ruined in the end. Not recommended unless it's the only book at the vacation condo. Stick with Anne Rivers Siddons for better-written versions of the same story.

Just what you want in a novel -- big characters, dramatic action, love, hatred -- The Woodsman's Daughter has it all. The story encompasses generations and catches you up from the first sentence. You'll marvel at the details describing life in post-Civil War Georgia as well as the depth of feeling bringing the characters to life. If you're looking for a great novel -- this is it.

One of the worst books I have ever read in my 50 years of literacy. Absolutely dreadful. I should have known when I saw the jacket: a woman's figure from the wrong era pasted onto a pine farm.

The book is overwritten and under-imagined. The characters are cardboard and impossible to view with empathy or even affection--apathy is more like it. (Why must novels about my native South be peopled by bizarre, perfervid gothic types?) Unimportant action is minutely detailed, while major movements are left unrealized. The dialogue is artificial, imperfectly accented, and stagy; in fact, the entire book is stagy, as if it were written with film in mind. (God help the director.) Imagery is strained and distracting, and the observations of nature are sometimes inaccurate. There are even grammar errors (shudder).

In all, this novel was not worth the (pine-derived?) paper on which it was printed.

In one moment of carelessness, Monroe Miller throws away his family legacy and must live with what he has wrought, tormented by his family's rage and disdain. Dalia, the eldest, once her father's favorite, grows to hate the man who has cursed his family with his rash deeds. The prose is finely detailed, reflective of the post-Civil War era in Georgia, particularly the family of a turpentine farmer made rich by his investments in trees, but poverty-stricken in his relationships with those he cares most about. But this is a trans-generational story and each generation carries its burdens.

In the first part, Monroe Miller is a tormented alcoholic whose family detests his crude manners and embarrassing drunkenness. His wife is addicted to laudanum, which isn't surprising, considering the birth of their second daughter, who is born blind and afflicted, thanks to the father's self-indulgence. The only really strong character is Dalia, a would-be Scarlet O'Hara, but without any of the bravery and innate strength. Dalia lives in anger and despair, the subject of part two, when she moves to a small Georgia town in search of a husband, leaving her family's tattered history far behind. When Dalia marries and has a child, a boy, Marion, she is unable to connect to him emotionally. Later a daughter is born, Clara Nell; the mother lavishes all her attention and over-protectiveness on her girl. Although she attempts Scarlet' O'Hara's "fiddle-dee-dee" when dealing with town gossips, Dalia suffers for their mean-spiritedness, while flaunting her own willful ways.

Part three deals with Clara Nell's' life as a new bride, the tensions between the daughter's husband and Dalia, provoked by a disturbing history and Clara' Nell's realization that few choices are available to women. In her spirited bid for independence from Dalia, Clara Nell has gotten herself into yet another untenable situation. Throughout the novel, each generation rails against the injustices heaped on women in a man's world, all subjected to constraints on their personal freedoms. Unfortunately, these constraints fuel victimhood rather than strength. It is very difficult to care about these singularly unattractive characters, a drunken father, a laudanum-addicted mother, one blind and afflicted daughter and her bitter sister. Men are cast as villains, almost without exception; even Dalia's well-intentioned second husband fades into the background during her childish manipulations, but he is always there to pick up the pieces and sooth his wife's feelings.

Although the novel makes a strong case for the powerlessness of women at the beginning of the 20th century, the dialog, internal and external, is burdened with unhappiness and dysfunction, allowing not a single breath of hope for any of the characters. Dalia is the one constant figure in each generation, but she never escapes the scars of her childhood, every challenge but another opportunity to exercise her self-will. Never does she learn from past mistakes. There is an audience for this book: it falls somewhere between the promise of Wally Lamb's This Much I Know is True and the excesses of Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees. For this reader, Rubio's self-indulgent generational saga fails to inspire with its tenacious vision of despair. Luan Gaines/2005.

A stunning, moving epic novel set in nineteenth century Georgia, 'The Woodsmans Daughter' is sure to touch your heart if you have one. The nineteen hundreds isn't the time of women's liberation or 'capable' females, yet the story is about ladies with cores of steel and men with spines of jellyfish.

'The Woodsmans Daughter' spans three generations, following our tragically spoiled heroine Dalia Miller from a young girl, to a young woman, to a mother, and lastly a grandmother. Dalia has the gutsy will of Scarlett O'Hara but her selfishness makes Scarlett look like Melanie. Life is cruel, and doesn't spare feisty Dalia any of its ruthless surprises.

The book is divided into three parts, first focusing on Monroe Miller, Dalia's father, and his hard life as a turpentine farmer. He finds the atmosphere of his self-made Millertown, deep in the woods of longleaf pines, more congenial that his fancy house with his laudanum addicted wife and two willful daughters.

The second part is Dalia's life after growing up, managing her own survival in a world not designed for single women. The last part is about Clara Nell, Dalia's daughter, who completely embodies the spirit of her willful mother.

I don't want to give away too much, but the languid pacing of this family's triumphs and tragedies make for a surprisingly fast read. Cousin Juliet particularly intrigued me, mentioned but not introduced until Clara Nell's life account.

Dalia's life progresses, prospers, blossoms, withers, declines, and rebuilds under the spellbinding prose of author Gwyn Hyman Rubio. Not one moment is left dull under the vivid canvas of her words. This is truly a beautiful book in all aspects: languid, interesting, suspenseful, tragic, uplifting, and filled with fully fleshed out characters that you will either love or hate ... and often pity. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!

The old adage holds true- don't judge a book by its cover. I pulled this one from the shelf thinking the winsome lady wandering in the pines might hold some enticing secret. Sadly, if that lady is the lead character, Dalia, her only secret (and a thinly veiled one at that) is that she is a frivolous, loafing whiner.

The first section of the book drags as you, the reader, are forced through endless descriptions and accountings of the turpentine industry. As if this isn't bad enough, you have to see it through the eyes of a drunkard, a drug addict, a heartless wench, and then even through the eyes of a blind coward. Thankfully, most everyone dies off before the second section sets in. The second section, however, gives us no respite from the relentless onslaught of self-obsession emanating from the characters. Dalia schemes her way into a husband who rewards her by being cruel, demanding- horror of horrors!- his conjugal dues. There's no way to feel sorry for Dalia's "plight" because she is such an unsympathetic character. Somehow she manages to rid herself of her husband, though exactly how I do not understand. It seems he wastes away; his flimsy and poorly developed character just shrivels up from apathy. Alas, his biological contribution to the narrative, the affection-starved Marion, apparently resembles his father enough to make Dalia treat him like dirt. Less than dirt, honestly, because Dalia at least notices the "red clay" her father was always tracking into the house. The most loving contact Marion has with his mother in the entire book is when she lays a hand on his shoulder.

The third section almost shows some promise when precious Clara Nell tries to bond with her brother, but it disappoints as well. The letter Marion sends his sister is probably the most interesting part of the entire book, but it is so out of context with the rest of the narrative it seems like a joke. The narrative "twist" of the woodsman's grand-daughter falling in love with the offspring of his old rival reads like a last-ditch effort to breathe life into the story. Spoiler alert- it doesn't work.

Back to the library this one will go, whereupon I hope it is re-shelved behind books on children's crafts and macrame, never again to blight the eyes of another reader.

Despite the hardships and troubles of Rubio's characters, the writing is tremendous. Both physical and emotional details are brought to life through Rubio's pen. There is a glimmer of light at the end of the book that reminds us there is always hope and love in the world.