October 2010: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
November 2010: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
No meeting in December
January 2011: Abigail Adams by Woody Holton
February 2011: Straight Man by Richard Russo
March 2011: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
April 2011: In the Neighborhood by Peter Lovenheim
May 2011: Last Call by Daniel Okrent
June 2011: A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary 1785 - 1812 by Laura Thatcher Ulrich
July 2011: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
August 2011: House of God by Samuel Shem
September 2011: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
As always, we have a varied and exciting collection. Happy reading and we hope to see you on the second Monday at the Penfield Starbucks, 7:30 pm.
A few years ago we read the David McCullough bio of John Adams. I thought that I knew Abigail pretty well from that, and wasn't too intrigued with the thought of a bio that just concentrated on her. And, with an author named Woody(!), I did not have the highest hopes for this month's selection.
ReplyDeleteI was pleasantly surprised. Here are a few thoughts, not in any particular order, on things from the book that stuck with me:
**I liked the fact that he traced a couple of themes through her life instead of just telling us the bare facts. The idea of her not only getting around the common law that kept her from owning property but also putting her expectations in writing to remind folks to fulfill them was one of the themes he discussed in the intro and then followed to the end. It was especially interesting because several years ago we read local author Miriam Monfredo's Seneca Falls Inheritance, the plot of which revolved around The Married Women's Property Act of 1848, which gave NY married women the right to own property and inherit.
**I liked the fact that she did not come across as a saint. In fact, she sounded like the Mother-in-Law-from-Hell in some ways. It sounds like you always knew where you stood with her, and that sometimes it was in the doghouse. I would not have wanted to marry one of her sons.
**I was surprised to see that the story of her daughter Nabby's breast cancer was presented differently in this book from the way it was in McCullough. McC described her mastectomy in gruesome detail (as I remember, anyway), her pain without anesthesia, etc., and I was expecting a repeat of that, which I wasn't sure I could read again. But Holton just says that laudanum was the only painkiller available, and goes on. He seems much more interested in the fact that her husband was off in the boonies for most of her illness, which I found pretty amazing too.
**The whole issue of the family dynamics looms very large in this story, and I thought it was both fascinating and disheartening. Fascinating because I thought about how dependent on family you were for social contacts in that time, and if you didn't get along with them, it could be pretty bad. Also, how utterly dependent women were on the economic situation of their husbands. I know that one of the author's points was that Abigail tried to provide some independence for her female relatives, but it only underlines how tenuous life was for most women.
Disheartening because you could hear the pain coming through the letters, and with people so distant and communication and travel so slow, it could be years (or never) before you got the chance to get together and talk.
**I've run out of time for now. Maybe more later. I will be eager to read other comments and talk on Monday. Thanks Joanna and Kaylie!
I'm only half way through the book, even though I've had two months to read it. Having read the David McCollough biography of John, I thought I knew them both pretty well. I didn't think quite as highly of him after reading this book. I thought a lot of his comments to Abigail were pretty snarky and although he respected her as an individual, I guess the prevailing attitudes of the time were pretty ingrained in him.
ReplyDeleteI liked how Holton expanded on the definition of words and phrases as they were used at the time. I think a lot of times reading letters from past eras can be misunderstood.
I'll definitely finish the book, but then I think I'm done with the Adams Family