Gibbons, Kaye (Vol. 88) - Andrew Rosenheim (review date 25 November 1988)
Andrew Rosenheim (review date 25 November 1988)
SOURCE: "Voices of the New South," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4469, November 25, 1988, p. 1306.
[Rosenheim is an American novelist and critic. In the following excerpt, he examines the "narrative tone" in Ellen Foster, contending that "the voice is distinctly Southern … [and focuses] our attention as much on the story as the voice telling it."]
In Kaye Gibbons's first novel, Ellen Foster, detachment is the keynote of an eerily removed narrative tone. The narrator is Ellen herself, recalling a personal history of repeated tragedy and abuse. When the heroine says at the beginning of the novel, "I had me a egg sandwich for breakfast", some readers may groan, anticipating the rural, folksy, semi-literate Southern dialect that has degenerated by now into self-caricature. Yet, unselfconscious, undramatic, never aggrandizing, the quietness of the girl's account subtly...
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