On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Kaye Gibbons
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1842-1890
- Setting: Virginia, North Carolina, and Massachusetts
- Principal Characters: Emma Garnet Tate Lowell, Clarice, Samuel Tate, Alice Tate, Whately, Maureen, Henry, Randolph, John Tate, Quincy Lowell, Martha, Mavis, Charlie
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Children, Family or family life, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, Slavery or slaves, Marriage, Death or dying, Old age or elderly people
- Locales: Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts
On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, Kaye Gibbons’s novel of a Southern woman’s inner dialogue, stretches from 1842 to 1890. Her narrator, Emma Garnet Tate Lowell, creates the South in sometimes painfully personal terms. As the book opens, Samuel, Emma’s father reels about the plantation kitchen. He has murdered a slave, and in spite of his belligerent protestation that he “did not mean to kill the nigger,” the violence has clearly debilitated him. His direction, at that moment, comes from Clarice, a black servant who superintends but does not help him clean up as he...
[The entire page is 1991 words long]
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