Now in November - Hardcover

Josephine Johnson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671204890 ISBN 13: 9780671204891

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1970

Synopsis

Brilliant, evocative, poetic, savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) depicts a white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the thirties. The novel moves through a single year and, at the same time, a decade of years, from the spring arrival of the family at their mortgaged farm to the winter 10 years later, when the ravages of drought, fire, and personal anguish have led to the deaths of two of the five. Like Ethan Frome, the relatively brief, intense story evokes the torment possible among people isolated and driven by strong feelings of love and hate that, unexpressed, lead inevitably to doom. Reviewers in the thirties praised the novel, calling its prose "profoundly moving music," expressing incredulity "that this mature style and this mature point of view are those of a young women in her twenties," comparing the book to "the luminous work of Willa Cather," and, with prescience, suggesting that it "has that rare quality of timelessness which is the mark of first-rate fiction."

About this title

About the Author:

JOSEPHINE W. JOHNSON, (1910 - 1990), was the author of 11 books of fiction, poetry, and essays. NANCY HOFFMAN is associate provost of Brown University.

Review:

In 1934, Josephine Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for her first novel, Now in November. A bleak and beautiful work, it tells the story of a Midwestern farming family and their desperate efforts to make a living. Like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (published several years later), it portrays the unrelenting harshness of hard work and drought set against the life-giving beauty of the land and the fierce determination of its people. Margret, the narrator of Now in November, and her family come to the farm when she is a young girl; ten years later she tells of her family's fight to pay off their mortgage and keep their land: "There was a bitterness in sowing and reaping, no matter how good the crop might be... when all that it meant was the privilege of doing this over again and nothing to show but a little mark on paper." Always struggling, always tired, never secure, they still hear the constant refrain from outsiders: "You farmers have got stuff to eat anyway. That's something, ent it?" -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1970
• ISBN 10: 0671204890
• ISBN 13: 9780671204891
• Binding: Hardcover