Ellen Foster - Softcover

GIBBONS Kaye

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860496059 ISBN 13: 9781860496059

Publisher: Virago, 1998

Synopsis

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy'. So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbons's much acclaimed first novel. The story of an eleven year old orphan, driven to desperation by some of the wickedest relatives in literary history, this is the story of her battle for survival.

About this title

Review

Oprah Book Club® Selection, October 1997: Kaye Gibbons is a writer who brings a short story sensibility to her novels. Rather than take advantage of the novel's longer form to paint her visions in broad, sweeping strokes, Gibbons prefers to concentrate on just one corner of the canvas and only a few colors to produce her small masterpieces. In Gibbons's case, her canvas is the American South and her colors are all the shades of gray.

In Ellen Foster, the title character is an 11-year-old orphan who refers to herself as "old Ellen," an appellation that is disturbingly apt. Ellen is an old woman in a child's body; her frail, unhappy mother dies, her abusive father alternately neglects her and makes advances on her, and she is shuttled from one uncaring relative's home to another before she finally takes matters into her own hands and finds herself a place to belong. There is something almost Dickensian about Ellen's tribulations; like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or a host of other literary child heroes, Ellen is at the mercy of predatory adults, with only her own wit and courage--and the occasional kindness of others--to help her through. That she does, in fact, survive her childhood and even rise above it is the book's bittersweet victory.

From the Publisher

"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy."

So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbons's first novel, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Wise, funny, affectionate and true, Ellen Foster is, as Walker Percy called it, "The real thing. Which is to say, a lovely, sometimes heart/wrenching novel...[Ellen Foster] is as much a part of the backwoods South as a Faulkner character and a good deal more endearing."

Edition details

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1860496059
• ISBN 13: 9781860496059
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 130