The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 13 May 2008
by Eudora Welty
It may have been Cormac McCarthy who said that no book was worth writing (or reading) if it didn't deal with life and death. Certainly, the very best books seem to have this element, even if it is merely an undercurrent of feeling. The moments of life's greatest transistions are the moments of greatest drama and the moments in which we are most open to the truths of living and how those truths motivate us or change us. Eudora Welty, one of 20th century America's greatest novelists, was certainly aware of this when she wrote this compelling book.
Laurel McKelva Hand is a woman past 40 who lives in Chicago, where she is a professional designer and lives alone after being widowed during World War 2. She comes to New Orleans to see her father, Judge McKelva, who is in his seventies and is facing the first real medical setback of his life. He undergoes surgery for a detached retina, and the doctor's admonition that he not move at all for a few weeks has him feeling demoralized. Laurel looks after him and reads to him from Dickens. The Judge doesn't get much sympathy from his second wife, Fay, who is younger than Laurel and who laments how little fun she is having in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. She positively resents the man's need for recovery. His fragile state and her relentless badgering drive the Judge, finally, into his grave. After his death, Laurel and Fay return to Mount Salus, Mississippi with the Judge's body. There, in the family home, there will be a wake and a funeral, and the flood of memories that overwhelm Laurel in her grief. Laurel is swept up in the good-natured grieving of her old friends, and the folks who were the Judge's friends, as well as the friends of her mother, who died many years before. Fay, however, is a shrill outsider. She is from Madrid, Texas, and her family is portrayed as a raucous bunch of country rubes as compared to the demure and proper Southern gentlefolk of Mount Salus. Fay has already begun planning how she will empty the house of the Judge's, and particularly his late wife's, possessions. Laurel clearly resents this invasion of her family's life and its past. Fay couldn't be more ill-suited to her position. She is finally driven away, or at least not stopped from leaving with her family. But she will be back. In the meantime, Laurel is left alone in the house and with the memories that ooze from the very walls. What ensues is a compelling meditation on memory and loss, delving into our concern with what we have left when all others have gone. Laurel relives some of her memories and those of her beloved mother. She sifts through some of the relics and decides which can not be left in Fay's insensitive hands. In the end, she realizes that memories do not live in things, but in our minds. How we remember, how we feel about those memories, this is how the past continues to survive. In the end, Laurel is ready to leave the house to its ignominious future with Fay. The book is incredibly beautiful. Welty powerfully evokes the atmosphere of this town and of the people gathered to grieve the sudden death of one of its best. Laurel's affection for her parents and her honor for their lives is palpable and evocative. And Welty's gift for description and metaphor make the book a real pleasure to read. Highly recommended.
(For this book, Welty was awarded the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)
Also by Welty: [One Writer's Beginnings] [The Ponder Heart]