Jenny (Reading Envy)'s Reviews > The Optimist's Daughter

I had a strange reading experience with this book. I'd read a chapter, not connect with it at all, set it aside on my bedside table for a while until I finished the other books sitting around.

Somewhere around page 70, several months later, something clicked. I think it was the description of the funeral and really hooking into Welty's understanding of the intricacies of southern etiquette, spoken but more importantly unspoken (yet expected.) It really solidified it for me when she describes books and how they connected her to her father, who has just died.

The neighbors respect her father for his strength while dying of cancer, while his young second wife is silly and has spurts of dramatic mourning that are not what people want to see.

"There's no telling when she last had a decent home-cooked meal with honest vegetables," said Miss Tennyson Bullock. "That goes a long way toward explaining everything."

Welty uses a lot of southernisms that are very familiar to those of us living in the region - saying someone "liked-to" like "He liked-to bled to death a mile from home." "Fixing to _____." This is most definitely a southern tale.

A few other bits that stood out in my first reading:

"The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much."

"She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams."

"For every book here she had heard their voices, father's and mother's. And perhaps it didn't matter to them, not always, what they read aloud; it was the breath of life flowing between them, and the words of the moment riding on it that held them in delight. Between some two people every word is beautiful."