Ivan's Reviews > The Optimist's Daughter

I read this about 35 years ago. This past week I was thrashing about trying to find something to read to would hold my attention (a problem for me sometimes). I picked this up and decided to read the first few pages. I was hooked almost immediately. This is a novel about loss. The writing is languid and lovely and the articulation of scenes and emotions are communicated with the precision of a gem cutter. Laurel is the protagonist. There has been a death in the family - but Laurel has lost much more than a parent. The character of Fay is a brilliant representation of a type both selfish and facile - she seemed like so many folks we're encountering these days - angry, opinionated, defensive, and just plain ignorant. This all felt very real to me - very true.

Loss and acceptance are the themes.

“But the guilt of outliving those you love is justly to be borne, she thought. Outliving is something we do to them. The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantasies of living. Surviving is perhaps the strangest fantasy of them all.”

“It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world, calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again ₋ but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due.”

There are writers who try to "spell" regional accents - I hate it when they do this. I think it is much more effective when - like Welty - they use regional colloquialisms. I'm southern by way of California - been in north Florida 40+ year (note the distinction: north Florida is the deep south - kin to Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi - whereas central and south Florida are homogenized melting-pot America) - anyway, we don't faint, we "fall out"; we "might could" go or stay or do it or not do it; we're "fixin" to "leave out" in just a minute. We still say "yes ma'am" and "no sir" and "Y'all have a blessed day." I enjoy reading colloquialisms - they give me a sense of "place" - that's one of the qualities I appreciated most about this book - I felt like I was there, like I knew these folks.