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fitzreadsbooks's review against another edition
dark
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
catbrigand's review against another edition
5.0
I felt as though Ivy was someone I'd known my whole life. What an enchanting story.
book_concierge's review against another edition
5.0
Ivy Rowe is born around the beginning of the 20th century in the mountain cabin where her parents have settled. She is in the middle of a pack of eight children and we learn about her life through the letters she writes, beginning at age 12 to a pen pal in Holland, or to her teacher, and continuing through her long life as she writes to her friends and family over the decades.
What a marvelous character! Ivy is curious and adventurous, intelligent if lacking education, forthright, determined, and self-reliant. She makes mistakes and deals with them. She finds love in the wrong places and then with a good man. She observes the workings of the world as it changes around her but remains true to her tiny corner and her mountain ways. She raises children – her own, her neighbor’s, her grandkids. She helps her neighbors, advises her siblings, dares to dream big, and resolves to live well and true to herself. And through it all she writes these wonderful letters, full of all the emotions of life – joy, despair, hope, dejection, enthusiasm, resignation and love, always love.
The landscape is vividly portrayed and practically a character. I’ve driven through some of these mountain areas in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, but even if I had never seen them with my own eyes, I think I would have a clear picture in my head based on Smith’s descriptions. I could hear the bees buzzing, smell the fragrance of a summer meadow, feel the leaves crunch underfoot on an autumn afternoon, or smell the smoke from a chimney fire welcoming me home on a cold winter evening.
Smith also uses a vernacular dialect throughout. However, Ivy’s language (and spelling) improve as she grows from a 12-year-old with limited education to a grown woman who loves to read. There were a few times when I really had to stop to think before I could puzzle out what a word was. For example, Ivy mentions “hunting sang” and continues writing about “sang” … and it wasn’t until she mentioned that it’s only the root, “which looks like a headless man” that I finally realized that she was talking about ginseng. Still, I really enjoyed the colloquialisms Smith used, which gave a definite Southern flavor to the text.
What a marvelous character! Ivy is curious and adventurous, intelligent if lacking education, forthright, determined, and self-reliant. She makes mistakes and deals with them. She finds love in the wrong places and then with a good man. She observes the workings of the world as it changes around her but remains true to her tiny corner and her mountain ways. She raises children – her own, her neighbor’s, her grandkids. She helps her neighbors, advises her siblings, dares to dream big, and resolves to live well and true to herself. And through it all she writes these wonderful letters, full of all the emotions of life – joy, despair, hope, dejection, enthusiasm, resignation and love, always love.
The landscape is vividly portrayed and practically a character. I’ve driven through some of these mountain areas in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, but even if I had never seen them with my own eyes, I think I would have a clear picture in my head based on Smith’s descriptions. I could hear the bees buzzing, smell the fragrance of a summer meadow, feel the leaves crunch underfoot on an autumn afternoon, or smell the smoke from a chimney fire welcoming me home on a cold winter evening.
Smith also uses a vernacular dialect throughout. However, Ivy’s language (and spelling) improve as she grows from a 12-year-old with limited education to a grown woman who loves to read. There were a few times when I really had to stop to think before I could puzzle out what a word was. For example, Ivy mentions “hunting sang” and continues writing about “sang” … and it wasn’t until she mentioned that it’s only the root, “which looks like a headless man” that I finally realized that she was talking about ginseng. Still, I really enjoyed the colloquialisms Smith used, which gave a definite Southern flavor to the text.
chris10b's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. Ivy Rowe has a voice that will stay with you long after you finish reading her story.
mary00's review against another edition
In the beginning, this book reminded me of These Is My Words, with its epistolary format and backwoods dialect. However, for me, it quickly went downhill and I decided that it wasn't worth my time to finish it when there are so many books that I really want to read.
For as much as I read of the book, it seems like it is well-written and that the characters are very tangible and fleshed out, especially Ivy. Yet, I did not care for the tone. It was a bit too fatalistic and I did not care for the prevailing idea that unfaithfulness is a natural and fine way of life, albeit with consequences.
In short, this book may be well-written and many will enjoy or even love it, but it just was not for me at this time.
For as much as I read of the book, it seems like it is well-written and that the characters are very tangible and fleshed out, especially Ivy. Yet, I did not care for the tone. It was a bit too fatalistic and I did not care for the prevailing idea that unfaithfulness is a natural and fine way of life, albeit with consequences.
In short, this book may be well-written and many will enjoy or even love it, but it just was not for me at this time.
jgintrovertedreader's review against another edition
5.0
I'm an Appalachian mountain girl. I felt like I knew Ivy from the first sentence. She truly seemed to come to life on the pages. I came along a few generations after her time, but I felt like she could be one of my grandmothers. She talked the way I probably still talk :-) Education was important to her, and she was very smart, but she never really got a chance. I guess, really, I felt like I could have been reading family history. That says a lot about a novel.
Re-read June 28, 2009
There's not all that much to add. This is a book that touches my heart and it's hard for me to write about those.
Ivy Rowe is this book. She's spunky, she makes mistakes, she loves, she lives, she's stubborn, she's wrong sometimes; in short, she just feels real to me in a way that very few characters do. Oh, I write fairly often about how I love this or that character, but Ivy feels like someone I know. The novel is written in a series of letters that Ivy writes to others. You get inside her head and stay there. You follow Ivy from the time she's about 10 years old on. There's a whole progression of wide-eyed optimism to teenage carelessness and invincibility to repentance to more carelessness to acceptance and reflection. I live a whole other lifetime when I read this book.
Lee Smith chose to have Ivy write in our southern Appalachian dialect and she gets it just absolutely perfect. I literally "hear" Ivy with my grandmother's voice, and I hear the the preacher Sam Russell Sage as my uncle. Ivy's sister Silvaney doesn't really speak, but she reminds me of my grandmother's sister, Sue. Do you see the connection I make to this book?
It might be a little hard to read at first because Ivy's letters are full of childish mistakes and she spells our dialect phonetically, but don't be put off by that. It gets better and I think you'll understand it anyway. But for a story about a woman who makes her share of mistakes, but lives a life worth living, pick this one up. I think you'll enjoy it. And if you happen to be from the southern Appalachians, I think you'll feel the same strong connection I do. This book has a permanent place in my heart and soul.
Re-read June 28, 2009
There's not all that much to add. This is a book that touches my heart and it's hard for me to write about those.
Ivy Rowe is this book. She's spunky, she makes mistakes, she loves, she lives, she's stubborn, she's wrong sometimes; in short, she just feels real to me in a way that very few characters do. Oh, I write fairly often about how I love this or that character, but Ivy feels like someone I know. The novel is written in a series of letters that Ivy writes to others. You get inside her head and stay there. You follow Ivy from the time she's about 10 years old on. There's a whole progression of wide-eyed optimism to teenage carelessness and invincibility to repentance to more carelessness to acceptance and reflection. I live a whole other lifetime when I read this book.
Lee Smith chose to have Ivy write in our southern Appalachian dialect and she gets it just absolutely perfect. I literally "hear" Ivy with my grandmother's voice, and I hear the the preacher Sam Russell Sage as my uncle. Ivy's sister Silvaney doesn't really speak, but she reminds me of my grandmother's sister, Sue. Do you see the connection I make to this book?
It might be a little hard to read at first because Ivy's letters are full of childish mistakes and she spells our dialect phonetically, but don't be put off by that. It gets better and I think you'll understand it anyway. But for a story about a woman who makes her share of mistakes, but lives a life worth living, pick this one up. I think you'll enjoy it. And if you happen to be from the southern Appalachians, I think you'll feel the same strong connection I do. This book has a permanent place in my heart and soul.
mischievous_monkey's review against another edition
1.0
I can see why people like this book. The main character has a lot of spunk and her worldview is sometimes humorous. I just wasn't caught up in the story enough to slog through the dialect and dreary setting.
kduffy's review against another edition
5.0
This has become one of my favorite books ever. Its written in epistolary form and the letters by the main character, Ivy, begin when she is a child. Ivy is from rural Virginia and her writing and grammar are poor. This made the reading difficult at first. As Ivy grows, her grammar improves and the reading becomes easier. But by that point, the reader is so completely engaged in the beauty of the story that the poor grammar and slow reading is forgotten. Ivy is an amazing woman with an abundance of talents and faults making her one of the most interesting characters I've ever encountered.
suzywatson's review against another edition
1.0
DNF. Too much work to read a book written in the vernacular.
eliansley's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0