eBooks - Literature - Modern Fiction - Kate Walbert - Our Kind: A Novel in Stories
Our Kind: A Novel in Stories eBooks
by Kate Walbert
|
Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $12.00
|
|
Platforms
Windows PC, Windows Mobile 5.0-6.0, Pocket PC 2003 Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $12.00
|
|
Platforms
Palm, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Windows PC, Mac, iPhone/iPod Touch Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $12.00
|
Our Kind: A Novel in Stories Summary
| In her last novel, Kate Walbert wrote largely about the effects of World War II on the American girls and women who came of age at that time. In her new book, she continues to study that generation of women - from a different angle, and at a later point in their lives. In Our Kind, Walbert writes about a group of women who came into the quick rush of adulthood, marriage, and child-bearing all within the early 1950s - only to discover that it was not everything it had been made out to be. Employing a collective voice and narrating from the center of a group of 8 companions, Walbert subtly gets at the true feelings -- anger, disappointment, and vulnerability, as well as pride, victory, and a sense of escape -- of this unique culture of unflappable women. These are women whose futures were pre-decided for them: they would marry and have children and stay home, end of story. Occasionally they would entertain. What they wore and how they presented their homes, that would be what mattered. Only it wasn't enough. So they got divorced, all of them, and their children grew up, and now, women of a certain age with a certain amount of money, they are at a loss for what to do. This book is about what happened when they broke free of their chains, when they divorced the conventional lives for which they'd been bred. Feeling unmoored -- though they'd never confess it -- they cling to one another, to the existence of one another, as a source of stability and routine. They have not been raised to be individuals; they have always thought of themselves as one of a group - be it a family, a country club, or a nursing home. The irony is that these women aren't actually particularly close with one another. Even these friendships - like their marriages -- are more about cultural expectation, self-definition, and staving off loneliness. With a certain jaded sense of humor they daily convene as if to view the strangeness of their lot together. They wander through their small town see... |
|
|
eBooks - Titles - Authors - Literature - Modern Fiction - Kate Walbert - Our Kind: A Novel in Stories