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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Gilbert Public Library | F ADAMS, ALICE, 1926- | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Pinehill, North Carolina, the years of the Depression. Into this small Southern town comes the Bairds, fugitives from the burdens of their life in Connecticut. To the people of Pinehill, the Bairds seem glamorous. To the Bairds, Pinehill holds the hope that they will regain their innocence, and once again be rich in love.
Author Notes
Alice Adams was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1926 and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After graduating from Radcliffe College, she married and had a son in 1951. Adams later recalled her late 20s and early 30s as the worst years of her life. After divorcing her husband in 1958, she worked at secretarial and clerical jobs to support herself and her son.
Adams published her first work of fiction when she was about thirty, and was more than forty-years-old by the time she began making a living solely as a writer. In 1982, in recognition of the twelfth consecutive appearance of her work in "Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards," Adams won a special award for continuing achievement. The only other previous winners were Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike. A New York Times best-selling author, many of Adams's books, among them A Southern Exposure and Almost Perfect, focus on love and on women struggling to find their place in the world. Other works of Adams include the novels Medicine Men, a story that explores the relationship between doctors and their patients, and Superior Women, a compelling tale of five women who come of age during World War II.
Now a San Francisco resident, Adams's work has been compared for Southern flavor to that of Flannery O'Connor and for sophistication to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Her deft prose both sensual and sophisticated, Adams, in her ninth novel, leaves the San Francisco setting of her recent books (Almost Perfect, etc.) to explore the intrigues and desires of the residents of a small North Carolina town. The country is in the grip of the Depression when the bright and beautiful BairdsCynthia and Harry, and their young daughter, Abigailmove to Pinehill. ``They are, as they might half-ironically put it to each other, on the lam'' from their too demanding and expensive life in Connecticut. In fact, there is much half-ironic about the novel, including Cynthia's secret reason for choosing Pinehill: it is the home of her favorite (and rumored to be sexy) poet, Russ Byrd. As the Baird's determinedly climb Pinehill's tiny but formidable social ladder, they encounter people thoroughly entrenched in the communal hierarchy and in their environment; at parties, the cleverly unattributed dialogue gives the sense that the town is of one mind. And yet each of the dashing characters is distinctDolly Bigelow, the pretty gossip; Jimmy Hightower, a writer manqué who shares Cynthia's fascination with Russ Byrd; Odessa, Dolly's servant, who seems as suspicious of Cynthia's passive disapproval of Southern segregation as she is of Dolly's overt racism. Meanwhile, Russ neglects his wife, who has a breakdown; has a passionate affair with the town beauty, who bears him a son whom she passes off as her younger brother; and eventually becomes himself ``helpless among the major passions of women''including Cynthia's. Such melodramas feel witty, given Adams's intelligent characterization, and are at equal pitch with her descriptions of Pinehill's flush, distracting beauty. As always, her forte is the subtle misunderstandings and meshings of human relationships, viewed with both irony and compassion. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In this sprawling but amiable ninth novel, Adams (Almost Perfect, 1993, etc.) returns to the time (1930s) and place (North Carolina) of some of her earlier and, arguably, best writing, most memorable in short stories such as ""Roses, Rhododendron"" and ""Verlie I Say Unto You."" Harry and Cynthia Baird, along with their young daughter Abigail, move from New England to Pinehill, North Carolina, in the years just before the WW II. They've chosen Pinehill as a place to start over--leaving behind old flirtations and bad debts--because they sense that they'll seem exotic, even glamorous, to the small-town southerners and, alas, because Cynthia is secretly fascinated by Russell Byrd, a famous poet who lives outside of town. Once arrived, the Bairds are swept into a life that's both more complicated and sweeter than anything they'd expected. Deciphering the southerners, white and black, adulterous and faithful, poet and nymphomaniac, turns out to be an impossible and thoroughly irresistible occupation--so irresistible in fact that when it comes time for the Bairds to leave Pinehill they can't really tear themselves away. There are many detours to the plotline here, but, in all, Adams guides us deftly along. She's great at gossip, and she creates characters with all her usual flair (and overabundance of parentheses!). If some of the Pinehill people seem too archetypical to be true--one southern belle, one Jewish intellectual, one sullen black maid, etc.--others make up for it, especially moody, confused Russ Byrd, his poor wife Sally Jane, and, most of all, the Bairds, who surprise even themselves by turning out to be not nearly as shallow as they thought they were. Not a new recipe, but a nice mix of sugar and spite. Adams is at home here, finally, and it shows. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Few contemporary writers have Adams' ability to find just the right telling detail to advance a plot, depict a locale, or bring characters to life. She's in fine form in her new group novel. It's 1939, and Harry and Cynthia Baird flee their unsatisfactory life in Connecticut for a fresh start in Pinehill, North Carolina. They are immediately caught up in their neighbors' busy and complicated lives. Adams juggles many stories and characters: the famous poet Russell Byrd, who has unilaterally changed his wife's given name from SallyJane to Brett and fathered five children he's not much interested in; Brett, whose depression leads her to seek treatment from incompetent anti-Freudian psychiatrist Clyde Drake; rich and unhappy Esther Hightower, who is frustrated by the lack of interest Pinehill pays to the plight of the German Jews; the Bairds' adolescent daughter Abigail, whose outrage at the mores of her new southern friends echoes her mother's. By setting the novel in the period leading up to World War II, long before the civil and women's rights movements, Adams lets the reader experience a time when people's lives were determined by their gender, their religion, and the color of their skin. Adams' perfect pitch for dialogue has never been put to better use. (Reviewed August 1995)0679444521Nancy Pearl
Library Journal Review
During the Great Depression, Harry and Cynthia Baird and their daughter, Abigail, run from their New England roots to Pinehill, North Carolina, hoping to escape from debt, social obligations, and boredom. Instead, they stumble into a small-town soap opera with its own rules of conduct they struggle to understand. The mystery of the Southern way of life unravels as they settle into its rhythms. Their "Southern exposure," brief and idyllic, broadens them and helps them to approach the future with a new point of view. Adams's (Almost Perfect, Knopf, 1993) insightful descriptions and dialog make engaging reading. The characters are both complex and complete. Recommended for general readers.Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
