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A review by maryehavens
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
3.0
I'm glad I revisited this book. It does require quite a bit of attention because there's tons of characters and Welty uses the same names again and again (Battle, Uncle Battle, Little Battle, e.g.). Someone said this is a "jumbled mess" and yes, it is messy/chaotic. But you have so many people gathered together for a wedding that it can't help but be chaotic! The family structure and the "servant" (read: former slaves) structure also makes it chaotic. I found it difficult to remember why this kid was here and was this kid really Ellen and Battle's child and how many children did they have anyway and how old is this aunt??
I find it interesting that the Goodreads description says it was set in 1923 because I had a very difficult time pinning down the time period. Denis and George served in the war and I initially thought that was WWI but other family members kept referring to the Civil War. The other stumbling block was the amount of servants on the properties. I don't know much about the transition of African-Americans from Civil War to Reconstruction to, like, the 1890s. I imagine that there was a slow turnover from slaves to former slaves to servants. And someone else also mentioned something about Reconstruction so it seemed fresh-ish in their mind. It was difficult for me to figure out.
In terms of Southern, LORDY, this was SOUTH-ERN!!
I did enjoy reading this book, if only to really dig into Southern literature, but it requires a lot of attention. Kind of like the Fairchilds themselves, TBH. :)
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I'm going to need to come back to this one. It just couldn't hold my attention. I started over twice. Willing to try again but not now.
I find it interesting that the Goodreads description says it was set in 1923 because I had a very difficult time pinning down the time period. Denis and George served in the war and I initially thought that was WWI but other family members kept referring to the Civil War. The other stumbling block was the amount of servants on the properties. I don't know much about the transition of African-Americans from Civil War to Reconstruction to, like, the 1890s. I imagine that there was a slow turnover from slaves to former slaves to servants. And someone else also mentioned something about Reconstruction so it seemed fresh-ish in their mind. It was difficult for me to figure out.
In terms of Southern, LORDY, this was SOUTH-ERN!!
I did enjoy reading this book, if only to really dig into Southern literature, but it requires a lot of attention. Kind of like the Fairchilds themselves, TBH. :)
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I'm going to need to come back to this one. It just couldn't hold my attention. I started over twice. Willing to try again but not now.