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A review by lelia_t
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
4.0
Nine-year-old Laura McRaven, whose mother has recently died, arrives in the Delta to stay with her mother’s people, the Fairchilds, on their cotton plantation. There’s an extended clan of Fairchilds, who have been a “ruling class” family for generations, and Laura jumps right into the chaotic life of many children, many aunts and uncles, many servants, as they prepare for cousin Dabney’s wedding to the Fairchild’s overseer Troy Flavin.
That makes the book sound straightforward, but it’s complex, layered and dreamy as our perspective shifts among characters, particularly among the white women. There are whole paragraphs where the meaning seems opaque to the logical reading mind, yet speaks on deeper levels. Like the whirlpool in the Yazoo River - the one some characters are afraid of and others have swum in - the book can pull you into its depths. We feel this pull in the Fairchild clan itself, which has a mythos that sucks people in - for better or worse - while leaving others stranded outside the magic circle. There’s so much in this book - the class and racial divides, family expectations, women’s privileged and burdened role in family and plantation life, innocence, belonging, idealized motherhood, and the impending changes in Southern culture - and the whole time you’re feeling these realities rather than thinking them. And of course there’s the wounded golden boy, Uncle George - based at least partly on Welty’s longtime love-interest and then friend John Robinson - a legend in the family, fondly relied and doted on, capable of kindness and surprising callousness.
It’s a book I could read again and again, beautiful and deep, sweet and filled with a yearning that’s difficult to pin down.
That makes the book sound straightforward, but it’s complex, layered and dreamy as our perspective shifts among characters, particularly among the white women. There are whole paragraphs where the meaning seems opaque to the logical reading mind, yet speaks on deeper levels. Like the whirlpool in the Yazoo River - the one some characters are afraid of and others have swum in - the book can pull you into its depths. We feel this pull in the Fairchild clan itself, which has a mythos that sucks people in - for better or worse - while leaving others stranded outside the magic circle. There’s so much in this book - the class and racial divides, family expectations, women’s privileged and burdened role in family and plantation life, innocence, belonging, idealized motherhood, and the impending changes in Southern culture - and the whole time you’re feeling these realities rather than thinking them. And of course there’s the wounded golden boy, Uncle George - based at least partly on Welty’s longtime love-interest and then friend John Robinson - a legend in the family, fondly relied and doted on, capable of kindness and surprising callousness.
It’s a book I could read again and again, beautiful and deep, sweet and filled with a yearning that’s difficult to pin down.