A Virtuous Woman (Oprah’s Book Club)
May 25, 2008
When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was twenty and he was forty. She was the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry and he was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. She was newly widowed after a disastrous marriage to a brutal drifter. He had never asked a woman to do more than help him hitch a mule. They didn’t fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life.
Kaye Gibbons’s first novel, Ellen Foster, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the praise of writers from Walker Percy to Eudora Welty. In A Virtuous Woman, Gibbons transcends her early promise, creating a multilayered and indelibly convincing portrait of two seemingly ill-matched people who somehow miraculously make a marriage.
Customer Review: Time waster
So, let’s see. A virtuous woman is one who’ll marry anyone who asks her to, one who’ll leave considerate parents without a backward wave because a man with an attractive face suggests doing so, one who decides to take up a distasteful habit to prove she’s capable of vice. Each of the characters in this one-dimensional book is either exclusively good or exclusively bad. That choice of character template is lazy and insulting to readers who’re aware that humanity can’t be sorted so effortlessly. This review is based on the first ten chapters of the book. I wish I’d had the good sense to quit reading beyond chapter one. This is the last book I’ll select based on its inclusion in Oprah’s “list.”
Customer Review: Just kind of ok…
The story was fine and it was a quick read with some interesting moments but overall I would not recommend this book unless you just need something to read on a quick flight. I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about. I believe if you go into this book thinking it’s some amazing novel you will be disappointed. But if you are looking for something light to read without becoming engrossed you will be fine. I certainly wouldn’t call this a page turner and have a whole list of books I would recommend before this one. Buy from here…
This site offers tips and guides how to open a community book club.
