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Title: My Home Is Far Away by Dawn Powell, Tim Page ISBN: 1-883642-43-4 Publisher: Steerforth Press Pub. Date: October, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: ORDER THIS BOOK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
Comment: I finished reading this in one day -- that's how gripping I found it. It's literary in the way that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather are literary -- the diction and syntax are polished, the setting is captured with precise details, but the plot comes through clearly -- and it's hard to put this down once you start to read it. This is my first Dawn Powell novel, but I intend to read all of her works after this amazing introduction.
Rating: 5
Summary: Coming of Age in Rural Ohio
Comment: Dawn Powell (1896 -1965) wrote novels about her youth in small town Ohio at the turn of the century and about New York City, where she spent most of her adult life. In general, Powell wrote the New York City novels, such as "Turn Magic Wheel", and "The Locusts Have no King" later in her career. They tend to be sharp satires. Her earlier Ohio novels, such as "Dance Night" and "Come Back to Sorrento", are marked, I think, by a depiction of small town life which is critical and bittersweet, as well as somewhat satirical, and by a restlessness and sense of frustration, ...
Powell worked for three years on "My Home is Far Away" which was published in 1944. She had difficulty with the book, writing and rewriting the various scenes as she tried to fictionalize her biography and turn it into a novel. The book appears in the midst of her New York novels, and it is a throwback in to her earlier books with its setting in Ohio, its focus on childhood, and its bittersweet tone. Powell intended this novel as the first of a three-part trilogy, but the other two volumes never materialized.
Most of Powell's novels seem to me distinctly autobiographical in tone and "My Home is Far away" is particularly so. It tells the story of a family, focusing on three young sisters, Lena, Marcia, and Florrie, their father Harry, their mother Daisy, and, after Daisy's death, their stepmother Idah. There are basiclly three parts to the story: the period leading to the death of Daisy, and intervening period in which the three girls are raised by their father and assorted other relatives, and a the period after their father remarries and the girls are subjected to a cruel stepmother. When they find they can no longer take the abuse, they leave home and come into their own lives.
The title of the novel, "My Home is Far Away" derives from an Irish song that the girls sing with their mother. The title well captures some of the rootlesness of the family as they move from here to there. It also evokes well the longing for a home life and for a stability which the family, and Dawn Powell, never had.
One of the problems with this book is diffentiating the characters of three young girls. On the whole, this is handled effectively. The Dawn Powell character is the middle sister, Marcia, who is plain but highly precocious. The older girl, Lena, is much more sociable and outgoing.
The family moved a great deal from one small Ohio town to another and to different places within various towns. The most effective scenes in the book for me were the pictures of many dingy, run-down hotels and small town back streets during which the girls spent much of their childhood. The father, Harry, was a travelling salesman who, for most of the book, has difficulty holding a job and spending time with his family. He professes to love his family, but doesn't provide well. He spends his time and money hanging around with his friends and, apparently, with women in various towns.
One key moment in the book occurs rather early in it when the girls' mother dies. This scene is beautifully told. Then we see Harry trying to shunt the girls off to various relatives until he finally attempts to care for them himself. The marriage to Idah brings Harry some stability, but at a terrible cost. Idah is a shrewish, jealous stepmother. The two older girls both leave home to get away from her.
This book has some slow moments, but it is a wonderful coming-of-age novel and gives a good picture of the rural midwest. It is good that Dawn Powell's novels are in print and readily accessible. It is intriguing to think how she might have proceeded in the remaining two projected volumes of her autobiographical trilogy.
Rating: 5
Summary: Triumph!
Comment: Dawn Powell was no whiner- and as this highly autobiographical novel attests, she had plenty of reason to complain! The story of her turn of the century Ohio childhood, is told through the viewpoint of Marcia, the gifted, plain, middle child of three motherless sisters. Despite a neglectful, absent and grandiose father, ( a child himself,) and a host of inadequate relatives, the girls are largely delighted with their world, which by modern standards is one of poverty and neglect. The book is an object lesson in attitudes and expectations that become reality.
This was an era that discouraged pity, and would have been dumbfounded by modern 'confessional' trends. The attitudes toward children, would be barbaric today. The girls remained loyal to their father, even as they grew to understand his weaknesses, and they found delight in characters that would be considered dangerous and forbidden today. Their own grandmother, refusing to attend to fire safety, managed to burn down four houses, including her own, from which weeks before the girls had just been removed. This is a story of a triumph of childhood with nothing of the tone of the adult looking back in a lament. In some ways, it is similar to "Angela's Ashes," another horrible experience of childhood, that uniquely avoids the subject of depression and rage. This even holds true for the archetypical wicked stepmother, an unrelenting, hateful woman who sadistically confiscated or forbade any object or activity of pleasure.
The most amazing part of Marcia, is this 'game' she played, when she was in the midst of an ordeal. She could reach down inside of herself and become the person who was devoid of reactions to the current stress and be completely strong and capable of enduring the trauma through to the end. It is a testimony, spoken by a child, of the human spirit, and the infinite manifestations and sources of power by which mankind survives. I will definitely read this book again, for its fresh outlook and restrained economy.
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Title: The Happy Island by Dawn Powell, Tim Page ISBN: 1883642795 Publisher: Steerforth Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell ISBN: 1883642728 Publisher: Steerforth Press Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell ISBN: 1883642418 Publisher: Steerforth Press Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Unless : A Novel by Carol Shields ISBN: 0007154615 Publisher: Fourth Estate Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Daughter of Persia : A Woman's Journey From Her Father's Harem Through the Islamic Revolution by Sattareh Farman Farmaian, Dona Munker ISBN: 0385468660 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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