Martha McPhee

I enjoyed following the author's progressive reckoning with her chaotic, dramatic childhood and her growing self-awareness of what she was doing at Omega Farm, the site of the chaos, at the present moment. Her love for her mother, currently suffering from dementia, her husband and children never wavered. I was surprised that she included her own bad behavior as the stresses mounted, a brave thing to do. I also appreciated her descriptions of trying to figure out how to fix decades of neglect and worse at Omega Farm - it's not easy, especially as woman trying to figure out which contractor to trust. I liked her.… (mer)

This book was not at all the book I thought I was going to be reading based on the blurb. I thought I would be reading about the impact of the 70's Me generation ridiculousness on the next generation, about an environment of no structure and no boundaries. And I guess in some ways it is that. Martha McPhee and her 9 siblings, stepsiblings and half-siblings all had that experience -- most if not all having emerged as interesting productive adults, so at least there is that. But the book is about something else. McPhee wrote this during lockdown as she relocated herself and her family, to her childhood home, a place fraught with memories, to care for her mother rapidly sinking into Alzhemer's and to care for the property, an urban forest rapidly sinking into the impacts of illegal dumping, invasive species, climate change, and benign and malign neglect. Like many of us McPhee is also reckoning with a world full of selfish malicious post-truth people and glaring daily examples of the tragic costs of institutional racism. The book is about healing, about learning what to let go of and what to hold fast to as a parent, a daughter, a sibling, a spouse an employer, a teacher, and as a citizen of the country and the planet. And I guess it is about realizing that recognizing there is some rot does not mean one has to tear the whole thing down (that goes for relationships and homes, societies and forests.) McPhee used her pandemic shutdown well. she learned, and in the clumsy labored words of the Biden campaign she Built Back Better.

I enjoyed this gentle and sometimes profound book, perhaps more than I would have enjoyed the book I thought I was going to read. McPhee is a gorgeous writer and a good person (though I will say it sounds exhausting to be her, examining every choice one makes for its impact on all is ... a lot.) Some people have mentioned in reviews that there is a lot of forestry info, and in fact there is a pretty decent amount. I learned from it, it was interesting for the most part, but it wasn't a how-to. Forestry is not by any measure what this book was about. I think those readers lost the forest for the trees. (See what I did there?!) I recommend this highly, especially for those like me who, in the middle of their lives with obligations to, and love for, the last, current, next, and next-next generation. (I am at the end of the middle, but still firmly attached to this mortal coil as far as I know.)… (mer)

I love a good multi-generational saga, so I was very excited to get an ARC of this book and even more pleased when it turned out to be a brilliant one.

I was immediately drawn in to this story: from the beginning, we know that Isadora’s ‘Grammy,’ variously known throughout the book as Thelma, Tommy, and Katherine, was quite the character, regaling her young granddaughters with incredible ancestry and rich family stories. The narrative skips around a lot, starting when we move from the granddaughters sorting through their late grandma’s things to Tommy as a 6-year-old child whose mother, Glenna, takes her two young daughters with her, leaving her husband in Ohio and heading west for a new life in 1910. Glenna is not a good mother, and leaves her very young children to be raised by others and then by themselves. Tommy cares for and raises her little sister, Katherine, and then makes her own way in the world.

There is an underlying theme of falseness throughout this story. Life is messy, and people tell lies and embellish. Even the most elegant woman has history and secrets. Tommy takes her sister’s name, her sister takes a different name, Glenna does what she pleases without much regard for her daughters, telling lies and leaving things out as she makes her way. Winter has her secrets, including a secret love, a difficult relationship with her mom, and a complicated family of her own. Isadora’s generation, with the help of a great uncle, try to piece their colorful family history together and separate the truth from the fantasy.

McPhee’s writing is gorgeous and vivid: the descriptions of the various settings are lushly detailed and the characters are well-drawn. So much intricate information is thrown at the reader, along with a cast of unique characters spanning over more than a century, and yet somehow the plot, timelines, and various narratives are easy to follow. Beyond that, the story is enthralling. I couldn’t stop reading once I got started. The only possible complaint I could have are that some stories end almost too soon—I was left wanting just a bit more time with some characters, but I suppose that’s how life is, with the inevitability of time.

Some of my favorite quotes come from near the end of the novel, and are about human life, death, and the histories of us:

“And just like that, a life is over—the urgencies, the fights, the stories, the sweet peas, the rattlesnakes, the attempts to make something of it, bend it and stretch it and configure it with our wills, give it a narrative, a history, a story, to make it amount to something.”

“Close your eyes. Imagine our historic moment, all that it entails. Imagine a thousand years from now what someone would write about it. Would it fill a sentence? A paragraph, at most? One sentence tells the history of us gathered here today, our lives now so rich in detail, filled with love and hate and joy and dramas. We, all of us, are reduced to a sentence, crushed and overpowered and hidden behind the flimsy weight of that sentence.”

An Elegant Woman is about women: mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, friends. It’s about complicated relationships and history and messy, real family; doing your own thing and still owning your piece of what came before you. I absolutely love the cover, and think it perfectly expresses the themes of the book.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for my copy in exchange for my honest review.… (mer)