![]() ![]() However, I did find this novel charming, often reminiscent of Little Women. Gibbons also wrote Cold Comfort Farm, which I consider a better book. Still, an uneven Gibbons novel has much to offer, and Amy Lee is a character worth getting to know. ![]() Not only that, the manner in which Gibbons pulls her two plots together is distressingly pedestrian. His mise en scene, a New England town and an upper-middle class life, are paper mache in contrast to the fine porcelain of the English scenes. The American of the title doesn't match this level of writing. ![]() Her desperate childhood is feelingly described: the collapsed and distant father, the kind but loud family who adopt her, the child's need to have a secret inner life of her own. ![]() The heroine, Amy Lee, is a beautifully-realized character, lit from within with the desire to write stories. My American, alas, is not in that category, although if you're a Gibbons fan ( and I am the President of her lower Manhattan fan club) you'll find lots to admire here. But Gibbons wrote dozens more, some of them extremely good - I'm thinking of her grown-up versions of classic fairy tales, Starlight and Nightingale Wood, which are both total charmers. It's a delight, and as close to Jane Austen as anyone in the 20th century ever got. Everyone knows and loves Gibbons' first novel, Cold Comfort Farm. ![]()
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