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Title: Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0-452-28328-0 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Ironically told tale of a woman in 1890s San Francisco
Comment: One of my most eagerly anticipated books this year was Karen Joy Fowler's new novel, _Sister Noon_. Fowler is one of my favorite writers. _Sister Noon_ is set in San Francisco in 1890. The central character is Lizzy Hayes, a fortyish spinster, treasurerer of the Ladies' Relief and Protection Society Home, which takes in orphans and raises them. Lizzy believes herself happy despite a fairly boring life. One day the notorious Mrs. Pleasant, an elderly ex-slave, reputed to have been an, er, "working woman", and a very wealthy woman, comes to visit, with a new child for the Home. This child is an odd 5-year old girl named Jenny Ijub.
The novel interleaves details about the history of Mrs. Pleasant and her curious menage at the Bell household with Lizzy's modest adventures and difficulties at the Home, especially difficulties involving Jenny and also a Chinese orphan named Ti Wong. Mrs. Pleasant came to San Francisco passing for white, then, at a notorious party revealed that she was black, and an ex-slave. Over time she made a fortune as a cook, and as a woman who knew many of the secrets of the leading men of the new and growing city, in particular one Thomas Bell. In 1890 Mrs. Pleasant serves as housekeeper for Thomas Bell and his strange wife, at a notorious house called the House of Mystery. They have several children, and rumours abound as to which of the women is the mother of any of them, and indeed how many of the children might be the result of Mrs. Pleasant's rumoured business activities.
At the same time Jenny is having a hard time adjusting to life in the Home, as she is persecuted by the other children. Lizzy finds herself visiting the House of Mystery several times, and having a number of ambiguous and almost phantasmagorical conversations with both Mrs. Pleasant and Mrs. Bell. In addition the Home is subjected to a diptheria epidemic, and quarantine. And Lizzy must also fight off questions from her society friends about her association with Mrs. Pleasant, and about the horrible thought that Jenny might actually be part-black (can't have a black girl in with white orphans!). And finally Lizzy starts to question aspects of her own family history, especially her father's possible dealings with Mrs. Pleasant. Also Jenny Ijub is threatened with kidnapping, and Lizzy's decision to take in the Chinese boy Ti Wong causes additional stress.
The book is continually intriguing, driven especially by Fowler's wonderful ironic prose. Clearly the question of race is at the center of the book, as well as the place of women, in particular spinsters, in society. But even more, it turns out, the book is about families. Not surprisingly, with so many orphans about, stories of broken families abound -- Mrs. Pleasant's story and Mrs. Bell's story both involve mistreatment as a child, and even Lizzy has family issues. And when we learn what Lizzy wants, it's not a husband, nor money, nor even more adventure, but a family.
I found the book a bit harder to grasp, to engage with, than either _Sarah Canary_ or _The Sweetheart Season_, so I might rank it third among Fowler's novels. But that, surely, is not so terrible: _Sister Noon_ is a very fine novel, very well worth reading (and her other novels, as well as her short stories, collected in _Black Glass_ and in _Artificial Things_, are outstanding).
Rating: 5
Summary: FACT AND FANTASY BLEND IN A BEWITCHING TALE
Comment: Hugo Award winning author Karen Joy Fowler ("Sarah Canary", 1991) blends fact and fantasy in her bewitching third novel, "Sister Noon." Imagery, minute historical data, and dazzling prose abound in this story set against San Francisco's Gilded Age.
We meet 40-year-old spinster Lizzie Hayes, volunteer treasurer of the Ladies Relief Home, familiarly called the Brown Ark, a residential facility for homeless children made comfortable with donated furnishings representing "the worst taste of several decades."
Lizzie had been a "passive and biddable" child beneath whose "tractable surface lay romance and rebellion." She was now "hard to dissuade and hard to intimidate." Persistent when it came to raising funds for the Home, Lizzie lived in a dangerous place, a "city propelled in equal parts by drunken abuse and sober recompense," where there were six men to every woman and 700 gambling/watering holes.
Nonetheless, Lizzie is advised by Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant that she can do anything she pleases, "You don't have to be the same person your whole life." This is apt tutelage from one who knows as that may be precisely what Mrs. Pleasant did. An enigmatic woman in life as well as in fiction, sometimes revered, at other times vilified, she has been called the "Mother of Civil Rights in California" and the "Fabulous Negro Madam." Born a Georgia slave, she cleverly amassed a fortune which she dedicated to favored philanthropic causes.
As this author imagines in "Sister Noon," Lizzie's life is changed forever when Mrs. Pleasant appears at the Home and asks for her. Although Lizzie has never spoken with the 70-year-old woman, she knew Mrs. Pleasant worked as a housekeeper although she "was rich as a railroad magnate's widow." It was said the infamous woman "had a small green snake tattooed in a curl around one breast.....she was a voodoo queen.....she would, for a price, make a man die of love."
Mrs. Pleasant has come to deliver 5-year-old orphan Jenny Ijub to the care of the home. Jenny is a mysterious child described as not quite truthful with her claims of once owning a pony, a parrot, and a silver cup. As time passes she is more and more given to restless nights, and her assertions grow more fanciful - her father "had been as rich as a sultan," she had seen fairies, ghosts, angels, and she didn't believe in God. When Jenny creates a ruckus at an outing, she claims that a man in green pants has tried to kidnap her.
Yet it is the little girl who becomes the catalyst for Lizzie's rebellion against the constrictive society in which she was raised.
"Sister Noon" is a superbly realized recreation of an 1850s San Franciso peopled by quirky, smart characters. Ms. Fowler, an author with practiced eye and arresting pen, has constructed a tale that absorbs, amuses, and sometimes skewers the complacent.
Rating: 2
Summary: Maybe it's me, but...
Comment: I found this book extremely boring. I forced myself to read the whole thing because I'm a San Franciscan, but I didn't even feel it captured the city well. I kept turning back to remember who characters were, and as far as the plot...uh...did something happen? The cover is the best thing about this book.
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Title: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0399151613 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 22 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0345426533 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Sarah Canary by KAREN JOY FOWLER ISBN: 0345416449 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 10 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Sweetheart Season by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0345416422 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 10 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Great Fire: A Novel by Shirley Hazzard ISBN: 0374166447 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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