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Title: KATE VAIDEN by Reynolds Price ISBN: 0684846942 Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction Pub. Date: May, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.82
Rating: 5
Summary: A great read, a great writer...
Comment: This was my introduction to Reynolds Price, and I am most glad to make the acquaintance. Kate Vaiden is on the receiving end of uncommonly tragic circumstances in early life, and her reactions and choices springing from these events are one part exhasperating, one part predictable, often dreamlike - we can't be meant to like her. Watching Kate's inner character warp over time as a result of these events is a box seat to a slow train wreck, but the machinations of plot are mainly just an excuse to read Price's wonderful prose. Is the female voice of the main character believable? Is Kate knowing, or a victim of her Southern life and times? There is much to ponder, but the ending, replete with hopeful likelihoods, makes you wish Price had simply continued unfurling the story so as to enjoy more of his dense, beautiful writing about it.
Rating: 2
Summary: Kate Vaiden: Drag Queen
Comment: While I would never assume that a man couldn't write in a woman's voice, Kate Vaiden sorely tempts my judgment. Reynolds Price tries to capture the female voice and consciousness of his narrator Kate and fails wildly. Kate is so laughably unconvincing that I thought perhaps I had misread it. However, when I showed the book to several other women, they all agreed. Kate is so clearly what a man envisions a woman to be (and so clearly NOT a woman), that I'm tempted to call the book a post-modern attempt at drag, and badly done at that. While there is some nicely honed prose, the story itself relies too much on contrived plot twists and thoroughly sentimental epiphanies. The dull story aside, the real interest lies in Kate's voice. Like a poorly rehearsed ventriloquist act, Kate Vaiden betrays its author's voice and bizarre conceptions of feminity again and again, transforming the novel from unintentional parody into high comedy.
Rating: 1
Summary: Unconvincing
Comment: Kate Vaiden is a novel filled with unrealistic characters doing unlikely things for unexplained reasons. The biggest problem is Kate Vaiden herself. She doesn't think or act like any woman I have ever run across, in truth or in fiction. As a woman myself, I found Mr. Price's attempt to write in a woman's voice singularly unsuccessful. But Kate is not the only problem. None of the characters' thought processes or emotional impulses are clearly conveyed. Certainly Kate, as narrator, doesn't clue us into the motives of the people she describes to us. I suppose one could say that in this way the novel reflects real life, because we often do not understand the purpose behind the actions of the people we meet. But frankly, I expect more than that from a novel. I expect purpose and meaning, characters who come alive on the page because they behave in some manner that I can perceive as authentic. Instead, this novel only left me with questions. Why did the characters do the things they did? And what in the world was the author's purpose in writing this book?
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Title: A Long and Happy Life by Reynolds Price ISBN: 068911947X Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: December, 1987 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: ROXANNA SLADE: A NOVEL by Reynolds Price ISBN: 0684853736 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Letter To A Man In The Fire: Does God Exist And Does He Care by Reynolds Price ISBN: 0684856271 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Feasting the Heart: Fifty-Two Commentaries for the Air by Reynolds Price ISBN: 0743203690 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: A Great Circle: The Mayfield Trilogy by Reynolds Price, Scribner Classics ISBN: 0743211863 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 02 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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