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Connie May Fowler

Autor(a) de Before Women Had Wings

9+ Works 1,628 Membros 51 Reviews 8 Favorited

About the Author

Obras de Connie May Fowler

Before Women Had Wings (1996) 731 cópias
Sugar Cage (1992) 194 cópias
Remembering Blue (2000) 190 cópias
The Problem with Murmur Lee (2005) 162 cópias
River of Hidden Dreams (1994) 133 cópias
When Katie Wakes (2002) 91 cópias
A Million Fragile Bones (2017) 9 cópias
Do Not Enter The Memory 1 exemplar(es)

Associated Works

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome padrão
Fowler, Connie May
Nome de batismo
Fowler, Connie May
Data de nascimento
1960-01-03
Sexo
female
Ocupação
Author
Agente
Lyceum

Membros

Resenhas

At first I was a little miffed that there weren't any "real" chapters, but once I noticed how well the flow went with Clarissa's day I relaxed and enjoyed the book.
I felt myself grow just a little right along with Clarissa. I disliked "Iggy" from the get go, and was fantasizing his death right along with Clarissa.

I laughed and cried throughout most of the book and my heart stopped a few times. Overall I will have to keep this one on the shelf to come back to time and again.

~I was provided a copy of this book from Hachette Books for my review.~… (mais)
 
Marcado
chaoticbooklover | outras 23 resenhas | Dec 26, 2018 |
Contains spoilers.

First, I must mention this book’s subject is harsh. Even those experienced with books that has violence towards children including “The Kite Runner”, the violence is graphically brutal and too probable. Be warned.

The story is in two segments. Set in the South in 1967, Billy Jackson (father) and Glory Marie (mother) along with their daughters, Phoebe and Bird (real name Avocet) are barely scrapping by running a small rented store, living with furniture that they don’t own. Billy is a drunk with lost hopes of becoming a country music singer. The household reeks of expectations unmet, alcoholism, anger, and the worst – violence towards Glory Marie, Phoebe and Bird, excess to the nth degree. The first half ends when Billy kills himself over his failures in life. In the second half, Glory Marie and the girls re-settle in Tampa, living in a trailer. The mom kicks up her alcoholism, tormenting the girls verbally, emotionally, and physically. The persons who make life bearable are the owner and family of the cottage/trailer motel, a semi-permanent cottage guest named Miss Zora, and the girl’s half-brother Hank.

I had extreme feelings throughout the majority of the book. I wanted to punch the father for his cruelty, alcoholism, whoring, cowardice, and violence towards all his family members. I wanted to slap the mom awake and have her recognize her own values; she was the one running the store while the father drank and whored. She has not needed him for years. Instead, she became him, drinking more and escalating the beatings even worse and was simply evil in one scene. I pitied Phoebe the most, who took more beatings from both parents than Bird. When she was old enough, she stayed away as often as she can, self-preservation as a survival tool. The narrative, Bird’s, alluded to Phoebe being weak in doing so; that’s bull. Bird is 9 years old; her immaturity and brattiness is clear, a source of Phoebe’s beatings. Even so, she too suffered and found her saviors in Miss Zora and a chance meeting with a biker who shared a violent past in the hands of his parents. Her strength was perseverance.

The book employed several symbolisms to depict the plight of the mom and children. In one scene, vultures swooped down taking away (and presumably eating) a momma cat and her babies. A life sucks moment if you will. Another is tied to the book title. Both daughters are named after birds, Phoebe and Avocet. Miss Zora taught Bird the dangers of pesticides on creatures including birds, weakening the egg shell making them vulnerable to be eaten. Bird thought of themselves – “like those baby birds born in a web of DDT: doomed from the start, some other creature’s lunch before we even had our wings.”

My favorite character is the biker, Big Al, who taught Bird the damage of verbal abuse, making the child think he/she deserves the beatings. No one does. It was a powerful and necessary turning point for Bird. Interestingly, Big Al also taught Bird beauty via Walt Whitman, “Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, / In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, / Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

The subject is rough; the book has some good moments, difficult to ‘process or absorb’, and even harder to “like”.

One quote:
On the downtrodden:
“…Dumb-assed crackers who drink till dawn in a sorry attempt to forget about all the things they will never have, never become. But there’s no forgetting when you’re white trash - smirks, stares, stolen glances remind you at every turn that you’re not worth squat. So the men, raging drunk, bullshit each other into believing that bruised fist and broken noses will act as charms, paving their way to heaven. And we females – girls and women alike – can’t find enough strength in our battered souls to escape, so we birth our boys into legendary scoundrels, characters made better in the crosshairs of half-truths. Yes, smiles break out all around as we cast daddies, brothers, husbands into near-respectable village idiots in the stories we spin over bowls of homegrown, freshly snapped peas, clotheslines draped with bleach-scented, bloodstained damp sheets, sinks filled with suds and supper-crusted dishes. And after all that, we still aren’t decent. We’re still trapped.”
… (mais)
½
1 vote
Marcado
varwenea | outras 13 resenhas | Nov 6, 2017 |
This is a book you'll want to read every few years. On my second read, I saw so much more of myself in each character. If you read for a deeper understanding of your own roots and heritage, if you love Florida's once pristine world, if you want to travel there again, curl up with this beautiful novel.
 
Marcado
Gale.Massey | 1 outra resenha | Aug 21, 2017 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
9
Also by
2
Membros
1,628
Popularidade
#15,799
Avaliação
3.9
Resenhas
51
ISBNs
49
Idiomas
4
Favorito
8

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