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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
slow-paced
Southern Belle Varina finds her prospects of marriage becoming severely compromised by her father's debts so marriage to older widower Jeff seems like a good idea. Jeff is building a plantation but after becoming a hero in the Mexican War he turns his hand to politics and Varina has to learn to be a political wife. Jeff is Jefferson Davis and Varina is the First Lady of the Confederate President during the Civil War. After the defeat Jeff sends Varina and the family away and they travel across the South with enemies chasing them all the way.
Told as a memoir dictated to a former member of the household, this is fictionalised biography of a real-life character, Varina Davis, someone at the epicentre of the Civil War. In this book Varina is a complex and wilful character, her marriage seeing ups and downs and the excitement of the family's flight across the defeated South is an excellent juxtaposition to the genteel life of a society hostess who never quite fits in.
Told as a memoir dictated to a former member of the household, this is fictionalised biography of a real-life character, Varina Davis, someone at the epicentre of the Civil War. In this book Varina is a complex and wilful character, her marriage seeing ups and downs and the excitement of the family's flight across the defeated South is an excellent juxtaposition to the genteel life of a society hostess who never quite fits in.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Frazier is sharp, nuanced, and honest in his portrayal of Varina Davis. A wonderful exploration of memory and history and reconciliation. Reminds me of Paulette Jiles.
“It is possible to love someone and still want to throw down every remnant of the order they lived by.”
Charles Frazier is best known for his 1997 mega-hit Cold Mountain, which is another historical fiction set in the midst of the Civil War. (See a trend? Pretty soon here I’ll fully embrace my somewhat embarrassing love of historical fiction.) While that book is on my shelf, I happened to snag a free copy of Varina, and started it on a whim the week after Christmas. I was immediately and somewhat surprisingly pulled right in by both Frazier’s incredible prose and the fascinating story itself.
Varina Davis, forever in the history books as the first and only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, was a fascinating character. She married the much older Jefferson Davis as a young woman, gave birth to a number of children (all but one of whom died before her), was captured after the Civil War, and recovered to live and work in New York until her death 1906.
Frazier obviously has a strong grasp of Varina’s life story and he invented a wonderful narrative structure to tell it in a way that provided a walk in her shoes while not letting her off the hook for her sins: “Those were times that required choosing a side—and then, sooner or later, history asks, which side were you on?”
Going back and forth in time from before the war to after the war to the tumultuous, chaotic reality of life during the war, Frazier makes it hard to hate Varina. And maybe that’s his point. As my pastor talked about from the pulpit this last weekend, once you get to know someone’s story, it’s nearly impossible to not feel some sense of sympathy and relation to your own life and experience. What does it mean to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Would you be able to easily dismiss the entirety of how you were raised and where you come from? There just aren’t easy answers, even if there are right answers.
I’ll end with this wonderful take from the narrator about Jeff Davis (whom I did not feel any sympathy towards):
“He did as most politicians do—except more so—corrupt our language and symbols of freedom, pervert our heroes. Because, like so many of them, he held no beloved idea or philosophy as tightly as his money purse. Take a king or a president or anybody. Put a heavy sack of gold in one hand and a feather-light declaration about freedom in the other. And then an outlaw sticks a pistol in his face and says give me one or the other. Every time—ten out of ten—he’ll hug the sack and throw away the ideals. Because the sack’s what’s behind the ideals, like the foundation under a building. And that’s how freedom and chains and a whipping post can live alongside each other comfortably.”
Varina was a great story with superb writing. I can’t wait to read more of Frazier’s slim body of work.
Charles Frazier is best known for his 1997 mega-hit Cold Mountain, which is another historical fiction set in the midst of the Civil War. (See a trend? Pretty soon here I’ll fully embrace my somewhat embarrassing love of historical fiction.) While that book is on my shelf, I happened to snag a free copy of Varina, and started it on a whim the week after Christmas. I was immediately and somewhat surprisingly pulled right in by both Frazier’s incredible prose and the fascinating story itself.
Varina Davis, forever in the history books as the first and only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, was a fascinating character. She married the much older Jefferson Davis as a young woman, gave birth to a number of children (all but one of whom died before her), was captured after the Civil War, and recovered to live and work in New York until her death 1906.
Frazier obviously has a strong grasp of Varina’s life story and he invented a wonderful narrative structure to tell it in a way that provided a walk in her shoes while not letting her off the hook for her sins: “Those were times that required choosing a side—and then, sooner or later, history asks, which side were you on?”
Going back and forth in time from before the war to after the war to the tumultuous, chaotic reality of life during the war, Frazier makes it hard to hate Varina. And maybe that’s his point. As my pastor talked about from the pulpit this last weekend, once you get to know someone’s story, it’s nearly impossible to not feel some sense of sympathy and relation to your own life and experience. What does it mean to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Would you be able to easily dismiss the entirety of how you were raised and where you come from? There just aren’t easy answers, even if there are right answers.
I’ll end with this wonderful take from the narrator about Jeff Davis (whom I did not feel any sympathy towards):
“He did as most politicians do—except more so—corrupt our language and symbols of freedom, pervert our heroes. Because, like so many of them, he held no beloved idea or philosophy as tightly as his money purse. Take a king or a president or anybody. Put a heavy sack of gold in one hand and a feather-light declaration about freedom in the other. And then an outlaw sticks a pistol in his face and says give me one or the other. Every time—ten out of ten—he’ll hug the sack and throw away the ideals. Because the sack’s what’s behind the ideals, like the foundation under a building. And that’s how freedom and chains and a whipping post can live alongside each other comfortably.”
Varina was a great story with superb writing. I can’t wait to read more of Frazier’s slim body of work.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I could only make it to 13% of this, I was bored out of my mind. I was so bored I stopped reading anything for almost 2 weeks. I was initially very excited to read the book, I was craving a civil war period book and was eager to dive in. I was met with uninspiring characters and a strange narration. I had to return this book and clear it from my library. I feel much better now that I can stop staring at it unfinished everytime I open my kindle app!
I've been wanting to read this book for sometime. It is the story of Varina Davis, wife of traitor Jefferson Davis. It his historical fiction, and at this point, I don't know enough about her to discern the truth from the fiction. It has a frame story of a man named James visiting Varina shortly before her death. She slowly reveals her life history, a lot of which goes back to her fleeing at the end of the Civil War. She comes across as far more liberal than I expected. I've already lined up a true biography to see how this novel lines up. It is beautifully written.
Beautifully written book, taking fictional license of the real wife of Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. Rich descriptive language; yet, containing one of my literary pet peeves -- fragments in time not in chronological order. It seems disjointed, but the author expressed that he wanted to communicate memories and not just historical record. V is a deeply flawed and, at times, an unlikeable character. But her depth and complexity is obvious. Frazier manages to portray the story of a reviled woman with some disgrace but mostly compassion.
2 / 4 : If you have time, read
[From an upscale sanitorium, belle of the ball Miss Varina Davis tells all about her marriage, children, and the war.]
After some preamble, Varina hits its stride in the scenes detailing the Davis family's hopeless trek through Frazier's doomed South, his Babylon of false prophets, hangers-on, kings, and whores.
Varina gives reason to doubt and question her protagonist as the story goes on but, it's like, c'mon. She's the wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, I don't need to be told she's one of the bad guys.
[From an upscale sanitorium, belle of the ball Miss Varina Davis tells all about her marriage, children, and the war.]
After some preamble, Varina hits its stride in the scenes detailing the Davis family's hopeless trek through Frazier's doomed South, his Babylon of false prophets, hangers-on, kings, and whores.
Varina gives reason to doubt and question her protagonist as the story goes on but, it's like, c'mon. She's the wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, I don't need to be told she's one of the bad guys.