Take a photo of a barcode or cover
meghankg 's review for:
Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
Having never seen the film version (I know) I was anxious to read Mitchell's original novel since I still had few preconceived ideas of the plot and character depictions. While on the whole I enjoyed the epic story of Scarlett O'Hara, there were just enough pieces that kept this book from fully grasping me until about the last 200 or so pages. In Scarlett, Mitchell has created a truly compelling heroine; at once both completely detestable in her selfishness and a strong woman to be admired in a time when she was going firmly against social expectations. However, where the novel lost me was in the overly long "down time" both during the war and in the early days of Reconstruction in Atlanta. It felt that the action and character arcs stalled and became repetitive, which is unfortunate in a novel that covered such ground and scale and included so many truly memorable (if not entirely likable) characters, particularly Melanie and Rhett Butler. Perhaps more interesting for me though was the novel’s function, despite being a work of fiction, as something of a glimpse into the Southern side of the Civil War and its aftermath. While I found myself more often than not cringing at the depiction of the slave characters, both through their manner of speaking and the way they were spoken about in relation to slavery and emancipation, as a glimpse into how this reality of America’s history was viewed by those closer to it the novel was enlightening, if not still problematic in its romanticizing and perpetuation of stereotypes. Overall, I enjoyed the character journey that this novel took me on and look forward to eventually watching the film (I know).