Gibbons, Kaye. Charms for the Easy Life. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993.
Reason read: Mary Lee Settle celebrates a birthday in the month of July. Nancy Pearl suggested Charms for the Easy Life be read with Settle’s memoir, Addie.
Three generations of southern women. The relationships between mother (Charlie Kate), daughter (Sophia), and granddaughter (Margaret) are tangled and complicated. Like all relationships, they are rich in drama, tough-love, grace, and unspoken courage. Complicated by pride and fierce independence. Only these are no ordinary women. Granddaughter Margaret is no exception. She assists her grandmother with unconventional medical practices on military patients and encourages her mother’s second-time-around love life. The three generations can read the same book and discuss and argue like best friends and yet, they can also carry dark secrets strategically kept from one another, hold on to old grudges like a mean snapping turtle, and parse out the silent treatment to one another like professionals. Strong without menfolk to provide for them, the Birch women support each other through everything. This is an age when grandmothers could orchestrate the love lives of their granddaughters. Wise beyond her years, Margaret listens to her grandmother’s advice. As an aside, my favorite was when Charlie Kate gave Margaret her easy-life charm, telling Margaret that it worked…depending on the definition of easy.
Confessional: I couldn’t help but be reminded of Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris.
As an aside, the method of quilling a pregnancy was a new one for me.
Favorite line, “She had said all that she needed to say, and so there were no secret longings, no secret wishes and desires that had never been spoken” (p 254).
Author fact: Gibbons wrote her first novel when she was in her twenties.
Book trivia: Charms for the Easy Life is Kaye Gibbons’ fourth book and other editions include “Christina’s World”, a painting by Andrew Wyeth, as the cover art.
Playlist: Benny Good man, Nelson Eddy’s “Sweet Mystery of Life”, Johnny Mercer’s “Deep in the Heart of Texas”, Hazel Scott’s “Minute Waltz”, Frank Sinatra, “White Christmas”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “You Made Me Love You”, Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols”, Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, Grieg’s E Minor Piano Sonata, Bach’s Minuet in G, Ravel’s Le Tom beau de Couperin, and Sarah Bernhardt.
Nancy said: Pearl was generously vague when describing why Charms for the Easy Life was paired with Addie. The multitude of complimentary themes was a joy to discover on my own.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62) and again in the chapter called “Mothers and Daughters” (p 159), and a third time in the chapter called “Southern Fiction” (p 222).
~*LunaSea*~ 