APRIL 2018 - AudioFile
In a soft Southern accent, Molly Parker narrates Frazier’s recent novel about the life and times of Varina, wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Varina describes her life and times in a nonlinear manner, from the 1840s through the early 1900s, through flashbacks and memories. The dialogue flows into the narrative without shifts in tone or accent, making it difficult to differentiate between the two. Shunning false drama, Parker’s narration drifts along the days, months, and years of Varina’s life on the plantation until her harrowing escape to Florida after the war and then her new life in New York City. Varina’s high-strung temperament is cushioned by regular indulgence in laudanum, capably captured in Parker’s cadence. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
02/19/2018
Varina Howell Davis (1826–1906), wife and widow of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, is an inspired choice as heroine for Frazier’s riveting fourth novel (following Nightwoods). “Being on the wrong side of history carries consequences,” he writes, and the events of Varina’s life propel a suspenseful narrative. A quotation from her letters, “my name is a heritage of woe,” is an apt description of the life depicted: Varina, called “V” throughout, is married at 18 to the much older Davis; becomes the mother of six children, only one of whom survives her; flees the collapse of the South as a desperate fugitive with a bounty on her head; and, later, is forced to earn a penurious living as a journalist. She is a flawed but fascinating woman—educated beyond the interests of most southern belles of her time, she is an avid reader of classical literature, fluent in Greek, and possesses a quick intelligence. Frazier alternates V’s chapters with those of James Blake, an orphaned black boy rescued from the streets of Richmond and raised with V’s brood. Frazier’s interjection of historical detail is richly informative, and his descriptions of the natural world of the South are lyrical. While V’s emotional reserve and stoic narration keep her from becoming a fully vibrant character, this is a sharp, evocative novel. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
No writer today crafts more exquisite sentences than Charles Frazier.” — USA Today
“Frazier works on an epic scale, but his genius is in the details—he has a scholar’s command of the physical realities of early America and a novelist’s gift for bringing them to life.” — Time
“Charles Frazier’s feeling for the Southern landscape is reverential and beautifully composed.” — New York Review of Books
“Perfectly evocative . . . A finely wrought novel that will reward rereading. Elegiac without being exculpatory, it is an indictment of complicity without ignoring the historic complexity of the great evil at the core of American history.” — Washington Post
“Beautifully rendered…Frazier in this, his fourth novel, lyrically resurrects the blasted but hauntingly beautiful Southern landscape just after the war...Varina Davis becomes a marvelously fallible character, complicated enough to stand on her compromised own.” — The New York Times
New York Review of Books
Charles Frazier’s feeling for the Southern landscape is reverential and beautifully composed.
Washington Post
Perfectly evocative . . . A finely wrought novel that will reward rereading. Elegiac without being exculpatory, it is an indictment of complicity without ignoring the historic complexity of the great evil at the core of American history.
USA Today
No writer today crafts more exquisite sentences than Charles Frazier.
The New York Times
Beautifully rendered…Frazier in this, his fourth novel, lyrically resurrects the blasted but hauntingly beautiful Southern landscape just after the war...Varina Davis becomes a marvelously fallible character, complicated enough to stand on her compromised own.
Time
Frazier works on an epic scale, but his genius is in the details—he has a scholar’s command of the physical realities of early America and a novelist’s gift for bringing them to life.
Washington Post
Perfectly evocative . . . A finely wrought novel that will reward rereading. Elegiac without being exculpatory, it is an indictment of complicity without ignoring the historic complexity of the great evil at the core of American history.
USA Today
No writer today crafts more exquisite sentences than Charles Frazier.
Time
Frazier works on an epic scale, but his genius is in the details—he has a scholar’s command of the physical realities of early America and a novelist’s gift for bringing them to life.
The New York Times
Beautifully rendered…Frazier in this, his fourth novel, lyrically resurrects the blasted but hauntingly beautiful Southern landscape just after the war...Varina Davis becomes a marvelously fallible character, complicated enough to stand on her compromised own.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Varina showcases historical fiction at its finest: emotive and explanatory. It displays Frazier’s immense talent and bountiful creativity. And it earns its place among the finest Civil War novels of any era as it chronicles damaged lives and a deservedly lost cause.
Asheville Citizen-Times
There are things so masterful words can’t do them justice. Frazier’s writing falls in that category.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A master of landscape and language, both often fresh and surprising in his telling.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
An incredibly gifted storyteller.
Denver Post
Frazier...uses his Faulkner-like complex sentences to good effect...The book creates genuine tension.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Varina portrays a prescient, conflicted heroine. . . Slyly paced . . . When [Frazier] is at full-throttle, incredible declarations are tossed off as mere jottings.
Library Journal
★ 02/15/2018
Frazier reprises his Cold Mountain success, this time focusing on a less familiar historical figure from the Civil War: Varina, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Varina's unconventional opinions and attitudes, contemporaneously perceived as less than fully enthusiastic toward her husband's lost cause, probably accounts for this gap in popular knowledge. Frazier tells her story in the form of an imagined oral memoir, in which she recounts her story to a black man, "Jimmie Limber," whom she rescued from the streets of Richmond, VA, when he was abandoned as a toddler. Focusing on events following Lee's surrender when she and her children fled the Confederate capital, and bouncing between pre- and postwar events, this narrative approach succeeds after a slow start. The unveiling of Varina's sad story piques the reader's curiosity. Much of what Frazier imagines is consistent with the incomplete historical record surrounding Varina, and he fills in the blanks to reveal a powerful personality that, while of her times, has much to say to us today in respect of how the impact of great events on individuals can affect the history of those events. VERDICT Highly recommended for general readers as well as anyone interested in American history. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/17.]—Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa
APRIL 2018 - AudioFile
In a soft Southern accent, Molly Parker narrates Frazier’s recent novel about the life and times of Varina, wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Varina describes her life and times in a nonlinear manner, from the 1840s through the early 1900s, through flashbacks and memories. The dialogue flows into the narrative without shifts in tone or accent, making it difficult to differentiate between the two. Shunning false drama, Parker’s narration drifts along the days, months, and years of Varina’s life on the plantation until her harrowing escape to Florida after the war and then her new life in New York City. Varina’s high-strung temperament is cushioned by regular indulgence in laudanum, capably captured in Parker’s cadence. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
