![]() ![]() ![]() However, I did find this novel charming, often reminiscent of Little Women. Gibbons also wrote Cold Comfort Farm, which I consider a better book. Still, an uneven Gibbons novel has much to offer, and Amy Lee is a character worth getting to know. ![]() Not only that, the manner in which Gibbons pulls her two plots together is distressingly pedestrian. His mise en scene, a New England town and an upper-middle class life, are paper mache in contrast to the fine porcelain of the English scenes. The American of the title doesn't match this level of writing. Her desperate childhood is feelingly described: the collapsed and distant father, the kind but loud family who adopt her, the child's need to have a secret inner life of her own. The heroine, Amy Lee, is a beautifully-realized character, lit from within with the desire to write stories. My American, alas, is not in that category, although if you're a Gibbons fan ( and I am the President of her lower Manhattan fan club) you'll find lots to admire here. ![]() But Gibbons wrote dozens more, some of them extremely good - I'm thinking of her grown-up versions of classic fairy tales, Starlight and Nightingale Wood, which are both total charmers. It's a delight, and as close to Jane Austen as anyone in the 20th century ever got. Everyone knows and loves Gibbons' first novel, Cold Comfort Farm. ![]()
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