i really liked this at the beginning. it's an interesting family story through the generations, but it got overly long and repetitive by around 60% of the way through. the writing is good and the characters were all theoretically interesting, it just became too much for too long. ( )

I love a good multi-generational saga, so I was very excited to get an ARC of this book and even more pleased when it turned out to be a brilliant one.

I was immediately drawn in to this story: from the beginning, we know that Isadora’s ‘Grammy,’ variously known throughout the book as Thelma, Tommy, and Katherine, was quite the character, regaling her young granddaughters with incredible ancestry and rich family stories. The narrative skips around a lot, starting when we move from the granddaughters sorting through their late grandma’s things to Tommy as a 6-year-old child whose mother, Glenna, takes her two young daughters with her, leaving her husband in Ohio and heading west for a new life in 1910. Glenna is not a good mother, and leaves her very young children to be raised by others and then by themselves. Tommy cares for and raises her little sister, Katherine, and then makes her own way in the world.

There is an underlying theme of falseness throughout this story. Life is messy, and people tell lies and embellish. Even the most elegant woman has history and secrets. Tommy takes her sister’s name, her sister takes a different name, Glenna does what she pleases without much regard for her daughters, telling lies and leaving things out as she makes her way. Winter has her secrets, including a secret love, a difficult relationship with her mom, and a complicated family of her own. Isadora’s generation, with the help of a great uncle, try to piece their colorful family history together and separate the truth from the fantasy.

McPhee’s writing is gorgeous and vivid: the descriptions of the various settings are lushly detailed and the characters are well-drawn. So much intricate information is thrown at the reader, along with a cast of unique characters spanning over more than a century, and yet somehow the plot, timelines, and various narratives are easy to follow. Beyond that, the story is enthralling. I couldn’t stop reading once I got started. The only possible complaint I could have are that some stories end almost too soon—I was left wanting just a bit more time with some characters, but I suppose that’s how life is, with the inevitability of time.

Some of my favorite quotes come from near the end of the novel, and are about human life, death, and the histories of us:

“And just like that, a life is over—the urgencies, the fights, the stories, the sweet peas, the rattlesnakes, the attempts to make something of it, bend it and stretch it and configure it with our wills, give it a narrative, a history, a story, to make it amount to something.”

“Close your eyes. Imagine our historic moment, all that it entails. Imagine a thousand years from now what someone would write about it. Would it fill a sentence? A paragraph, at most? One sentence tells the history of us gathered here today, our lives now so rich in detail, filled with love and hate and joy and dramas. We, all of us, are reduced to a sentence, crushed and overpowered and hidden behind the flimsy weight of that sentence.”

An Elegant Woman is about women: mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, friends. It’s about complicated relationships and history and messy, real family; doing your own thing and still owning your piece of what came before you. I absolutely love the cover, and think it perfectly expresses the themes of the book.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for my copy in exchange for my honest review. ( )

While going through her grandmother’s treasures novelist Isadora discovers the stories behind all these treasures is really myth. The reality of this upper-class family is entirely different. Looking at her Grammy’s life, Isadora is involved in a history from early twentieth-century Billings Montana to a prohibition-era Adirondacks lakeside cabin, Isadora finds herself immersed in a family history of women who took charge of their own lives. ( )

3. 5 The year is 1910 and Montana is calling for workers, new opportunities to those who take up the challenge. Glenna, leaves her husband and takes her two young daughters, to the new land where she is sure they will thrive. Glenna does, but it is soon apparent her job prospects are better, sans her children. Leaving them with a farming family, who comes to live them, a love that is returned, she shows up a few years later. Taking them away, they are now pretty much left on their own. The eldest Teddy, providing for her younger sister.

This is a generational novel, but for me the middle lagged, Teddy's story went on too long. What this novel does well though us show how the past reflects in the girls future. Past traumas that are very much in evidence in the decisions they make. How these decisions reflect in how they raised and the expectations they had, for their own children. How sometimes pretending something is will make it so, with hard work and the formidable will to move forward.

This did good my interest, but in some spots more than others. There were even a few surprises along the way. I just think it's length bogged this down, too detailed, could have been a little more succinct.

ARC from Edelweiss. ( )

An Elegant Woman by Martha McPhee is a highly recommended family drama spanning decades.

Although fictional, this draws form parts of McPhee's own family history while following four generation of women as they determining what they are and what they want. The journey follows the family from Montana to Maine, starting in 1910 at a train station in Ohio. Two young girls, Tommy and Katherine, travel with their impulsive mother, Glenna Stewart, while heading to a new life. Tommy continues to take care of her sister while Glenna teaches in a one room school house and Katherine goes to school.

The novel opens with Isadora and her sisters going through their grandmother's house in New Jersey to clean things out. In the novel, Isadora is trying to retell her grandmother's life story while trying to understand her own journey. This is a story of a woman's journey as reflected in the stories of women in their past from her family and embellished along the way. Family myths are explored and shared in this novel about heritage and what that means.

The writing is very descriptive and the characters, along with their actions, are complex and complicated. They are all not understandable or likeable, but depicted as if they want the best for their children and future generations. The characters are well-developed. The overwhelming focus is the family stories and the handing off to the next generation.

The writing is good as it captures the historical period the characters are going through and their thoughts and reactions. The question of family legacies and what is passed down to the next generation is clearly part of the plot. The question about what the next generation knows about the past generation and their ancestors and how it all ties together is clearly part of the theme. The question arises what is memory and what is truth when telling a story that will be shared to the next generation.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/06/an-elegant-woman.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3371461568 ( )