TENDING TO VIRGINIA

by Jill McCorkle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 1987

By the author of the touching, delightful Southern regional/family novel July 7th (1984), a warming, generous-hearted tale of a communal healing, in which three generations of women in one family air old feuds, loves, scandals and histories and, at the last, pry open old secrets that still have the power to burn. Again, McCorkle's regional dialogue fairly sings. Husband Mark is about to take his law exam, and there's a baby on the way, but elementary-school teacher Virginia--to the family she's Ginny Sue--is mad and depressed and doesn't give a damn (she's painted nasty creatures on the nursery wall). Suppose she's just a substitute for Mark's first wife? Oh, to be back with Gram Emily in her old house with just love, and no fears! But when she does reach Gram, it's at Gram's duplex (the old house is now a Piggly-Wiggly); Gram is in and out of reality and into blasting the TV; and ill with toxemia, Ginny Sue will doze, dream and mumble awake while the women of the family gather to tend her: cousin Cindy, twice married and divorced, wild, ""full of herself,"" cracking wise and doing her crying inside; Cindy's lumpish mother Madge, whose insane husband committed suicide sometime after stirring Cindy's idolatry and Ginny Sue's darkest fears; Ginny Sue's mother Hannah (Gram Emily's daughter), whose knowledge of love and grief Ginny Sue never seemed to be able to touch; Emily's hotshot sister Lena--with husband Roy, she made a pair that ""cut a shine""--who, now that Roy's dead, is more than slightly gaga and raising hell in a nursing home; and Gram Emily, who knows something wise about a woman's home and family: "". . .you go on home where you got children waiting for dinner."" While the women reach into the past, reclaim the dead, and release longings that mend the present, Ginny Sue learns that love is always, but there's a time to leave an old home for a new. An immensely likable tale about women's loves and troubles through generations--with raspingly endearing characters (McCorkle's cranky, off-center elders are salty as fatback) and dialogue rich in regional rhythms and right as rain.

Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION