PATSY JEFFERSON'S DIARY
By
Like that of Bourne's Nellie Custis (1974), her Patsy Jefferson's prim, cliched style changes very little between her first entry at age seven and her next-to-last on meeting her future husband--and the prose of both is indistinguishable from that of Nabby Adams (1975) whose ""woods were a blaze of color."" (Here Patsy's ""mountains are aflame with color."") Prematurely proper, Patsy says the expected things about Paris (the ladies are ""most immodest""), slavery (""I wish with all my soul that the poor Negroes were all freed""), Papa's government business, and her family's crises (when Mama dies, ""Why did God take her from us?""). But see Monjo's superficially similar treatment of Patsy's daughter (in last year's Grand Papa and Ellen Aroon) for the difference a little shaping and selecting by a sharper eye and ear can make.