Varina by Charles Frazier
Got this recommendation from a Facebook friend. Its about Jefferson Davis's wife, Varina (or "V" as she is referred to in the book), and is told in parallel time frames, one as she and her family flee post-civil war Richmond and the other of her childhood, youth, courtship, marriage and life leading up to the war. Its also in large part about James, a young black boy who was part of Varina's household in during the Civil War. The two are reunited many, many years after the war as James tries to find his own lost story which includes his time as companion to the Davis children and foster son to Varina.
Since the book is about his wife, Jefferson Davis is portrayed not so much as the President of the failed Confederate States (or the fleeing traitor that he eventually became) but mostly as a (somewhat disinterested) husband and father. Frazier's Varina is an opium aficionado, though she claims to be an amateur, not a professional, a self-proclaimed victim of the times' doctors prescribing the drug for, as she says, everything from "monthly melancholy to childbirth...also fatigue, excitement, sore throat, heartbreak and boredom...they see it as the cure-all for excitable women."
Her marriage, and the various ways she fought against its constraints and settled into its boundries is a central topic of the book, especially the rivalry she had with her husbands' dead first wife: "At seventeen V had been young and romantic enough to believe that, given time, she could occupy and eventually possess all the chambers of Jeff's heart-or at least a majority of them." In this she failed, and her failure gives the story a sense of tragedy that she herself doesn't linger on. Of the decisions of her own youth: "That age, you make choices and don't always know your making them. Some don't matter, but a surprisingly large lot of them haunt forever. Each choice shuts off whole worlds that might have been."
She's the quintessential strong old southern lady, a model for the Steel Magnolia's of later years. Oddly, though its part of her world for half of her life, she neither dwells on nor thinks much about the institution of slavery-its almost as if that were just background to her live and not the impetus for the war which broke her family apart. When pushed she agrees its bad and her position even before the war was to just walk away from the institution completely, but she played the dutiful wife to one of the south's staunchest defenders so that's a little hard to swallow. What's not difficult to absorb is her affection for her children, including James.
With respect to James' presence in their home, she dismisses Davis's possible disapproval by telling James: "I don't know why he didn't object to you being there-maybe because he didn't have the energy to fight the war and me at the same time. To be able to live together we learned to pick our battles." And they fought various battles throughout their marriage.
On the raising of children: "Children don't judge their own lives. Normal for them is what's laid before them day by day. Judgment comes later."
Frazier's descriptions of the southern homes: "The butter-colored plaster walls lay blank, without any blemish of framed art." and later : "Scant furniture hovered around cavernous fireplaces at either end of the long room, and no paintings marred the high walls."
Per Delray, one of the men who helped them from Richmond until basically the end: "The slowest man sets the pace because we're not the kind of people to leave anybody behind."
"Two young people meet at that moment of accelerative emotion when nature floods our being with urgent demands. So, assume the usual plot elements-attractiveness, proximity, opportunity."
On her journey south she befriends a group of young women and recognizes something of herself in them: "the need to become something at least within the vicinity of your dream of yourself."
She could be a snot: "V barely suppressed her laughter, a stage gesture meant to be readable from the upper balcony. Meant to provoke."
"I ask how the great work has gone today, and he always gives the same answer-incremental advancements. Which I tell him is the most any writer ought to expect."
Oscar Wilde visited with V: "She smiled and said, you'll find that as you grow old, you stop bothering to hide the self you've been all along.
-I aspire to that every day.
-Let's schedule a conversation on the topic thirty years from now. I'd like to hear your thoughts."
Rating: #4 Liked It
Since the book is about his wife, Jefferson Davis is portrayed not so much as the President of the failed Confederate States (or the fleeing traitor that he eventually became) but mostly as a (somewhat disinterested) husband and father. Frazier's Varina is an opium aficionado, though she claims to be an amateur, not a professional, a self-proclaimed victim of the times' doctors prescribing the drug for, as she says, everything from "monthly melancholy to childbirth...also fatigue, excitement, sore throat, heartbreak and boredom...they see it as the cure-all for excitable women."
Her marriage, and the various ways she fought against its constraints and settled into its boundries is a central topic of the book, especially the rivalry she had with her husbands' dead first wife: "At seventeen V had been young and romantic enough to believe that, given time, she could occupy and eventually possess all the chambers of Jeff's heart-or at least a majority of them." In this she failed, and her failure gives the story a sense of tragedy that she herself doesn't linger on. Of the decisions of her own youth: "That age, you make choices and don't always know your making them. Some don't matter, but a surprisingly large lot of them haunt forever. Each choice shuts off whole worlds that might have been."
She's the quintessential strong old southern lady, a model for the Steel Magnolia's of later years. Oddly, though its part of her world for half of her life, she neither dwells on nor thinks much about the institution of slavery-its almost as if that were just background to her live and not the impetus for the war which broke her family apart. When pushed she agrees its bad and her position even before the war was to just walk away from the institution completely, but she played the dutiful wife to one of the south's staunchest defenders so that's a little hard to swallow. What's not difficult to absorb is her affection for her children, including James.
With respect to James' presence in their home, she dismisses Davis's possible disapproval by telling James: "I don't know why he didn't object to you being there-maybe because he didn't have the energy to fight the war and me at the same time. To be able to live together we learned to pick our battles." And they fought various battles throughout their marriage.
On the raising of children: "Children don't judge their own lives. Normal for them is what's laid before them day by day. Judgment comes later."
Frazier's descriptions of the southern homes: "The butter-colored plaster walls lay blank, without any blemish of framed art." and later : "Scant furniture hovered around cavernous fireplaces at either end of the long room, and no paintings marred the high walls."
Per Delray, one of the men who helped them from Richmond until basically the end: "The slowest man sets the pace because we're not the kind of people to leave anybody behind."
"Two young people meet at that moment of accelerative emotion when nature floods our being with urgent demands. So, assume the usual plot elements-attractiveness, proximity, opportunity."
On her journey south she befriends a group of young women and recognizes something of herself in them: "the need to become something at least within the vicinity of your dream of yourself."
She could be a snot: "V barely suppressed her laughter, a stage gesture meant to be readable from the upper balcony. Meant to provoke."
"I ask how the great work has gone today, and he always gives the same answer-incremental advancements. Which I tell him is the most any writer ought to expect."
Oscar Wilde visited with V: "She smiled and said, you'll find that as you grow old, you stop bothering to hide the self you've been all along.
-I aspire to that every day.
-Let's schedule a conversation on the topic thirty years from now. I'd like to hear your thoughts."
Rating: #4 Liked It
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