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Summary
Summary
Ellen Foster
Author Notes
Kaye Gibbons was born on May 5, 1960 in Nash County, North Carolina. She received a bachelor's degree in American literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her first novel, Ellen Foster, was published in 1987. It won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was chosen as one of Oprah's Book Club Selections, and was adapted into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. Her other novels include The Virtuous Woman, A Cure for Dreams, Sights Unseen, On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, Divining Women, The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster, The Lunatics' Ball, and The Secret Devotions of Mary Magdalen. Her novel Charms for the Easy Life was also adapted into a made-for-television movie. She also received the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, which recognized her contribution to French Literature in 1996 and she received the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1998.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The appealing, eponymous, 11-year-old orphan heroine of this Southern-focused debut survives appalling situations until she finds safe harbor in a good foster home. ``Some readers will find the recital of Ellen's woes mawkishly sentimental,'' PW remarked, ``but for others it may be a perfect summer read.'' (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
A commendable first novel narrated by an adolescent girl, Ellen, who relates the day-to-day experiences she endured as a child in a troubled family. Ellen's mother died young, her father was abusive, her other relatives were equally bad; it wasn't until she was taken into a foster home that she found the sort of peace and freedom to be innocent that most normal childhoods afford. Gibbons does not lapse for a single moment in keeping the entire narrative within this spunky character's personal frame of vision and distinctive pattern of expression. It's a humorous and unsentimental novel, never weepy or grim, despite the subject matter. Gibbons elicits the reader's compassion and admiration for Ellen forcefully yet honestly. BH. [CIP] 86-22136
Kirkus Review
A short first novel told in the laconic and telegraph-style voice of an 11-year-old girl down South. Ellen Foster is a kind of Huck Finn, smarter than her years and with wit and resilience in plentiful measure, whose orphan adventures lead her, at last, to a happy home. The story opens with the death of her kind but dragged-into-poverty-and-despair mother, an event that leaves Ellen alone with her father, who, like Huck's Pap, is a piece of mean, worthless, lecherous, drunken white trash. Ellen hides from him as best she can, but finally has to run away from home to escape his half-crazed sexual advances. Ellen's fate then is to live for a time with her rich but snake-mean grandmother, who takes out on Ellen the hatred she feels for Ellen's ne'er-do-well father--who in turn does the decent thing by dying (and, like Huck's dad, does it offstage). Ellen's grandmother herself is the next to go (of flu), after which Ellen is handed on to a hypocritical and shallow aunt (and her ditto daughter), who so enrage Ellen (and give her so little love) that she once again flees, this time to the home for girls run by her ""new mama,"" where she at last finds the stability and love (and cleanliness and order and honesty) she's never had before. At book's end, her old and best-loved friend Starletta--dirt poor and black--comes for a weekend; and though the occasion gives rise to a fleeting brush of platitudes about race relations, the depth of feeling Ellen has (not only for her friend, but for having a place to invite her to) is lovely, psychologically on target, and affecting. A reader may doubt that at her age, and in her poverty-driven circumstances, the unlettered Ellen could really be as worldly as she's sometimes portrayed (she names an imaginary boyfriend Nick Adams), but by and large the innocence of her wit and the tough stoicism of her voice avoid an Eloise-like coyness and ring true--and touching: ""I am not exactly a vision. But Lord I have good intentions that count."" A child's-eye tale of evil giving way to goodness--and happily far more spunky than sweet. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Ellen Foster is the often heart-wrenching tale of an 11-year-old girl who loses her dearly loved mother through suicide and is left to coexist with her alcoholic father. ``Old Ellen,'' as the protagonist refers to herself, is a tough but tender young soul, determined and wise beyond her years. Initially, she is resourceful enough to ferret out money for necessities, but eventually she becomes fearful for her safety and runs away to live with her art teacher. When a court decides she can no longer remain there, Ellen is briefly shuttled between uncaring relatives but eventually triumphs in finding a ``new mamma.'' Gibbons has produced a warm and caring first novel about a backwoods child persevering through hard times to establish a new and satisfying identity. It is written with the freshness of a child but the wisdom of an adult. Kimberly G. Allen, Supreme Court Lib., Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.