Stella Landry - Hardcover

Robin McCorquodale

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297840606 ISBN 13: 9780297840602

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1993

Synopsis

The author of Dansville tells of Stella Landry, a woman whose fondest dreams have come true, only to be shattered by a haunting past with which she is forced to come to terms. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Here, the author reins in the stylistic excesses of her heavy- breathing Dansville (1985) and settles in to plain-speaking--for a raw-boned confession of a woman who barely survives a near-lifetime of abuse. It all takes place in the cities and small towns of Texas. As Stella describes her nun-like, solitary life (``People like me don't [marry]'') in Fort Worth, the reader has to guess why she at first shuns the courtship of persistent young Jim, a man she instinctively likes. He's a small-town mechanic, and Stella has known others like him: ``Born into a life that they saw no reason to change (their fathers had jobs good enough...their pride was in how well they were able to copy the men who had come before them''). Stella and Jim do marry, however, and have a son. In fact, Stella comes to adore, in the worshipful sense, her new status as part of a family--with ``all the love around me.'' But then a distant kin of Jim's family thinks she recognizes Stella, and one day someone gross and evil arrives from the past. Throughout, Stella's childhood and youth are revealed, beginning with the small bit of happiness in childhood with mother Joylyn and father Doc, who, he said, could never pass his medical exams. Joylyn will disappear, driven to desperation by Doc's callous greed and drunkenness, leaving Stella, abused, in poverty and vulnerable to exploitation and years of humiliation. After a near-fatal violation (graphically detailed), she escapes to Forth Worth. But Stella finds no forgiveness for her past from the church-going Christians of her new family. It's only after more years of loneliness that she finds in herself forgiveness and love. A straightforward hapless victim's tale. Stella is no hearty Moll Flanders, but, still, there's a root authenticity here of the regional mores and rituals. This could edge into a May Sarton/Tillie Olsen feminist readership. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this deeply affecting novel, McCorquodale ( Dansville ) writes in the indelible voice of a young Texas woman of mid-century who gradually reveals a girlhood consisting of sorrow, cruel betrayals and a few carefully treasured moments of joy. Introduced when she is 20 and working as a waitress in a Fort Worth luncheonette, the determinedly solitary Stella Landry is wooed and won by young Jim Lester against all her expectations. Her cherished life with him and their baby Darrell in the small neighboring town is threatened by an acquaintance from her past. McCorquodale flawlessly blends Stella's past into her unfolding present; we learn that she was abandoned in a central Texas motel as a baby and raised by Joylin and Doc Landry, whose love nurtured and sustained her until Doc's drinking and failing business schemes led to Joylin's departure and a drastic, unremitting downhill turn for adolescent Stella. The author relates the horrifying circumstances of Stella's life before she meets Jim (and later) in subtle, utterly credible and deeply moving prose. In her sure telling, Stella's encounter with her past and her embrace of her losses and her future make an irresistible story with an unforgettable heroine. Literary Guild alternate; paperback rights to Avon.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0297840606
• ISBN 13: 9780297840602
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 230