A Tale of Two Women I enjoy historical fiction but have a restricted range, preferring British Tudor and Medieval settings or, as in this case, the antebellum Southern States.The Wedding Gift is set in Alabama and the focus is on two women who come from very different social classes but who share a common bond of powerlessness when faced with domineering men. Sarah is a half-white slave, the off-spring of Emmeline, a house slave, and the boorish plantation owner. Theodora is the plantation owner’s…
Disappointing I was really looking forward to this book after reading about it in Stylist magazine. Although it tells a good tale for about 80% of it, the ending was unsatisfying, and actually bizarrely done, now that I think about it. Almost as if the author wanted to throw in an 11th hour twist to shock the reader, but it just came across as disconnected.However, my biggest issue is the lack of emotion throughout. Some parts that could have been really emotive were described blandly through dialogue,…
The Wedding Gift is Marlen Suyapa Bodden’s debut novel. Alabama. The Allen Plantation. 1840′s. Sarah is born to her slave mother Emmeline. Three months later the plantation owner’s wife gives birth to her daughter Clarissa. They have the same father. The two girls grow up on the same land, but live very different lives. What I quite enjoyed was the two viewpoints Bodden used to tell her story – that of the slave Sarah and that of Theodora, the owner’s wife. It was an…
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A Tale of Two Women I enjoy historical fiction but have a restricted range, preferring British Tudor and Medieval settings or, as in this case, the antebellum Southern States.The Wedding Gift is set in Alabama and the focus is on two women who come from very different social classes but who share a common bond of powerlessness when faced with domineering men. Sarah is a half-white slave, the off-spring of Emmeline, a house slave, and the boorish plantation owner. Theodora is the plantation owner’s…
Disappointing I was really looking forward to this book after reading about it in Stylist magazine. Although it tells a good tale for about 80% of it, the ending was unsatisfying, and actually bizarrely done, now that I think about it. Almost as if the author wanted to throw in an 11th hour twist to shock the reader, but it just came across as disconnected.However, my biggest issue is the lack of emotion throughout. Some parts that could have been really emotive were described blandly through dialogue,…
The Wedding Gift is Marlen Suyapa Bodden’s debut novel. Alabama. The Allen Plantation. 1840′s. Sarah is born to her slave mother Emmeline. Three months later the plantation owner’s wife gives birth to her daughter Clarissa. They have the same father. The two girls grow up on the same land, but live very different lives. What I quite enjoyed was the two viewpoints Bodden used to tell her story – that of the slave Sarah and that of Theodora, the owner’s wife. It was an…