- Paperback: 560 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (Aug 26 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 006093669X
- ISBN-13: 978-0060936693
- Product Dimensions: 13.5 x 2.3 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #528,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
During the civil rights conflict, Birmingham, Ala., was notorious for the ferocity of its racial bigotry: peaceful demonstrators attacked with fire hoses and dogs by police chief Bull Connor; the Klan-set explosion at a black church that killed four little girls. The four victims are only background figures in Naslund's (Ahab's Wife) faithful and moving evocation of the city and the era, but they appear to several characters in the form of spirits who promise the reconciliation to come. The novel is constructed as a series of vignettes that follow a dozen or so characters whose lives finally intersect in entirely credible ways, and who serve as emblems of the divided citizens of Birmingham, some who bitterly fought integration and others who persevered in their struggle for equality. As such, it's a panorama of the social landscape of the Deep South during its violent crucible of change. Naslund, who grew up in Alabama, writes with a deep, instinctive compassion for the South's tragic heritage of racial hatred, and an understanding of the high toll paid by people committed to justice. She develops her plot in a leisurely fashion that initially may leave readers somewhat frustrated, but her method eventually pays off in stunning scenes, vivid with action, color and emotion, that recreate both the horror and the heroism. The characters pivot around Stella Silver, a white college student who is horrified by the glee in her community when JFK is assassinated, and who is moved to activism. In its authentic, balanced evocation of daily life across a wide spectrum of the black and white communities, this novel justifies its length and measured pace, and credibly renders the faith and courage that brought redemption to a blood-soaked city.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-The author of Ahab's Wife (Morrow, 1999), a feminist corrective to Moby-Dick, has picked an equally ambitious subject for this novel: the racial injustice, hatred, and horror of Birmingham, AL, circa 1963. With a full cast of fictional characters, and a few historical figures (Police Commissioner Bull Connor, the Reverends Shuttlesworth, King, and Abernathy), Naslund weaves a busy but satisfying story of real and imagined events: lunch-counter sit-ins, fire-hosed demonstrators, police dogs at children's heels. The title refers to the spiritual presence (felt by several characters) of the four young girls who died in the horrendous bombing of their church. One matronly woman "sees" them as honeybees on roses, one bee to a rose. Because of this and other such contrivances, some readers might find the narrative strained, and the principal characters either too good or too horrible. For the most part, though, the author manages to keep this big story under control, in part by employing a measured narrative pace. There is plenty of value here for strong, informed teens. Undoubtedly, some readers will find the novel too slow, or too full of names and events, and thus confusing. But for those who can handle the mature themes, Four Spirits is an excellent history lesson, and a story not soon forgotten.
Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
FROM MANY PLACES IN THE VALLEY THAT CRADLED Birmingham, you could lift up your eyes, in 1963, to see the gigantic cast-iron statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, atop his stone pedestal. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
FROM MANY PLACES IN THE VALLEY THAT CRADLED Birmingham, you could lift up your eyes, in 1963, to see the gigantic cast-iron statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, atop his stone pedestal. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing Second Novel,
By
This review is from: Four Spirits (Hardcover)
The writing is equally beautiful to Ahab's Wife, but the story seems to be begging for a plot triangle. It's hard to understand why Naslund would have let this be published in such raw form. Characters make brief appearances and then disappear for pages. Chapters read almost like separate vingettes. Makes me wonder if publishers were pushing Naslud to meet a printing date: It is so peculiarly inferior to her other story, and odd when, clearly, her writing standards are so very, very high.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to Keep Track of the Characters,
By
This review is from: Four Spirits (Hardcover)
In the author's note, Sena Naslund writes that she wanted to "write about the acts of courage and tragedy" that took place in Birmingham where she was a college student. I feel she did a very good job of portraying the difficult choices people involved in the civil rights movement had to make and the effect of those choices and the courage it took. For this, the book is worth reading.I had difficulty however with keeping track of the various characters and who they were, for some reason. It is a long book, but even by the end I often felt myself saying, "now who is that again". I just didn't feel engaged with the characters, they are not ones who will stick with me.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
8 readers,
By A Customer
This review is from: Four Spirits (Hardcover)
Eight of us read this novel for our book group. All of us appreciated the history lesson and Southern perspective on an issue that for us, growing up in mostly white neighborhoods of the Pacific Northwest, was not as visible.However, as a novel, we were at times disillusioned. Too many characters left a lot of lives half constructed and then going no where. Even the book's title was given scant time. It felt as if the author had numerous starts and stops to ideas when putting the book together. Relationships between several of the characters seemed to take off and then end abruptly. Those of us who read Naslund's Ahab's Wife were especially disappointed. In the end we all felt a good editor could have made this book a lot less frustrating and time consuming to read.
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