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From Amazon
Set near St. John, New Brunswick, Beth Powning's debut novel is a profound meditation on the nature of grief and memory. Kate, 52, has recently lost her husband, Tom, a painter, to a heart attack. Even as Kate mourns her tragic loss, she receives nine antique hatboxes filled with letters and documents from her ancestors in Hartford, Connecticut. Kate then commences an interior journey through her past, recalling when she would visit her grandparents in the great summer house of Shepton, where five generations of her family had lived. Sudden death at a young age is a recurring theme, and it is a tribute to this novel that the author is able to avoid any sense of the maudlin. In fact, when she relates the story of an eight-year-old relation dying of measles early in the century, the writing is riveting and the period scenes perfectly drawn.
What marks this novel as exceptional is its lyrical language. As Kate goes about her daily tasks and struggles with her memories, she sees the objects of the world--flowers, dew, clouds--with a near-painful clarity. Old envelopes are "embroidered by the teeth of mice." Adolescence is a time when "one has no idea that one is in mourning for childhood itself." Each leaf in her shining garden "holds a spear or prism or cup of light." Kate ultimately must find her own way to deal with the ghosts of her past, including a troublesome, heavy-drinking man she once knew who returns to her town to take a newspaper job. While the themes of this thoughtful novel might not appeal to every reader, it is beautifully, tenderly written. --Mark Frutkin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
In this muted, measured debut, Powning captures the sorrow of a grieving widow as she revisits the past to heal present-day wounds. For 30 years, Kate's one constant has been Tom—her husband and best friend. A year after his death, 51-year-old Kate, alone in her lovely Victorian house in the Canadian countryside, is still having trouble acknowledging that he's gone. Distraction arrives in the form of a number of hatboxes from her grandparents' attic, full of letters smelling of apples and smoke that take Kate back to the simplicity of her childhood and Shepton, the family's rambling Connecticut home. But when Kate reads of a family tragedy, she sees a parallel between it and her own sorrow, and she begins to work through her feelings. Meanwhile, she grows close to Gregory, an old family friend who can't recover from his son's suicide, though she struggles with her feelings of pity and disgust for him when he makes some clumsy advances. Only a final calamity forces Kate to finally let go of the past and to start living in the present. The novel's leisurely pace takes some getting used to, but Powning does an excellent job of portraying Kate's sadness, divulging the tales of her family and focusing on the quiet beauty of her surroundings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
most boring book I've ever read,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Hatbox Letters (Paperback)
This book was chosen for our book club, and I can honestly say that it is one of the most boring, slow, overly wordy books that we have ever had to read for book club. For the first five chapters, hardly anything happens because so much of the story is about the main character's thoughts and grief about her dead husband. Okay, we get the picture! There's a huge lack of dialogue with any other characters, and although the author obviously has a large vocabulary and is good at describing things, that talent is greatly overused. Boring, boring, boring. I only gave it one star for the odd sentence in the book that sounded good.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not for the faint of heart,
By
This review is from: The Hatbox Letters (Hardcover)
While the language in the book is lovely, and the descriptions powerfully vivid, description does not a book make. The book is slow, and endlessly depressing. There seems no end to the amount of grief poured on multiple characters, and while I realize that is the topic of the book, as a reader I need a break. Obviously it is well written, as the sadness comes across so strongly, but I did not find it uplifting or enlightening. The lack of dialogue leaves you reading page after page waiting for something to happen. When something does happen, it is more bad news. After a while I found it hard to muster up any sympathy for the characters, instead I was just annoyed. I was sorely disappointed in this novel.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best books Ive read in a while,
By
This review is from: The Hatbox Letters (Paperback)
Grief and loss are topics explored by many authors in many great works of fiction. Often when a great loss occurs, it is followed by a great discovery of memories cherished, secrets revealed or hope in the future restored. The main character in Beth Pownings The Hatbox Letters discovers a past she never knew existed and future made bittersweet because she has to face it alone without the husband she loved so dearly.Pownings eye for detail and poetic prose are breathtaking and awe-inspiring. She transports us into Kates world by vividly describing her thoughts, emotions and physical surroundings. The language is powerful, filled with nuggets of wisdom that are polished to a vibrant shine in the mind, so we can return to them and admire their beauty over and over. In reading this fine novel, I found that I couldnt sprint through its pages. Instead, I enjoyed it at the more leisurely pace of a pleasant stroll, taking the time to pause and immerse myself in the beauty of the literary landscape. Along the way, I found phrases that elicited moments of reflection, others begged to be spoken aloud and admired for their lyrical essence. Powning captured the components of grief as well as what it means to be part of the legacy of a family. The Hatbox Letters is an enlightening and inspirational read that will draw you in to the main characters journey and make you reflect on your own journey.
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