35. Delta Wedding

35. Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty (11/2/2011 - 11/15/2011)

This was an assignment from an American Southern Authors Independent Study I took as part of my grad school studies, so this wasn't a book that I was reading on my own. But since I did read the whole thing, and since I read it instead of reading other books that I wanted to read, I'm including it here.  

The whole book is one big snapshot of the Fairchild family; there is only the barest of plots, which is that the family is coming together for Dabney’s wedding, and the rest of the book is just the family’s interactions with each other.  Each person plays a role in this enormous family.  The entire book is also just few days in this giant family's life together; the wedding itself takes maybe 2 pages after more than 100 pages of build up and like I said, there's not much to the book, plot-wise.  

There are a lot of controversies in this family.  George, one of the uncles/brothers of the family, is seen almost as a hero; he has moved out of the family's hometown (which is named after them) and made something of a name for himself.  But he has also married a woman that the rest of the family believes is beneath him, which causes a lot of problems.  Dabney, the young bride of this story, is marrying the family's plantation overseer, another person that the family believes is beneath them (and, to be fair, Troy is not a very nice guy).  The family is not quiet at all about their judgments either, which creates quite a lot of conflict.  

I like that Welty chose to tell the story from the point of view of several of the main women. I don’t know if that appeals to me just because I’m also a woman or if, as it seems, the women of this family really do have more insight into their and others’ lives and I find that interesting, but either way, I enjoy the narration style.  The main women, Ellen especially, seem to understand how the family fits together, how they fit into that family scheme, and how each member of the family relates to the others.  The perspective changes also help tell the family's story from lots of different points of view, which really change as the characters do.  

This is a good novel to read if you like family sketches and family issues. But if you tend to like stories that are more plot-driven, I probably wouldn't recommend it.  Nonetheless though, I do see why Eudora Welty is one of the more famous American Southern writers.