Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION BER | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
It is 1850. Margaret Fuller, feminist, journalist, orator and 'the most famous woman in America' is returning from Europe when her ship founders in a hurricane off Long Island. Rescued from the wreckage is Fuller's last book manuscript, which is left in the hands of her younger sister, Anne Thoreau. From this final evidence, what does one sensitive but ordinary woman make of a publicly disgraced woman like Fuller? Miss Fuller poses timeless questions of how we react to agents of change, but also demonstrates the individual cost of striving to change the world for the better.
Author Notes
April Bernard is a novelist, poet, and essayist. Her first novel, Pirate Jenny , was published in 1990; her most recent collection of poems is Romanticism (W.W. Norton, June 2009). Her previous poetry collections are Blackbird Bye Bye, Psalms, and Swan Electric. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The Nation, and Slate. She has taught widely and was for many years a magazine and book editor in New York City. Her honors include a Guggenheim award, the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Whitney Humanities Fellowship at Yale University, a Sidney Harman Fellowship, and the Stover Prize. She joined the English Department faculty at Skidmore in 2009 as Director of Creative Writing and is also on the faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars. The author lives in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fact meets fiction in this intriguing historical novel expounding on the life and times of Margaret Fuller, a freethinking feminist writer and friend of Emerson and Thoreau, among others, on the Concord scene. In poet Bernard's rendering, readers have an additional lens in Anne, a fictionalized sister of Thoreau's, who, in her youth, attends one of Fuller's Boston salons for ladies and then, later in life, becomes privy to a "lost letter" written from the ship that would have returned Fuller from Europe to the States had it not sunk off Fire Island, killing Fuller, her Italian husband, and their young son. Though the structure of the book feels artificial-in part because the imagined letter makes up the entire second section-the overall effect is worthwhile, bringing to light the fear of and disdain for independent, courageous women even among enlightened Transcendentalists. Though Fuller's untimely death was marked by sadness, it is the widespread relief evocatively etched in these pages that startles: no one knew what to make of this outspoken woman of dubious virtue, and a mother at that, leaving even the most progressive minds of the time to wonder if her tragic end wasn't something of a blessing after all. (Apr. 3) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Poet and novelist Bernard takes an unusual approach to historical fiction in this supple and concentrated tale. The catalyst is the wrenching death of the scandalously unconventional, brilliant, and courageous Margaret Fuller, a pioneering foreign correspondent, writer, and women's rights advocate, who died, along with her Italian husband and son, in a shipwreck in sight of Fire Island after voyaging home to shore up her harshly impugned reputation. Ralph Waldo Emerson hastens to the Thoreau home to ask Henry to hurry to the coast to claim the bodies and, as Henry fervently hopes, Margaret's new manuscript. Our witness to all this and more is a wholly fictional character, Henry's much younger adopted sister, Anne, who longs to assist her naturalist brother in his studies and casts a critical eye on the strictly limited lives of women. As Henry searches and Anne keeps busy, the full complexity of Fuller's dramatic life is revealed in a journal-like letter to Sophia Hawthorne. Bernard's elegant, witty, vivid, and tragic portrait reclaims a vilified yet revered and influential thinker and visionary.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE poet April Bernard's latest work of fiction, "Miss Fuller," opens in 1850, on the day the translator, literary critic, essayist, political activist and journalist Margaret Fuller died in a shipwreck off the coast of Long Island. Fuller, who had been in Italy reporting for Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, was returning home to the United States with her husband and young son when the ship foundered during a storm. Most of the novel is seen from the point of view of a woman named Anne, a fictitious sister of Henry David Thoreau; other parts are narrated by Fuller herself, via fabricated letters supposedly found by Thoreau on the day he visited the site of the wreck. Despite her early death, Fuller's life was extraordinarily rich, yet this novel fails to suggest the breadth and vibrancy of her intellectual and emotional concerns. Fuller was fluent in German, among other languages, and read and translated Goethe. As a reporter in New York, she wrote a series of human-interest stories based on her interviews with men and women at Sing Sing prison, Blackwell's Island and the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. As an editor and critic, she believed that literature was a tool individuals could use to cultivate and educate themselves. Yet in the letters Bernard invents, supposedly sealed inside a lap-desk that washes up on shore to be conveniently rescued by Thoreau, Fuller doesn't detail her experiences as a foreign correspondent in Europe. Instead she gossips about clothes and men, and expresses the anachronistic need to have time to herself. Addressed to Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife, Sophia, the letters make Fuller sound dizzy and peevish. Bernard also devises a torrid affair between Fuller and the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz that manages to be both unconvincing and tedious. The other stumbling block is the counterfactual presence of the protagonist and narrator, Anne Thoreau. "Miss Fuller" is not an alternative history novel. Anne has not been invented in order to discover what Thoreau's life might have been like with an extra sister - or to speculate about what might have happened if Fuller had served as mentor to a somewhat spiteful ingénue. Anne seems to exist for narrative convenience, yet she fails to serve as a useful guide to Fuller's world. When, for example, she attends one of Fuller's famous Boston "conversations," modeled after 18th-century European intellectual salons and Bronson Alcott's talks, she nervously spills her tea, counts the windowpanes and stares out at the garden. As a character, Anne isn't sufficiently developed to allow us to understand why she is so ill-equipped to convey (or is so overwhelmed by) the fact that she's surrounded by highly educated and interesting women, who in her rendition seem more like tittering ninnies. Clearly, Bernard was drawn to Fuller as a historical figure, but this attempt to fictionalize her has become stranded between genres. "Miss Fuller" is neither the sort of historical novel that seeks to recapture the feel of certain events nor a biographical novel that speculates about the inner life of a historical figure in a way that can't be documented by the scholarly evidence. It doesn't evoke Margaret Fuller so much as reach out to her - but she has eluded this novel's grasp. Despite her early, death, Fuller's life was extraordinarily rich. Sarah Fay is an editorial associate at The Paris Review. Her writing appears on theatlantic.com.
Kirkus Review
A letter from one woman to another washes ashore. This letter details the adventurous, fantastic, revolutionary life of Margaret Fuller. But will her words unite or divide? Will anyone read her letter at all? Bernard (Romanticism: Poems, 2009, etc.) juxtaposes two lives, two paths taken by very different 19th-century women, one conventional and the other extraordinary. Attending one of Margaret Fuller's famed Conversations, Anne Thoreau, Henry's adopted younger sister, is first preoccupied by her own plain dress and awkward manners. Yet Anne is quickly entranced by the charismatic Fuller with her bold call to each woman to embrace her inner Minerva, her own feminine wisdom that should stand alongside masculine wisdom. Fuller's early feminism both attracts and frightens Anne. Indeed, the disapproving eyes of not only conventional society matrons but also her own professed friends, the men of the Transcendentalist Concord circle, shadow her constantly. After serving abroad as one of the first women foreign correspondents, Fuller and her family tragically drown as their ship founders off the coast. Henry rushes to the wreck and finds, among other things, a letter to Sophia Hawthorne. When he contacts the Hawthornes, however, Nathaniel, disturbed by reports of Fuller's unconventional behavior, refuses to allow Henry to deliver it. Intrigued by the tale, Anne begins to wonder more about Fuller. Only after her children have grown and Henry himself has died does Anne seek out and read Fuller's heartbreaking letter. The thrill of being an intrepid reporter, Anne discovers, is tempered by financial strains and illness. The price is steep, yet Fuller's accounts of love and adventure justify the cost of her unconventional life, making her watery death much more tragic. Bernard skillfully contrasts the public and private sides of Fuller, crafting a book with rich imagery, emotional depth and a poetic rhythm.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
This historical novel by novelist/poet Bernard (Pirate Jenny) focuses on the adult life and tragic death of Margaret Fuller, an early feminist best known for her Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The story is filtered through the lens of Anne Thoreau, an imagined sister of Henry David Thoreau, part of a group that befriends and then nearly shuns the maverick Fuller for her personal unorthodoxies and professional ambitions. Anne is a budding naturalist and painter whose yearnings for a life beyond marriage and motherhood are squelched by the times in which she lives. After Fuller, her husband, and their young son perish in a harrowing shipwreck, Anne's brother rescues Fuller's letters, which reveal the costs of independence. The letters also offer an antidote to the harsh judgments of Fuller's friends. Most interestingly, the effect on Anne of Fuller's public call for equality shows that Fuller's impact began with individuals and how they used her words to reenvision themselves. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in the life of Margaret Fuller and for those who like feminist literature such as Kate Chopin's The Awakening.-Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.