Kate Vaiden

by Reynolds Price

Book Overview

0ne of the most feisty, spellbinding and engaging heroines in modern fiction captures the essence of her own life in this contemporary American odyssey born of red-clay land and small-town people. We... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684846942
• ISBN13: 9780684846941
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful

This was a mother's day gift from my daughter, and a first shot at Reynolds Price. I loved it. This author understands small places in the south. As a mother (and this is in the very first paragraphs of the novel), I just couldn't fathom how Kate Vaiden could have abandoned her child when he was just a baby, and "down for a nap." But Kate's life certainly explains it. Understanding why she abandons her child doesn't make it easy to forgive her. It's great that Reynold Price tells the story in the order he does, because you keep asking yourself, "how could she possibly have done such a thing, and how can she ever be redeemed?" The expressiveness in the dialogue is especially great. Kate Vaiden's story will linger for a long time; I feel better for having experienced it. And bravo to a male author who can write from a female protagonist's perspective like this.

Kate Vaiden: A tainted heroine

Kate Vaiden is a wonderfully real character who is refreshing to hear from. Despite her somewhat tragic life, she remains real, witty, intimate with the reader, and honest with herself. The descriptions of Macon, North Carolina are so simple yet so eloquent and poignant. More important than the poetic imagery and the interesting storyline is the presentation of a woman who has lived and made mistakes (and plenty of them) and makes no excuses for her actions nor does she express regret for her life. She is a strong, honest, and, despite her faults, an admirable character at least in that she is more mature than half the population today; she needs not blame anyone else for her mistakes and she does not wallow either. Reynolds Price should be proud to have written such a character and simply for Kate's voice this is a book to be read, and in my case, enjoyed.

A great read, a great writer...

This was my introduction to Reynolds Price, and I am most glad to make the acquaintance. Kate Vaiden is on the receiving end of uncommonly tragic circumstances in early life, and her reactions and choices springing from these events are one part exhasperating, one part predictable, often dreamlike - we can't be meant to like her. Watching Kate's inner character warp over time as a result of these events is a box seat to a slow train wreck, but the machinations of plot are mainly just an excuse to read Price's wonderful prose. Is the female voice of the main character believable? Is Kate knowing, or a victim of her Southern life and times? There is much to ponder, but the ending, replete with hopeful likelihoods, makes you wish Price had simply continued unfurling the story so as to enjoy more of his dense, beautiful writing about it.

Amazing, gritty, and meaty!

A friend gave me this book, telling me it was one of her favorites -- I'd never heard of it, or of Reynolds Price, but it's definitely one of my favorites now! From beginning to end, I was absolutely in thrall to Kate and her life, her quiet calmness and path through life. I was impelled onwards by the desire to know what came next, what she would do next. Kate is not entirely believable, even given the conventions of fiction and a little poetic license - she is a little TOO self-directed and unswayed by others, and the characterization of her sexuality is curiously flat -- what was intended perhaps as the reticence of the era comes across as an absence of passion, even for Gaston. The writing and characterizations, the subtlety and flamboyance (two qualities not often combined) of the prose and dialogue were an immense pleasure to read and to hear in my mind's ear. In the grand tradition of Southern novelists, Reynolds Price captures not just Kate's life but also the ambience of small-town families and a peculiar live-and-let-live attitude that comes with people being simultaneously crammed together and kept apart.

Lyrical coming-of-age tale set in rural N. Carolina; classic

Although I am a high school English teacher and consider myself pretty well read, I had never heard of Price until one of my wife's friends, a San Francisco lawyer, shared her "secret" with me. I had succeeded in turning her on to James Agee's brilliant, prose poem, -A Death in the Family- (1956)and, in return, she gave me a paperback copy of -Kate Vaiden-. Although this novel (which was awarded the National Book Critics Circle prize) is ostensibly about the entire "life" of the title character, its focus is on her youth, coming-of-age during WWII in rural N. Carolina (Price's home state), and later ramifications. What makes this book so memorable for me is Kate's voice. Price has written her story in first-person, and I found it hard to believe it was written by a man: his insights are so intuitive and so in tune with what I have learned about women's emotional lives (at age 38) that I was astonished. This book is one of the best examples I have ever encountered of narrative control; Price never falters as he slowly reveals Kate's tragic life. (Another example of brilliant first-person narration is James Dickey's _To the White Sea_, his last novel before his death a few months ago.) Kate Vaiden is a character and a book well worth your time, so long as you are not concerned primarily with plotting. Although this book is character-oriented, it is not tedious; in fact, the plot is rather unusual, both in the characters Kate encounters in her journeys (both physical and emotional) and in the events which occur (sometimes to her, and sometimes caused by her). _Kate Vaiden_ would be a particularly good book for a book group, especially a women's group (although, again, I'm a man and I think it's one of the best books I've read in years). Reynolds Price is criminally underappreciated; he has written several excellent novels, non-fiction dealing with Christianity (his current hardback is a retelling of the Gospels), and autobiographical works (including a recent book about his recent experience with a dread disease and his recovery). Please note that _Kate Vaiden_ has no religious component in it whatsoever; it is most assuredly not a Christian novel (whatever that may be). I also highly recommend any of the remarkably good books by Jon Hassler, who writes superbly about small town life in Northern Minnesota (imagine a cross between Anne Tyler's Baltimore stories and Sinclair Lewis, a fellow Minnesotan). The Love Hunter and North of Hope are my favorites, but A Green Journey and its "sequel," Dear James, are also wonderful. Happy reading.