Rating: 
Summary: Simple and Quiet
Review: Laurel is a quiet character; though she is the center of the book, she rarely speaks. Welty captures Laurel's greif at the death of her father with all of the accompanying conflicting emotions. Laurel's character was developed largely from the tangible details about the way she conducted herself with her father, mother, Fay, and the people from her town, as well as descriptions of her memories. She was a complete character through her interactions with the other characters and her memories which were brought on through her interaction with her surroundings. And though Fay seemed a little bit one-dimensional, she was by no means evil--there are stupid people in the world :) Contrary to some of the other reviewers I felt like the simplicity and grace of Welty's prose deserved the Pulitzer Prize.
Rating: 
Summary: Ridiculing the Rediculously Selfish
Review: Laurel's developement throughout the novel makes her a wonderfully three demensional person, but all the other characters are steeped in stereotyes. Stereotyping in this novel, however, is used as a tool. While the Judge's first wife was utterly selfless (due to an obsession with the past) his second wife, Fay, is selfish to a rediculous degree. Fay is perfectly despisable, and I commend Welty for her perfect personification of that vice. The funniest lines in this novel come from Fay's childish, ego-centric perception of the world. Laurel's realization about her father's "optimism" for a new life with Fay is a significant one. When you read this take note of Laurel's growth, because it is in her developement that this book becomes psychologically and philosophically interesting. This book will not be for everyone because of the simple, slow plot. Welty's talent resides not giving us a riveting plot, but in creating the atmosphere and tone of the south.
Rating: 
Summary: How did this win the Pulitzer?
Review: Thankfully, this was a novella or I would have never finished it. The story is pointless. The protagonist is a weak, spineless woman who allows herself to be abused by her father's second wife without much resistance. I was annoyed from the moment I started reading this by every character in it. If that was Welty's goal then I give this 5 stars instead of 2. Maybe one has to be a southerner to understand this book. The pulitzer board refused to give Pynchon the prize in '74 but they give it to this terrible book. I have read a few Pulitzer prize winning novels and this is the only one that I did not enjoy at all. I give an author one chance and Welty used hers up. May I suggest Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Hersey's A Bell for Adano, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea or Momaday's House Made of Dawn (just to name a few)if you want to read deserving pulitzer winners. This book is a waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Complex
Review: The sentence from this book that best describes it is: "Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams." What a beautiful piece of writing! I am so thankful for growing older and maturing. Having done so, this book can truly be enjoyed. It is about maturing, deepening, remembering, and honoring. It is about relationship with the persons in one's life, with the past and with the future. Obtrusively thrust in the middle of all this is Fay and the Chisom family, representing all the possible ugliness, crassness, uncaring and unfeeling meanness of today's world. I could write that there is little that happens in this book...on the surface, but as in all truly rich experiences, one has to go deeper and reflect to see the richness. After slowly enjoying the first 160 pages or so, the last 10 pages explode in complexity and interaction and meaning. Those pages comprise one of the finest endings to a novel that I have read.
Rating:
Summary: A phone book of characters in an inane novel
Review: This book cannot be read without, to quote Peter Medawar, "a desperate gasping and flailing around for sense." Although it starts off promisingly enough, this book quickly degenerates into semi-philosophical musings and one-dimensional characters. To make things worse, the reader is expected to keep track of a multitude of minor characters who crawl over and mess up everything, like ants at a picnic. Save your money and read the white pages instead.
Rating: 
Summary: A haunting novella that lingers in the reader's mind
Review: This book is the conclusion of Welty's thematic trilogy of Southern family life: while "Delta Wedding" concerns a family gathering for a marriage ceremony and "Losing Battles" relates the events surrounding a family reunion celebrating a matriarch's 90th birthday, "The Optimist's Daughter" is about a funeral. Like her previous works, this last of Welty's novels deals primarily with emotions rather than actions, with character rather than plot. Unlike any of her previous novels, however, this short work has both feet planted firmly in the last half of the twentieth century. Laurel, a widow not entirely recovered from the loss of her husband many years earlier, returns home and finds herself completely without family. Her father dies, leaving in his wake the appropriately named Fay, a vulgar second wife who represents everything Laurel isn't and her mother wasn't. The rest of the novel describes the various attempts by Fay and by the friends of her father to reshape their recollections of his life to their own needs; a particular humorous scene describes four elderly neighborhood women criticizing both Fay and the deceased--more to affirm their own sense of superiority than to comfort Laurel, who endures every word of their conversation. After Fay leaves town for a few days with her trailer-trash relatives (who cause quite a stir when they show up for the funeral), Laurel is left alone to wander through her childhood home and wonder about her family's past. By the end of the novel, Laurel realizes that neither Fay nor her father's neighbors can take away the only things left in her life: her memories of her parents and her future. Because of its leisurely pacing, this book isn't for everyone. To say that nothing happens is not entirely accurate: although it's a short book, it's difficult to summarize in even a few paragraphs. It is beautifully written, it's easy to read, and the novel has richly drawn characters--but some readers may feel the novel itself lacks character. Once I finished the book, I was not sure whether or not I liked it, and I don't feel it's her best. At times the book almost collapses under the weight of its own heavy-handed symbols: the birds, the mountains, the thunderstorm, the breadboard. The novel repays a few hours of reflection and rereading, however: passages that are seemingly unrelated to the main narrative eventually make sense. What saves "The Optimist's Daughter," in the end, is both its ability to haunt the reader and Welty's sure-handed understanding of humanity.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting read
Review: This story is basically about a woman named Laurel who makes some realizations about her family and herself. Her father has recently died after undergoing a relatively minor surgery. Laurel and her crass stepmother Fay, both travel back to Laurels' hometown to bury him. After the funeral, Laurel who is now alone in the house comes to an understanding of her parents while having some revelations about her past, herself and who she is. This is a very good story that will hold your attention, despite the fact little action takes place. The most action there is occurs when Fay returns to the house and has words with Laurel; even then it's a very sedate confrontation. Overall, this is a good book to read.
Rating:
Summary: Stacks its deck too unfairly
Review: Welty's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is largely told in the third person through the observations of its heroine, Laurel McKelva Hand, the daughter of a prominent and wealthy smalltown Mississippi judge who comes to New Orleans to help her father who must see a doctor for an eye affliction. On hand is the judge's second wife, the silly and vulgar Fay, whom Laurel and the doctor basically ignore. When the father unexpectedly dies, Laurel (who is older than Fay) must return to the smalltown with her stepmother for his funeral. The reasons for Welty's popularity with THE NEW YORKER editorial board are much in evidence: the story is told subtly and in small pieces, and accrues a remarkable level of hospital and genteel smalltown detail as it proceeds. Its measured rhythms are the best thing this novel has going for it. Unfortunately, it seems to proceed too much along the lines of a contest between discreet Southern gentility and refinement (embodied in the quiet and grieiving Laurel) and no-'count Southern lower-class vulgarity (championed by Fay and her obnoxious Texas relatives). Although Laurel comes to realize why her father's late-life optimism explains why he married Fay, Welty doesn't really allow Fay any sort of appeal to the reader at all, and so you finish the novel thinking how much *nicer* everything would have been had the judge never married her. (At least Tennessee Williams allowed Stanley Kowalski animal magnetism.) The novel seems too much on the side of delicacy , especially given that Welty's own fine feelings are so manifest in her method of telling of the story--though paradoxically some overobvious symbols (a carved boat, a breadboard, the judge's degenerating eye) weigh things down a bit much. The work is most interesting at the end, when Laurel must confront some truths about her real mother's final illness which complicate the overly schematic family alignments in some welcome ways.
Rating:
Summary: Trapped by Memories of the Past
Review: Welty's Pulitzer winning novel, set in the South of 30 years ago, examines the physical mechanics of the funeral process, while placing the human heart under the microscope of social and filial stress. Laurel--a war widow deprived of the experiences and joys of normal married life, rushes back to Missisippi from her Chicago job and lifestyle. This devoted only child insists on her place at her father's bedside, as he undergoes eye surgery--a convenient medical smokescreen for the unmentionable killer: Cancer. How can a confirmed Optimist handle this grim reality? The storyline develops in the aftermath of his inevitable death, but the battle lines are drawn even before he quietly expires: between Laurel--the daughter of beloved Judge Clint McKelva and his adored wife, Becky--and Fay, the utterly selfish and emotionally crude second wife/young step-mother. Is it seemly to be disputing arrangements before the man is even enterred? What had the judge been thinking--to desecrate his wife's memory by bringing that crass Texas woman into the big house where Miss Becky was enshrined in neighborhood memory? Laurel suffers deep emotional trials as she tries to maintain her dignity at the Viewing--held in the Judge's study--then during funeral and graveside solemnities. But conditions deteriorate, as bruised egos and grieving hearts are bared in a shocking public display. The interlopers have no sense of decency or compassion for the sincere mourners who rally around their native daughter. There is brief respite for Laurel when Fay suddenly departs with her hick kin; yet being alone with kind neighbors and loving bridesmaids does not really help her penetrate the veneer of faith in her childhood memories. How can Laurel rewrite the Past so as to validate her own bleak future? Like the bird trapped inside the house, will she be able to break out on her own, to accept her parent's foibles along with their love, while honoring their role in her life? This is more of a psychological piece, with admittedly little plot, but quiet insight into the tapestry of myths and lies which we accept as our heritage.
Rating:
Summary: A sublime, lyrical work!
Review: Welty's, The Optimist's Daughter, is a gorgeously written novella! In compact, stunningly written prose, Welty tells the story of the passing of a small town Southern judge, and the ensuing conflict between his patrician, well-bred daughter and his tacky, hard-scrabble second wife. Welty does not sound one wrong note in this dead-on depiction of Southern life during this era. Welty's writing itself, as well as its insights into the pinnacles and the depths of the human condition, is stupendous. She absolutely deserved the Pulitzer for this work! My absolutely favorite book, ever!
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