Rating: 
Summary: A Work Designed To Please The Mature Mind
Review: At the time of her death, Eudora Welty of Mississippi was generally considered America's greatest living author. Although Welty made her reputation with and is best remembered for her remarkable short stories, she also wrote a number of novels, including THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.As seen in reviews posted here, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER provokes a very divided response in readers. This largely due to the nature of the work, which is character rather than plot driven, and which although quite short requires a slow reading in order to develop clearly in mind. Perhaps more so than in any other work, Welty writes "below the surface" here: the story itself, which concerns a daughter who returns to her tiny Mississippi home town when her respected father dies, is quite slight--but Welty endows it with a surprising depth of meaning, transforming what would otherwise be pure character study into a sharply focused and deeply moving statement on the nature of love, loss, life, and the passage of time we must all endure. Although written in a deceptively simple style, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER is the mature work of a master. Given the nature of the piece, I do not think it can be much appreciated by young adults; one requires the perspective of at least middle age to fully grasp both its delicacy and beauty. But once that perspective is acquired, THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER should move immediately to the top of every serious reader's list. Strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The Optimists Daughter
Review: I would recommend Optimists Daughter to anyone. This book is great ! It deals with a judge's daughter and the way she dealt with his death. This book shows the importance of living life to the fullest and the how every person in your life is important in some way whether thay be friends, family, or even neighbors. This is filled with realism by dealing with the death of a loved one to many. Although this book is sad it shows that life is short and we need to live every minute of it to the fullest. The Optimists Daughter shows us that things we deal with every day may be painful but, it is easier if we have friends and other family to support us in times of need.
Rating:
Summary: Optimists Daughter
Review: I would recommend Optimists Daughter to anyone. This book is great! It is filled with realism. It shows the meaning of true friendship and how dealing with death can be painful, but at the same time able to get something from it by finding out some things about the past.Also, the book explains the importance of life and how one minute things can be fine but the next, things may fall apart. Although there is saddness in this book, the main character shows a true quality of being strong for herself and others. Optimists Daughter shows how short life may be and how we need to live it to the fullest. It also shows the importance of every person that fills our life whether they be friends, family, or even neighbors.
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Summary: The finest in Southern melancholy
Review: I'm not a big fan of Southern fiction in general, but this short novel is definitely a brilliant achievement. With admirable subtlety, Welty creates a portrait of the good and bad in all of us, as personified by demure Laurel and her wonderfully nasty stepmother, Fay. If most of the actual events come and go in the first 25 pages or so, the heart of the novel belongs to the more reflective remainder. Bereaved of her father but also free - for the moment - from the nagging of Fay and her relatives, Laurel experiences an emotional journey instantly recognizable to all of us who have ever stumbled into our families' past. From the thrill of reading your grandparents' childhood letters to the pungent smell of their clothes after years of smoking to the dimly lit bedroom nobody else had entered for 30 years...Welty's prose may be a bit purple, but all those sensations you love and hate at the same time are here. Character development is strong across the board as well. You won't like most of Fay's relatives and some of her friends, but then, you're not supposed to. (Isn't that what funerals are usually like in real life?) And they do blend in well with the vividly illustrated surroundings. You may not want the book to end as quickly as it does, but chances are you'll be happy for Laurel that it's over. You'll also come away with an interesting perspective on an uncomfortable event that most of us have to endure several times in our lives.
Rating: 
Summary: Quietly Epiphanic
Review: If you have long wondered what the fuss about Eudora Welty is all about, read THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, the 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winner for fiction. This is no peripheral achievement but the heart of the Welty experience. As you begin reading it, you would describe it as a spare, quiet character study. By the time you finish it--the prose is sleek and straightforward, you glide through it--you are flipping back, realizing the profundities it has kicked up all the way through, hoping you did not miss anything. It is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, fortysomething widow, who has flown back to the south from her career life in Chicago to be at her father's side as he copes with a medical emergency. It is obvious that she has come because the trophy wife/stepmother, Fay, is not considered up to the task by anyone else's standards. The first part of the novel ends with the judge's death; the second part moves back into the Mississippi house where Laurel grew up for her father's funeral. Here Welty introduces the town folk who hold her father and late mother in high esteem, who regard Fay as a white trash outsider nuisance. Fay reminds everyone that she gets all the property, everything they all view as belonging to the deceased parents and the grown daughter. The first two parts could easily translate to the screen or stage; the last two would be more difficult because Welty turns inward, helping Laurel sort out memory, loss, and what it spells for her future. The power of the book lies in how it twists and turns through the four characters--Laurel, her parents, and Fay--moving around the tensions between them until a full sense of the truth is located. What you first know about Laurel and Fay will be challenged. Neither is simple, nor is the story.
Rating:
Summary: Quietly Epiphanic
Review: If you have long wondered what the fuss about Eudora Welty is all about, read THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, the 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winner for fiction. This is no peripheral achievement but the heart of the Welty experience. As you begin reading it, you would describe it as a spare, quiet character study. By the time you finish it--the prose is sleek and straightforward, you glide through it--you are flipping back, realizing the profundities it has kicked up all the way through, hoping you did not miss anything. It is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, fortysomething widow, who has flown back to the south from her career life in Chicago to be at her father's side as he copes with a medical emergency. It is obvious that she has come because the trophy wife/stepmother, Fay, is not considered up to the task by anyone else's standards. The first part of the novel ends with the judge's death; the second part moves back into the Mississippi house where Laurel grew up for her father's funeral. Here Welty introduces the town folk who hold her father and late mother in high esteem, who regard Fay as a white trash outsider nuisance. Fay reminds everyone that she gets all the property, everything they all view as belonging to the deceased parents and the grown daughter. The first two parts could easily translate to the screen or stage; the last two would be more difficult because Welty turns inward, helping Laurel sort out memory, loss, and what it spells for her future. The power of the book lies in how it twists and turns through the four characters--Laurel, her parents, and Fay--moving around the tensions between them until a full sense of the truth is located. What you first know about Laurel and Fay will be challenged. Neither is simple, nor is the story.
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.
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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: 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.
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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.
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