The Grave of God's Daughter : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Book!
Review: An enjoyable, engaging read!! I highly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: Dang, these people are miserable...
Review: Brett Ellen Block is an award-winning young author and graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. Still, I found her debut novel, The Grave of God's Daughter, disappointing. Block can write, certainly. But this period drama, set in an insular Pennsylvania steel town settled by Polish immigrants, feels thin and underdeveloped. The plot hinges on a coincidence that seems rushed into place, as does the eventual explanation of the mystery at the center of the drama. Though I've no doubt that the poverty experienced by her protagonists is realistic for the time and setting, something about the treatment of it verges on melodrama. Cold! Mud! Burns and blisters! Entrails and blood! Drunken dads! Dying dogs! Dead catfish! I kept waiting for the kindly butcher to reveal himself as a child molester, but to her credit, Block avoids that Oprah book cliché. What she does not avoid, unfortunately, is a tendency towards literal, too obvious explanation in the narrative, e.g.: "My mother would gaze at the painting with such desperate, unrivaled adoration that I grew to fear and hate it. That flat, lifeless object had what I never did - her devotion."

I hate it when that happens.

I did like some aspects of the book. The relationship between the narrator and her younger brother was realistic, loose and engaging. But I found it frustrating that though the brother's fate is revealed at the very beginning of the novel, we never learn through the story how and why he becomes the man he is. Nor do we learn how the narrator escapes her small-town, impoverished circumstances. I think perhaps this illustrates the greatest flaw of the book. It feels like a section of a larger work, like a chunk out of some great, mid-century American epic. As such, the novel that we have feels curiously incomplete.

Rating:
Summary: Good Story Needs More Substance
Review: For a first novel this isn't too bad. Clearly, the first thing on which you need to concentrate when writing your first book--or any book for that matter--is to tell a good story. Ms. Block certainly does that here; it is very compelling and the pages almost seem to turn themselves. Beyond that, though, there is not much else. The characterizations are a little thin, the setting demands far more attention, and there are aspects in the relationships between her characters that are puzzling and require explanation.

It is a girl's coming-of-age story--told by her in the first person--and is framed by her adult visit to her mother's funeral many years later. It takes place in a western Pennsylvania town in 1941 that is mostly inhabited by Polish immigrants. Just about everyone in town is poor but her family with their alcoholic father is more so than most. In any event, she wakes up one day and notices that the one precious item in their meager household--an iconic painting--is gone. She assumes that her father has pawned it for booze money, and decides she is going to get it back. The plot has to do with her efforts to obtain enough money to do so and as she does, she makes some surprising and very sad discoveries about herself and her family.

As mentioned, it is a good plot, but the setting is downright weird. The Polish inhabitants of this town are a very closed society and don't tolerate outsiders. Just about all of them are grim and petty and mean-spirited and there doesn't seem to be a sense of humor in any of them. They are vicious to the one black guy who comes through, violent to a retarded boy, and overly harsh towards their children. In other words, their behavior in this strange place is at odds with what we know of human nature. No, this situation is not impossible, but it does seem improbable, and much more than is offered here would be needed to make this place real. As it is, it remains a work in progress, not fully developed.

The narrator's primary motivation in re-acquiring the icon is so that her mother will finally show her some love, or acknowledgement, or even simple recognition. But it is never explained how the mother became this way. The father is also uncommunicative and distant, but at least in his case the plot reveals a possible reason why. One wishes that the narrator--again, speaking from an adult perspective--would have shed a little more light on this. Better yet, it would have been nice to see her parents in action, or perhaps carrying on conversations with each other or their children, so that the reader can figure it out for himself. But, unfortunately, without exposition or revelation these characters remain stale.

The kids, though, are done very well. The narrator determinedly confronts her fears yet is also quite nervous about the venial sins she finds she must commit in order to complete her tasks, and which go against the teaching of the Catholic nuns at her school. Her younger brother also come across very sympathetically, a sensitive and intelligent little soul attached to his picture book.

In the end, it is an enjoyable read, and a good first novel. One looks forward to seeing more depth in her next effort.

Rating:
Summary: Good Story Needs More Substance
Review: For a first novel this isn't too bad. Clearly, the first thing on which you need to concentrate when writing your first book--or any book for that matter--is to tell a good story. Ms. Block certainly does that here; it is very compelling and the pages almost seem to turn themselves. Beyond that, though, there is not much else. The characterizations are a little thin, the setting demands far more attention, and there are aspects in the relationships between her characters that are puzzling and require explanation.

It is a girl's coming-of-age story--told by her in the first person--and is framed by her adult visit to her mother's funeral many years later. It takes place in a western Pennsylvania town in 1941 that is mostly inhabited by Polish immigrants. Just about everyone in town is poor but her family with their alcoholic father is more so than most. In any event, she wakes up one day and notices that the one precious item in their meager household--an iconic painting--is gone. She assumes that her father has pawned it for booze money, and decides she is going to get it back. The plot has to do with her efforts to obtain enough money to do so and as she does, she makes some surprising and very sad discoveries about herself and her family.

As mentioned, it is a good plot, but the setting is downright weird. The Polish inhabitants of this town are a very closed society and don't tolerate outsiders. Just about all of them are grim and petty and mean-spirited and there doesn't seem to be a sense of humor in any of them. They are vicious to the one black guy who comes through, violent to a retarded boy, and overly harsh towards their children. In other words, their behavior in this strange place is at odds with what we know of human nature. No, this situation is not impossible, but it does seem improbable, and much more than is offered here would be needed to make this place real. As it is, it remains a work in progress, not fully developed.

The narrator's primary motivation in re-acquiring the icon is so that her mother will finally show her some love, or acknowledgement, or even simple recognition. But it is never explained how the mother became this way. The father is also uncommunicative and distant, but at least in his case the plot reveals a possible reason why. One wishes that the narrator--again, speaking from an adult perspective--would have shed a little more light on this. Better yet, it would have been nice to see her parents in action, or perhaps carrying on conversations with each other or their children, so that the reader can figure it out for himself. But, unfortunately, without exposition or revelation these characters remain stale.

The kids, though, are done very well. The narrator determinedly confronts her fears yet is also quite nervous about the venial sins she finds she must commit in order to complete her tasks, and which go against the teaching of the Catholic nuns at her school. Her younger brother also come across very sympathetically, a sensitive and intelligent little soul attached to his picture book.

In the end, it is an enjoyable read, and a good first novel. One looks forward to seeing more depth in her next effort.

Rating:
Summary: Evocative, Mesmerizing, Wrenching, True
Review: I found The Grave of God's Daughter an absorbing and magical journey to a time and place that was not only Lost Allegheny, Pennsylvania among hand-scrabble, insular, obsessively private and shriveled-spirited Polish Catholic immigrant stock, but a sojourn reminiscent in a hundred ways of an emotionally-starved and delimited childhood savored and endured anywhere, on any dark streets or backroads. The narrator is being metamorphosed by the gigantic events of her lived world into an ultimately-wise but scarred, brave and (in her case) empathetic, self-reliant but regretful young woman before reaching adolescence and awareness of what being a woman will mean for her. The narrative is spare because the milieu of her and the younger brother dependent on her emotionally is stark and spare, darkened by overpowering but realistic foreboding and fear, by a graniness and plainness that darkens the sky and stunts childhood itself. The author is to be highly commended for not straying outside the bounds of that sadly all-too-common, even prevelant, milieu in the larger world beyond our tinsel and fading affluence. Lest we forget! At times, toward the end, I was almost afraid of what I might uncover turning the page... I, a child of the rural small-town protestant and anglo midwest, by far happier of circumstance, was taken back to that other world.

Rating:
Summary: "Nobody here forgets. Remembering's all they have"
Review: The Grave of God?s Daughter is technically, a precise a work of literary fiction as one is ever likely to read. Every sentence and image is superbly crafted, as though, author Brett Ellen Block, has tried painfully and meticulously to recreate every image. The story involves the sad emotional passion of a Polish-American girl?s childhood - a few brief weeks that illustrate what it?s like to grow up on the worst street in a Pennsylvania mill town in 1941.

The story begins when a nameless woman, who after thirty years, returns to her childhood home of Hyde Bend, a small Polish Catholic town near the Allegheny Mountains, to attend her mother's funeral. At the graveside she meets her brother, Martin, who carries the scars of a life of drinking. She hasn't spoken to her brother in years and she doesn't say much to him during their mother's funeral in fear that she will tell him the truth about why she left. As the funeral begins the woman thinks back to 1941 when Martin was eight and she was twelve. They live on River Road, in an enclave of Polish Immigrants who are almost entirely Catholic. Most know at least a little English, but the customs, traditions, food, and the morality are vestiges of villages carried straight from Warsaw and Krakow.

Their drunken father works nights in the steel mill and their mother works in the rectory as a cleaning woman and cooks for the priest. Both seem distant and disparate, shutting the children out of their seemingly pained lives. At one point the girl observes, "we were her children, but we had faded into the far reaches of her peripheral vision and nothing we did to clamor or claw our way back into her line of site would work." The family lives in a two-room, cold hovel in the most horrible section of the dreary town. All the residents of their block had to share the one outhouse with each other and with the rats that lived there at night.

Poverty pervades the story and the girl observes the misery around her with a startling resonance. Her mother wears her "weariness like a heavy mask, it could not blunt her fair features, or hide the hint of flexibility for a smile in her lips." One day the girl notices that her mother's favorite painting, The Black Madonna, is no longer hanging on the wall. Thinking that her father sold it so he could get drunk at the local bar, the girl persuades Mr. Goceljak, the town's butcher to hire her as his delivery boy so she can earn enough money to buy the painting back. Dressed as a boy, so no one will recognize her, the girl makes her daily meat deliveries and gradually uncovers a mystery from the past that surrounds her family and also uncovers the truth about a murder that has taken place in the town.

Block?s novel is narrated in the first person in a slow, smooth and gracefully modulated style. Her writing is so well paced and Block?s language is, at once, stark, yet packs an emotional and expressive punch. The narrator's voice is realistic and convincing, and there is a genuine verse-like quality to the story. But, at times, The Grave of God's Daughter tends to read more like an exercise in creative writing 101, and this reader was left wishing that perhaps the seamless structure could have been sacrificed for a little more depth, profundity, and passion. Mike Leonard July 04.


Rating:
Summary: The Grave of God's Daughter / A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Review: This novel, written aginst a backdrop of rural industrial Pennsylvania circa 1939-40 is strikingly similar to a "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn", albeit a darker version. The central character, a young girl, raised to be close to her younger brother Martin, remains (notably) unnamed thrughout the novel. She projects love, and silently screams out for love throughout this novel. Sadly, the return of love manifests in ways all too subtle and, so, unrecognizable to a young child.

The saddest part of this novel is a scene where, after she has burned her hands on a pot of hot water, boiled to bathe her brother, she reaches for the washroom door only to have the door jerked from her by her father, entering from the living area. She then lowers her head, mumbles an apology, and brushes past him. At this point you can feel the inner turmoil of this woman/child. All she wanted was some small token of recognition. A smile. A word. Something.

An unexpected ending underscores this brilliant novel of growing up, complete with the yearning for acceptance, identity and love.

I highly recommend this wonderful, evocative novel. It's not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: The Grave of God's Daughter / A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Review: This novel, written aginst a backdrop of rural industrial Pennsylvania circa 1939-40 is strikingly similar to a "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn", albeit a darker version. The central character, a young girl, raised to be close to her younger brother Martin, remains (notably) unnamed thrughout the novel. She projects love, and silently screams out for love throughout this novel. Sadly, the return of love manifests in ways all too subtle and, so, unrecognizable to a young child.

The saddest part of this novel is a scene where, after she has burned her hands on a pot of hot water, boiled to bathe her brother, she reaches for the washroom door only to have the door jerked from her by her father, entering from the living area. She then lowers her head, mumbles an apology, and brushes past him. At this point you can feel the inner turmoil of this woman/child. All she wanted was some small token of recognition. A smile. A word. Something.

An unexpected ending underscores this brilliant novel of growing up, complete with the yearning for acceptance, identity and love.

I highly recommend this wonderful, evocative novel. It's not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: This is a story about my home town - Natrona, PA
Review: This story about Hyde Bend is a mostly true account of the lives and people of Natrona, PA. I am impressed that Brett Ellen Brock had such detailed accounts of actual people and events. She appears to be too young to have lived these experiences herself, so she must have done extensive research.

The hard facts she reveals are absolute:

- St. Ladislaus cemetery's decay
- Slatka Pani, the "slum lord"
- Recognition of River Road (the main street in this tiny town)
- Mention of local taverns by their real names. Bars outnumbered churches by a ratio of at least 5 to 1
- The closed society of Polish immigrants primarily from Warsaw and Krakow

Through this book Block brings life back to what is now a decaying steel mill town which is rapidly eroding toward ghost town status. She contrasts the beauty and simplicity of small town life with the hidden secrets that lived and died in Natrona, PA.

This book brings back my reflections on a safe, carefree childhood combined with the mysterious morals and ethics my grandparents brought with them from war torn Poland - the pain that is ever-present in the eyes of the elders, but never discussed. The people who lived in "Hyde Bend" learned to celebrate the joys of today and bury the pains of the past. Brett Ellen Block brings this these hidden feelings to the surface in "The Grave of God's Daughter: A Novel".