KATE VAIDEN by Reynolds Price

Finished Th 7/13/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read.

This is one of the best profiles of a woman that I've ever read.

***By far, one of the most compelling and interesting novels that I've read in a long time. I really liked this one! 

A 47 year old woman reviews her life and confronts the fact that she abandoned her child many years before. She lost her parents when she was about nine years old. I think her father learned of her mother's infidelity and he shot her and then killed himself. She got pregnant by her cousin and gave up the child to her aunt. 

Lots of indecision and it seemed like how people actually think. 

From a viewer's review at GoodReads:

"I had Reynolds Price's novel "Kate Vaiden" (1984) in mind for a long time before finally being persuaded to read it by an online review written by a friend.. I proposed the book to my reading group as a possible choice among several other books each of which portrayed an individual American woman. The group chose a different book, but I went ahead and read "Kate Vaiden" (the last name rhymes with "maiden") anyway. The novel is unusual in that Price sets the novel in the first person in the voice of his primary female character. Novels in which the author writes in the voice of a person of the other gender are challenging and rare. Two recent examples of women writing in the voices of men are Siri Hustvedt's "What I Loved" and Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer-prize winning "Gilead".

Some reviewers have questioned whether Price (1933 -2011)has the understanding and novelistic skill to project himself effectively into the voice of a woman. Kate is her own person and an individual character indeed. As a young woman of 17, she abandons her baby son conceived out of wedlock. Price spends much of the novel trying to prepare the reader for this event. I thought he made Kate's behavior understandable and believable. As the story progressed, I became absorbed with Kate and her travails. I felt for her as she made her decisions, some good and many rash. The novel kept me involved with the heroine and her world.

The novel is set in the rural upper South, in North Carolina and Virginia. Much of the book is set in Macon, North Carolina, where Price was born, with substantial portions set in Raleigh, Norfolk, Greensborough, and elsewhere. Most of the action of the book takes place during the Depression and WW II era, with these large events contrasted against the quiet voices of individual rural lives. The book proceeds through the post-Vietnam era into the 1980s, with glances at civil rights, feminism, the anti-war movement, and other great changes which occurred over a relatively short time span.

The book is narrated by Kate Vaiden as a woman of 57. She tells the story of her life, especially of her tumultuous adolescence, with the hope that it will interest her son Dan, 40. Kate abandoned Dan when she was 17 and, at least up until the time she sets down her story, has had no contact with him. The book is almost a picaresque novel as young Kate picks up and moves many times and leaves a variety of people, relatives, lovers, and friends in her wake. The novel is sad as Kate abandons many people who genuinely want to offer her love, and Price made me sympathize both with Kate and with the others. Many of these individuals are themselves frequent lonely and searching. The novel is also a young woman's coming-of-age story. Abandonment, loss, and loneliness are important themes of the book as many of the characters, including Kate, her mother, the father of her baby, Douglas, her would-be lover Whitfield and others are orphans. Many people close to Kate die in the book: her parents, her first lover, and Douglas.

Precocious sexuality receives much emphasis in Kate's story. Her parents, Dan and Frances, have an apparently passionate but doomed relationship. After their shocking death, Kate, raised by her mother's sister Caroline and her husband Holt, begins a sexual relationship with a slightly older boy named Gaston who dies during Marine boot camp. Kate blames herself. The book includes strong portrayals of this relationship which stays with Kate all her life. After Gaston's death, Kate is molested by her older cousin, Swift. She then begins a relationship with Douglas, an orphan who can be tender and loving but also who has a tendency towards drifting and violence. Kate cannot bring herself to marry Douglas, who also comes to a violent death. During the story Kate has many other sexual relationships with men and friendships with women but she allows them all to fall out of her life. Price emphasizes the importance of marriage and commitment, parts of life which are denied to Kate. Late in the novel, Kate has a conversation with a teacher, Rosalind Limer, who has unhappily remained unmarried through life. Kate explains to Miss Limer her rejection of some of her suitors. Miss Limer observes:

"I won't try to judge what I didn't get to watch. But steadiness is what men seldom have to offer -- not in life anyhow, not in this green world. We're not promised that, in the Bible or any other book known to me."

Kate achieves a modicum of financial security. She is an independent, tough, perceptive, yet vulnerable and highly fallible woman. I came to feel greatly for her through her mistakes and misfortunes. The book also offers a portrayal of small town life in the upper South in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. Besides Kate, one of the characters that Price portrays effectively is Noony, an African American woman slightly older than Kate who works for Caroline and Holt. Noony offers her own commentary on Kate and on her life. The novel is presented against a backdrop of religious themes, including sin, redemption, and what appears to be God's ever-present love even in harsh circumstances. This is a stunning novel."

I loved the novel and I'll read more by Reynolds Price.