Hetty "Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid.We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.
Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.
This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.
Sue Monk Kidd is one that doesn't generally disappoint, and this book is no exception. I read The Secret Life of Bees a few years back and quite enjoyed it... the movie was alright too.
I can honestly say the thing that grabbed my first about this book was the title. I love a good title... and have been disappointed by a great title that ends up being a crap book. But this is a beautiful title that resonates indirectly throughout the entire book. I think there were probably 3 or 4 times I thought to myself while reading "Oh THIS is why the book is titled the way it is", only to come across another reason within the next half dozen chapters. This title is so fitting for this book, but gives nothing away about the story or plot. It's fabulous. Points to Kidd for aptly naming her books!
Both this novel and The Secret Life of Bees deal with interracial relationships, this one is historical, the other more modern, yet while reading this book, it struck me that I didn't know if Kidd was black or white. Not that it really matters, of course, but in this novel the chapters are narrated alternately by Sarah, a white girl, and Handful, a black girl. So I began to wonder which Kidd would relate to more and in theory which narrative would be more "accurate" or which girl she would relate to more. Turns out that she's white. Not that it gave any more or less credit to either of the narratives... just a curiosity solved.
If you have read the description on the back of this book (posted in italics at the beginning of this post), you know that this book is based on the actual life of Sarah Grimke. I didn't actually know this before I started reading it. I knew the premise, but I had no idea that Sarah was a real person until I got to the Author's notes at the end of the book, and even then I only read it to find out the whole "race-of-the-author" thing (still didn't solve that one by the way, I had to go to goodreads and look at her picture). This book made it to my "to read" list on my phone after I read a short blurb about it in Entertainment Weekly... I'd say about 95% of the books that EW writes about I have zero interest in, but this one grabbed me (probably because Kidd was the author), then I borrowed in on my ereader from the library, so I didn't have the back cover (bumping out other books again! When they come available after being on a 200 and some people wait list, you take the opportunity when it comes)... Anywhoo, no fact checking was done during the read of this book because of that. I thought it was entirely fiction, so that aspect has not weighed upon my review of this book.
Another realization I came to while reading this book is that the whole "Slavery in America" topic for me is VERY far removed, basically to the point of being almost entirely hollywoodized. In my sheltered Canadian life, I have never dealt with the rascism toward the Black community. PLUS being in Saskatchewan, there is a very limited population of African American people, mostly limited to Football Players, and they are basically celebrities. So my entire experience with this topic is from books like Underground to Canada (I read it in grade 5) and movies like 12 Years a Slave and Beloved. Frankly, Oprah has taught me more about Slavery in America than anyone else has. And anything else I have learned has taught me that the Canadians were the Good Guys. We were where people escaped to! Something I should also research into perhaps. I suppose the closest racially motivated movement that causes me shame would be the residential schools all over Canada that damaged so many Aboriginal families. I am still pretty far removed from that, the last one closed in 1996 and I probably wasn't even aware of their existence until high school. But due to Saskatchewan's large population of Aboriginal People, and the fact that the last closure of any residential school was in Duck Lake, we will be feeling the pains of this for a while. It's embarrassing to know that generations before us did such horrible things to people. I know it's not any kind of justification, but I feel that the residential school thing wasn't as spiteful as Slavery in the States. If this novel, and any other hollywoodized presentation of Slavery and the Southern States is correct, White Folk didn't consider people who were Black as people. They thought of them as something less. Whereas in Canada, we knew that Aboriginal people were people, but for some reason we didn't think they were refined enough and tried to make them more like us, hence the school-ness of residential schools. That does not justify what happened in any way, shape, or form... but it seems less evil than what has happened in the States. I think at least SOMEONE had good intentions when putting the residential schools into effect, whereas Slavery can never be a good thing. Only selfish people would enslave and torture others.
So this book has gotten me thinking, which is the mark of a good book. It was entertaining and didn't seem unrealistic or overly fluffy. One of the things about writing a story about a friendship like Handful and Sarah's is that sometimes it's more happy, but seem completely unattainable. The friendship between these two girls was not like that of any two white girls, or any two black girls. It was complicated, complex and very reserved. It wasn't a typical friendship, but it was a positive one. And we all know I'm a sucker for a book that has the positive messages.
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