Spinsters by Pagan Kennedy

It is 1968 the day after Martin Luther King Jr is assassinated, Dora and Frannie’s father, passes away after a long illness. Shortly after, the sisters receive an invitation from their Aunt Katherine to live with her.

Living with their Aunt and her black maid Letty proves unfulfilling to the sisters. They decide to visit other relatives and this ultimately results in a road trip through America’s Southern states.

As is evident from my above rating this novella (its word count is only some 63000 words) is not something I could easily recommend.

It is an agreeable and easy read but this only damns the novella with faint praise. I found the book lacking in subtlety and depth. The motifs, allusions and symbols are writ large. The pacifist Martin Luther King Jr is killed while the next day the World War II conscientious objector father of Dora and Frannie dies. America is going through huge changes and turmoil; the Vietnam War, the anti war riots, the race riots, women’s liberation. These changes will irrevocably alter the country, politically, socially and culturally. America’s Baby Boomers were attempting to rip the country from the hands of the pre World War II old guard and pull the country into a modern world. These events are mirrored, in a smaller way of course, in the lives of the sisters. Dora is outgoing, sexually active, gregarious and believes in a brighter future. Frannie on the other hand is old fashioned, strait laced and clings to the past and its apparent certitude.

They drive through Texas but decide not to stop in this particular state due to the oppressive heat. Of course, even five years on the sound of bullets can still be heard reverberating around the Lone Star state.

The conclusions to the all the story threads that weave through the book are foreseeable and rather too neat for a book that uses the America in the 1960s as its backdrop. The Vietnam War raged on for another four years. Nixon became President in 1969 and his Waterloo was still four years away. The times were a changin’ but the old guard still had a grip on the political rudder.

If one was to read The Spinsters as anything other than an allegorical novel then one could find it enjoyable. The author Pagan Kennedy does have an elegant, clear writing style that throws up some wonderful images, a ‘saleslady whose hair was stiff as seven minute icing’.

Dora and Frannie’s feelings of entrapment, loneliness and isolation while caring for their father will resonant with many people in an age where one in four people in the UK care for an elderly parent. The handling of this particular issue is what earned the novella its half a mark.

No’ of pages - 158

Sex scenes – none (there is some mild sexual references)

Profanity – none

Genre - drama

Originally posted at http://thevoyageout-bookreviews.blogspot.co.uk/