The Keepers of the House in Never too Late to Read Classics

Feb 01, 2013 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: audible-us, race, southern, 2014-read, hf

Add this to your lists. It is very good. Listen to the audiobook narrated by Anna Fields, if you can. Read it or listen to it, but don't let it slide to the bottom of your heap of books to be read!

This book stands out as one of the better about the race situation in the South before the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. What is it like to have both black and white blood? Where do you belong? How do you deal with this? What do you do and what do yo not do? In this book you will see people who hav Add this to your lists. It is very good. Listen to the audiobook narrated by Anna Fields, if you can. Read it or listen to it, but don't let it slide to the bottom of your heap of books to be read!

This book stands out as one of the better about the race situation in the South before the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. What is it like to have both black and white blood? Where do you belong? How do you deal with this? What do you do and what do yo not do? In this book you will see people who have made different choices, and you will think about why they made those choices. The reader will ponder what choices they might make.

The book gives you more than an in-depth understanding of being a bi-racial person. The feel of the South and how history played out there for those living in the South, that is what you get in spades. The Depression, WW2, the Korean War, and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement slide by, but the focus is on the people living there in the South. Is it set in Louisiana or Mississippi? Exactly where isn't really clear or really that important except that there are swamps nearby and you are taken in there. You will not forget that experience. The Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition and a sense of the racial inequality that existed in this time and place is what your are enveloped in. And what would you do if you were there - a Black or a White or mixed?

But what makes this book better than others that focus on the question of bi-racial identity? This certainly isn't the first book to tackle the question! It is in the way the author expresses herself. It is in the way she describes their lives and their surroundings: the nearby swamp, the fires, the weddings, the funerals and an old man watching his children and their children and the following generations grow up, watching and observing and making his own life choices. By the way, look at the title - you can see the generations slip by.

There is clever dialog and subtle humor:
Question:"Who are you calling?"
Answer: "The barn!"
When you hear this you will laugh. The Southern dialect and the slow desultory tempo with which Anna Fields narrates the book is the icing on the cake.

And the plot - the story finishes with a bang. You will be surprised. There is so much I want to tell you about William. What discussions you can have about the characters!

What makes this story so perfect is in the author's way of telling it. ...more

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Jan 11, 2020 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-lit, coming-of-age, pulitzer, read-in-2020, classics, favorites, race, racism, reading-women-2020

The Keepers of the House (1964), which won Shirley Ann Grau the Pulitzer Prize, is a masterwork on racism, and is uniquely told as the main character is a white woman in the deep south. She isn't a racist and, in fact, deals with threats and shunning herself. I won't go into more on that as it could spoil some of this brilliant story.

This is a smart, sophisticated, direct and ruthless indictment of racism. Grau's character comes from a family of Alabama landowners and lives in the ancestral fami ...more

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Sep 16, 2014 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: southern-literature, fiction, set-in-the-south, southern

May upgrade to five a wonderful novel beautifully written

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Jan 08, 2011 Janice rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is another book I read probably in the early 70's. I remember it being a wonderful book about the pre-civil rights era and would love to read this Pulitzer Prize Winner again. I've been thinking about this time today as I've been putting together a presentation of 'The Help' for one of my book groups. ...more

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