The Book of Ruth
Jane Hamilton, 1988
Knopf Doubleday
328 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385265706
Summary
Winner, PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction
"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you 're bound to get yourself cooked. "
Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it—to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess.
Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place, Ruth grows up in the shadow of her brilliant brother, trying to hold her own in a world of poverty and hard edges. Matt's brain is his ticket out of Honey Creek. Ruth, without options, cleaves instead to her tough, half-crazy mother, May, and eventually to Ruby, the sweet but slightly deranged young man she loves, marries, and supports. When the precarious household erupts in violence, Ruth is the only one who can piece their story together—and she gets at the truth in a manner at once ferocious, hilarious, and heartbreaking.
In this powerful, incandescent novel, Jane Hamilton has worked a miracle: she has given voice to a young woman you have passed on the street a thousand times. Perhaps you have never noticed her, hut the next time you see her, you will know who she is. Passionate in her commitment to life, Ruth is a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion, and love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 13, 1957
• Reared—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.B., Carleton College
• Awards—Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, 1988
• Currently—lives in Rochester, Wisconsin
Her first published works were short stories, "My Own Earth" and "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending", both published in Harper's Magazine in 1983. "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending" later appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1984.
Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, was published in 1988 and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award in 1989. The Book of Ruth was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1996, and it was the basis for a 2004 television film of the same title.
In 1994, she published A Map of the World, which was adapted for a film in 1999 and, the same year, was also an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her third novel, The Short History of a Prince, published in 1998, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998. This book was also shortlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize. In 2000, Hamilton was named a Notable Wisconsin Author by the Wisconsin Library Association.
All of her books are set, at least in part, in Wisconsin.
In an interview with the Journal Times in Racine, Wisconsin, in November 2006, Hamilton talked about her early inspiration for writing novels. As a student at Carleton College, she overheard a professor say she would write a novel one day. Hamilton had written only two short stories for the professor's class. Overhearing the conversation gave her confidence. "It had a lot more potency, the fact that I overheard it, rather than his telling me directly," she said. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reivews
Ms. Hamilton gives Ruth a humble dignity and allows her hope—but it’s not a heavenly hope. It’s a common one, caked with mud and held with gritted teeth. And it’s probably the only kind that’s worth reading about. –
The New York Times Book Review
Jane Hamilton’s novel is authentically Dickensian.... The real achievement of this first novel is not so much the blackness as the suggestion of resilience. At the end, Ruth begins to put together her shattered body, spirit and life. Her words are awkward, as they have been all along, but suddenly and unexpectedly they shine.
Los Angeles Times
In her first novel, Hamilton takes on a challenge too large for her talents. Ruth, the heroine, tells her story in the first person, but her limited point of view cannot do it full justice. Born and raised in small-town Illinois by a mother whose life keeps splintering, Ruth blames herself for her troubles, from the cold-blooded brother who always outsmarts her to the ne'er-do-well husband who nearly destroys her. Considered slow-witted, she has a cussed strength. Like the biblical Ruth, the Midwesterner is loyal to her wounded family, and has a talent for "stepping into other people's skin'' while ignoring her own needs. Ruth's gradual self-discovery is often moving; her sharp-tongued vulnerability and whole-hearted hell-raising win our sympathy and admiration. But her transformation from victim to heroine is less convincing: Ruth's intelligence soars when she sneers, not when she mourns her errors. Another problem is uncertain plotting, with static stretches marked by obvious foreshadowings of events to come. The final violence that erupts seems exotic, not an inevitable product of clashing characters. Hamilton evokes Ruth's character marvelously, but others as seen by her are incompletely rendered.
Publishers Weekly
When a Wall Street Journal writer observed that "simple tales of life and sorrow in the heartland are red hot," he wasn't writing about Hamilton's novel, but he might as well have been. Ruth, an Illinois farm girl, gives a first-person account of her life in an effort to make sense of what has happened to her and her tragedy-prone family. The language of this novel, by turns naturalistic, romantic, and occasionally humorous, has a freshness and originality of expression, and Mare Winningham's vital and poignant reading makes Ruth come alive. —Jacqueline Seewald, Red Bank Regional High School Library, New Jersey
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Ruth's story is particularly poignant because of the way she conveys so much that is beyond her understanding. What are the differences between what Ruth tells us and what we infer about her life and the people in it? How does Hamilton achieve this?
2. How do you respond to Ruth's naivete? Is her lack of understanding about the people in her life frustrating? Or does her innocence make her a more sympathetic character?
3. May is in many ways a monstrous character in Ruth's life. What about her is human and invokes our sympathy? Are there any similarities between May and Ruth?
4. How does Ruth get caught between May and Ruby? Does Justy's birth improve the situation for her at all?
5. Daisy seems comfortable in the world of the novel, even while she remains distinct and apart from everyone in that world. How is her friendship important to Ruth? Is she as well-drawn as the other characters in the book?
6. The Book of Ruth's climax is hinted at throughout the novel. What effect does this type of foreshadowing have on your reading? Does it add to or diminish the impact of the events when they finally occur?
7. Is Ruth's attitude toward Ruby justified at the end of the book?
8. Compare the characters of Aunt Sid in The Book of Ruth and Aunt Kate in A Map of the World. Do they serve the same function for Ruth and Alice?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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