Announced on October 27, 1997
About the Book
Ellen's first eleven years are a long fight for survival. Her invalid, abused mother commits suicide, leaving Ellen to the mercies of her daddy, a drunken brute who either ignores her or makes sexual threats. Through her intelligence and grit Ellen is able to provide for herself, but her desperate attempts to create an environment of order and decorum within her nightmarish home are repeatedly foiled by her father. After his death, a judge awards Ellen's custody to her mother's mother, a bitter and vengeful woman who hated her son-in-law for ruining her own daughter's life and who hates the child Ellen for her physical resemblance to him.
Against all odds, Ellen never gives up her belief that there is a place for her in the world, a home which will satisfy all her longing for love, acceptance, and order. Her eventual success in finding that home and courageously claiming it as her own is a testimony to her unshakable faith in the possibility of good. She never loses that faith, and she never loses her sense of humor. Ellen Foster, like another American classic, Huckleberry Finn, is for all its high comedy ultimately a serious fable of personal and collective responsibility.
About the Author
Kaye Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina, in 1960. She graduated from Rocky Mount High School and continued her studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While studying American literature at Chapel Hill, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster, which reviewers and fans praised as an extraordinary debut. Eudora Welty said that "the honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word" mark the work of this talented writer, and Walker Percy said, "Ellen Foster is a southern Holden Caufield, tougher perhaps, as funny…A breathtaking first novel".
Ellen Foster went on to win the Sue Kaufman award for First Fiction from the academy of Arts and Letters, A Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and the Louis Rubin Writing Award from the University of North Carolina. The book has been widely translated and is studied as part of the canon of French literature.
Her second novel, A Virtuous Woman, was published in 1989 and also received wide praise in the United states and abroad. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book "a perfect little gem."
In 1989, Gibbons received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to write a third novel, A Cure for Dreams, which was published in 1991. This novel won the 1990/PEN Revson Award for the best work of fiction published by a writer under thirty five years of age, as well as the Heartland Prize for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune and the North Carolina Sir Walter Raleigh Award. At that time, Gibbons also won the University of North Carolina Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In March 1993, G.P. Putnam's Sons published her fourth novel, Charm for the Easy Life, which became a New York Times bestseller, and prompted a Time magazine review to say, "Some people might give up their second-born to write as well as Kaye Gibbons." In 1995, G.P. Putnam's Sons published Sights Unseen, which became a national bestseller. In 1996, Kaye Gibbons was the youngest writer ever to receive the Chevalier De L'Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres, a French Knighthood recognizing her contribution to French literature. On December 14, 1997 Hallmark Hall of Fame presented Ellen Foster, starring Julie Harris, on CBS.
Her next novel, On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, was published in the summer of 1998.
Book Reviews
"It's the real thing. Which is to say: a lovely, breathtaking, some-times heart-wrenching first novel. Old Ellen she call herself, and she isâ€â€Âan eleven-year-old ancient, as much a part of the back-wood South as a Faulkner character--and a good deal more endearing."
— Walter Percy
"A captivating, often hilarious mix of Victorian fairy tale and fresh American lingo, told by an eleven-year-old orphan driven to desperation by the wickedest relatives in literature since King Lear: She saves herself and enchants the reader by recounting her story; line by line, in a style primitive, saucy, and exhilarating."
— Alfred Kazin
"Original, compelling, and frighteningly real, the voice of Ellen Foster makes the reader know her story in her own terms. I was absorbed and moved. Kaye Gibbons is a new writer of great force. She knows how to speak to our hearts." — Elizabeth Spencer
"Look out for Kaye Gibbons! For she is on the prowl for you. And when she corners you (oh, she will corner you), she is going to snatch the heart right out of your chest."
— Gordin Lish
Get more resources on Ellen Foster, an Oprah's Book Club selection.
View the Complete Oprah's Book Club List.
Ellen's first eleven years are a long fight for survival. Her invalid, abused mother commits suicide, leaving Ellen to the mercies of her daddy, a drunken brute who either ignores her or makes sexual threats. Through her intelligence and grit Ellen is able to provide for herself, but her desperate attempts to create an environment of order and decorum within her nightmarish home are repeatedly foiled by her father. After his death, a judge awards Ellen's custody to her mother's mother, a bitter and vengeful woman who hated her son-in-law for ruining her own daughter's life and who hates the child Ellen for her physical resemblance to him.
Against all odds, Ellen never gives up her belief that there is a place for her in the world, a home which will satisfy all her longing for love, acceptance, and order. Her eventual success in finding that home and courageously claiming it as her own is a testimony to her unshakable faith in the possibility of good. She never loses that faith, and she never loses her sense of humor. Ellen Foster, like another American classic, Huckleberry Finn, is for all its high comedy ultimately a serious fable of personal and collective responsibility.
About the AuthorKaye Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina, in 1960. She graduated from Rocky Mount High School and continued her studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While studying American literature at Chapel Hill, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster, which reviewers and fans praised as an extraordinary debut. Eudora Welty said that "the honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word" mark the work of this talented writer, and Walker Percy said, "Ellen Foster is a southern Holden Caufield, tougher perhaps, as funny…A breathtaking first novel".
Ellen Foster went on to win the Sue Kaufman award for First Fiction from the academy of Arts and Letters, A Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and the Louis Rubin Writing Award from the University of North Carolina. The book has been widely translated and is studied as part of the canon of French literature.
Her second novel, A Virtuous Woman, was published in 1989 and also received wide praise in the United states and abroad. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book "a perfect little gem."
In 1989, Gibbons received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to write a third novel, A Cure for Dreams, which was published in 1991. This novel won the 1990/PEN Revson Award for the best work of fiction published by a writer under thirty five years of age, as well as the Heartland Prize for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune and the North Carolina Sir Walter Raleigh Award. At that time, Gibbons also won the University of North Carolina Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In March 1993, G.P. Putnam's Sons published her fourth novel, Charm for the Easy Life, which became a New York Times bestseller, and prompted a Time magazine review to say, "Some people might give up their second-born to write as well as Kaye Gibbons." In 1995, G.P. Putnam's Sons published Sights Unseen, which became a national bestseller. In 1996, Kaye Gibbons was the youngest writer ever to receive the Chevalier De L'Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres, a French Knighthood recognizing her contribution to French literature. On December 14, 1997 Hallmark Hall of Fame presented Ellen Foster, starring Julie Harris, on CBS.
Her next novel, On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, was published in the summer of 1998.
Book Reviews
"It's the real thing. Which is to say: a lovely, breathtaking, some-times heart-wrenching first novel. Old Ellen she call herself, and she isâ€â€Âan eleven-year-old ancient, as much a part of the back-wood South as a Faulkner character--and a good deal more endearing."
— Walter Percy
"A captivating, often hilarious mix of Victorian fairy tale and fresh American lingo, told by an eleven-year-old orphan driven to desperation by the wickedest relatives in literature since King Lear: She saves herself and enchants the reader by recounting her story; line by line, in a style primitive, saucy, and exhilarating."
— Alfred Kazin
"Original, compelling, and frighteningly real, the voice of Ellen Foster makes the reader know her story in her own terms. I was absorbed and moved. Kaye Gibbons is a new writer of great force. She knows how to speak to our hearts." — Elizabeth Spencer
"Look out for Kaye Gibbons! For she is on the prowl for you. And when she corners you (oh, she will corner you), she is going to snatch the heart right out of your chest."
— Gordin Lish
Get more resources on Ellen Foster, an Oprah's Book Club selection.View the Complete Oprah's Book Club List.
Published 10/27/1997
