Lizzie - Hardcover

Despite a promising start and rich historical detail, this first novel falters beneath the weight of its nearly three-dozen narrators, each of whom relates a different episode or opinion about Elizabeth Dunbar, the flamboyant daughter of a corrupt Mississippi governor whose eventful life ends in a state mental institution. Within a present-day frame in which a professor of women's studies and an antiques dealer discover Lizzie's diaries and papers, a wide array of the protagonist's friends, acquaintances and relatives relate short episodes in her life, from her birth in 1902 through her lifelong struggle for fulfillment to her death in 1968. Many of the narrators (including a young William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, as well as a stallion and a ginkgo tree) simply weigh in with testimony to Lizzie's unconventional spirit, dispersing narrative tension and thwarting character development until the story sinks into a catalogue of legends about the woman. Only once does this tragic Southern belle shine through as a character real enough to care about--in a late section presented as a diary entry, in which she speaks movingly of her life as a series of misguided personal choices. Here alone do we get a glimpse of the kind of complex character and story line that Shawhan might have created, but hasn't. Rights: Jed Mattes

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Shawhan (language and literature, Delta State Univ.) has written an engrossing first novel of the life of Lizzie Dunbar, daughter of the governor of Mississippi and the founder of a newspaper for women in the 1920s. The story begins in the present when an antiques dealer finds Lizzie's diaries hidden away in an old desk. Through these papers, the reader is taken back in time to the turn of the century. The story is told from the point of view of many different characters, and together the chapters form a composite of Lizzie's life. There is Miranda, Lizzie's mother, who is weak and ineffectual, and Stephen, her father, who relentlessly pursues his political career at the expense of his family. Lizzie and her friends, beaux, and servants give insight into daily life in Mississippi in the first half of this century, when women were fighting for the vote. The force of Lizzie's personality and the tragedy of her life come alive for the reader as her newspaper folds, her father commits her to an insane asylum, and she dies alone and unloved. Recommended for public libraries.
Stephanie Furtsch, New Rochelle P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.