November Book Club - The Optimist’s Daughter

“The Optimist’s Daughter,” by Eudora Welty, provided plenty of material for nine of us at the book club’s November meeting. A Pulitzer Prize winner, this novel focuses on Laurel, a 40-ish designer, as she navigates her father’s illness, death and funeral. We found the book easy to read and difficult to understand. Subtle and indirect, rich with imagery, it shows a woman freeing herself of the claims and deceits of memory—a protagonist we never get close to and never warm up to. We appreciated Welty’s portrayal of a small Mississippi town, a close-knit and supportive society that is also judgmental and restrictive to a young woman who wants a career; its abiding traditions; its class structure. We were struck by a kind of timelessness in the novel: set in the 1960’s, it shows nothing of that era’s politics, racial strife, and cultural clashes. All told, a multi-layered book that would probably reward a second reading.