Yarns Without Threads - Kaye Gibbons

Kaye Gibbons

Divining Women

First published in New York by Grosset & Dunlap 2004 April 1, ISBN 0-399-15160-5. Paperback by Perennial, July 1 2005, ISBN 0-060-76028-1. Other editions, including large print, also produced.

I always try to avoid reading publisher's blurbs before reading a book. Often they disclose a key component of the plot, or give a grossly-distorted idea of the book's various components and themes. Sometimes they are just plain stupid, as with that for Kaye Gibbons' Divining Women: In her darkest yet most redeeming novel, Kaye Gibbons scorches us with a firestorm of despair-then resurrects love and hope from its very ashes.

The only despair I felt was that the novel never got anywhere. I'm not spoiling any reader's enjoyment by revealing that the heroine, Mary Oliver, is a young woman much beloved by her mother and grandparents (her father is dead). The family is so fabulously rich that wealth never needs to be discussed or considered, any more than does working to earn a living. Mary's maternal grandfather, Toby Greene, has been a practising nudist since early adulthood (ie, around 1870), joining the "American Community of Nudists". This was the proximate cause of a terrible rift between him and his first wife, who decamped along with her son Troop. Mary has always been aware of the split, and of her mother's step-brother. The novel tells of Mary's move to Troop's household, the reasons for this, and the domestic crisis which ensues. The action takes place against the background of the final chapters of World War I, and 1918's early stages of the appalling influenza epidemic which killed more people than four years of war had managed.

Edith Wharton, author of Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth and other novels illustrating the highs and, more usually, lows of women's lives in respectable or semi-respectable society around the turn of the century, is mentioned by the characters, and I suspect Gibbons would like to measure herself against Wharton. In my opinion, there is no comparison, and I prefer my Wharton unfiltered by contemporary feminist attitudes. At times there are echoes of novels such as The Color Purple, and even Yesterday's Sin, but again I found this unflattering to Gibbons. Feminist literature can be vastly more stimulating - and entertaining - than this dull tale of mainly dull people doing mainly dull things. Gibbons clearly doesn't find her characters dull, but the things she finds interesting about them left me cold. The title refers to women who have the talent of divining life and character (so the verb is used as in "divining water"), but there are hardly any examples of this talent in action. It didn't help my opinion of the work that the grandfather's nudism is never more than a cipher, a useful ultra-minority interest. It would have been easy to include a paragraph or so about how this new idea liberated the whole family, but none of the rest share his love of stripping off. Just about the totality of the book's references to nudity is included in the extracts. Contrast this with Adam Mars-Jones' perceptive musings on a child's attitudes and responses to a parental split and one parent's naturism in Summer Lightings.

Historical footnote:

Since most histories of nudism/naturism date its inception as a named movement to 1920s Europe, I had hoped for some incidental information about this American precursor. No such luck. In the absence of any documentary or Webpage evidence to the contrary (and I have looked, thoroughly), I'm forced to conclude that Gibbons manufactured the "American Community of Nudists", for reasons that I cannot imagine. It is true that some nineteenth Americans referred to as "advanced thinkers", including Franklin and Thoreau, favoured "air bathing", but that is rather different to "romping naked in the woods" as Gibbons's character does. An authoritative source for information on the origins of American nudism is Among The Nudists by Frances and Mason Merrill. My copy dates from 1930, and the authors state that a "small group, of about sixty or seventy members, affiliated with one of the large German associations, is made up chiefly of German-Americans, and the very existence of the group is unknown to outsiders. ... [the] group has grown and flourished in the single year that they have been organised." If an author makes up one significant historical detail, then presumably she may have made up many, in which case the book is no longer an historical novel, but instead becomes "speculative fiction" or "alternate reality" - genres allied to SF. Anybody want to try attempting such a novel, in which nudism originates in pre-WWI America, rather than post-WWI Germany?

Apologetic footnote:

The original Yarns Without Threads entry for this author referred to her as "Kay Gibbon", sorry. I am not sure whether I should apologise for the other error relating to the original entry. The index to that entry referred to her as "Stella Gibbons" - it's up to you to decide if this flatters or denigrates, and which Gibbons was so treated.

Spurious coincidences or six separations footnote:

Elsewhere on NUFF I have contributed a page about yoga and naturism. On that page you will find mention of a film Naked Yoga, one of whose participants was Elizabeth Taylor-Mead. This is almost certainly the same Elizabeth Taylor-Mead who has had a successful career in film and TV, and who is said to be working on a feature film based on Kaye Gibbons' A Cure for Dreams

Footnotes footnote:

These were much more fun than the main review. Excuse the digressions, but I was getting desperate for something worthwhile to say in regard to this book.

An edited version of this review appeared in the 2006 January issue of H&E Naturist magazine.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2006 January 5.

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Other content Copyright © author Tim Forcer

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