I can’t say that The Moonflower Vine would have stood much chance of a second look from me had it not come with such a sterling recommendation. To see a neglected book rate such high-profile coverage alone made it worth a try. In there amongst Wuthering Heights, Moby Dick, and Ulysses was this book with a completely unfamiliar title and by completely unfamiliar author. It wasn’t so much what Smiley had to say about it as that it was essentially the only genuinely little-known novel she saw fit to include in her list of 100 great novels. I read The Moonflower Vine after coming across Jane Smiley’s discussion of it in her Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. In their father’s vocabulary it meant joyrides, dancing, card games, cigarettes, and other things to dreadful to define. The girls grew up before they realized that pleasure was not an ugly word. But very early they understood that playing was somewhat suspect, allowed only through indulgence, a trivial pastime soon outgrown, and only about twice removed from sin. They played with what they had or found or made up and enjoyed themselves hugely. ![]() They had no toys to speak of (one doll, handed down from one to the other) but living as they did a good deal out-of-doors, they didn’t need such props. When they moved to town they had girl chums and Sunday School parties. On the farm they could play in the woods and go fishing. “ Laborare est orare,” he said and work meant to study your lessons and help Mama. The purpose in life, he said, was to work. For the most part, they resigned themselves to the situation and did as Papa said. There were so many things they were not allowed to do “because it wouldn’t look well.” And they couldn’t get out of his sight and do them, because he was everywhere. His importance might have been a comfort to the girls if it hadn’t been such a nuisance. ![]() Your Papa’s an important man in the community. “Yes, sometimes he is, honey,” said her mother. “Papa’s nicer to other people than he is to us,” Leonie once said. “Daughter,” he called each of them indiscriminantly it was a little more authoritative than the given name, which might not occur to him at the moment anyway. There, he was often preoccupied and short-spoken, indifferent to his children except to command or reprove. Ladies often said to them, “Your father is just the nicest man!” The girls could hardly help observing that he turned his sunny side to his public and clouded up at home. With other people around, he was pleasant as could be, full of laughter and witticisms and conversation marvelous to hear. And, like rain or shine, his moods conditioned all they did. There was no place they could go where the dominating spirit was not that of their father. ![]() He was omnipotent and he was everywhere - at home, at school, at church. To his daughters as they grew up, Matthew Soames was God and the weather.
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