Haunting, unforgettable, tragic. It's an epistolary novel comprised of Molly Petree's diary, and excerpts from other characters' diaries and letters, as well as newspaper clippings, songs, and court records.When the book opens, 13-year-old Molly Petree is living on a plantation named Agate Hill under the protection of her legal guardian, Uncle Junius Hall. The book spans 50 years of Molly's life. While she suffers many traumatic events, she always recovers, and you admire her strong heart even while you fear the consequences of her impulsiveness. The depiction of life in the south after the Civil War was most striking. Society was completely disrupted, except for some of the very wealthy. Many people, like Molly's friends and relatives, lived in poverty, not knowing if they would have enough to eat, often being robbed of what little they did have. All of the characters in the book were depicted well, even though their stories were told through diary entries and letters. I gave the book four stars because I thought the narrator who finds the diaries, letters and other items that tell Molly's story was a twit. I was glad she was in the story only briefly. Also, the ending wasn't very clear. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERTHere's what the author, Lee Smith said about the ending to clarify it after someone on an Amazon forum emailed her to ask about it:"Thank you for reading On Agate Hill. I think BJ did shoot Jacky, intending to murder him, because BJ had been secretly in love with Molly for years, and felt that Jacky was "doing her wrong" by being so unfaithful to her. (I had hoped that was clear in the way BJ worshipfully talked about Molly in his narration) Molly found Jacky mortally wounded at the store, then shot him herself in order to put him out of his misery. But then BJ lied to everybody, saying that she had not shot her husband, and thereby got her off at her trial. BJ thought that HE could be Molly's husband then, since she "owed" him, but as you read, this was not to be. Molly did not love him in that way. So she really had to leave, and she did.Now, that was my intention, as I said... but as BJ said, there were a lot of people that had a motive to kill Jacky... such as, for instance, Icy. There was "a bullet out there waiting for him" all along, I guess.Sincerely,Lee Smith "
This was a fairly good book, though I felt the different places and people in them felt a little disconnected. That is, it felt almost like I was reading a different book in different places, despite the main character being in all of them. It spans the main character's life, and when she moves places, she is surrounded my completely new people, and each stage in her life is narrated by a different person, but it still didn't quite mesh together for me. Still, it was a good story. An interesting perspective on how Confederate Southerners suffered after the War. Probably the thing I liked the least is the lack of clarity in who committed a crime at the end of the book. Even the author, who intended it to be a particular person, confessed that many characters could have done it. (I'm being vague so as not to spoil anything). It is just such a big part of the book that I thought it should have been explained. I don't see the point of making that part foggy. It was actually kind of frustrating.
Do You like book On Agate Hill (2006)?
I was captivated by the honesty of this little girl's narrative. I always love a story in which the characters have no pretenses - and the world she is trying to grow up in (Reconstruction-era South) is falling apart, one page at a time, one layer at a time, one person at a time, and she is making sense of it in the best way she can. I kept wondering what was ahead for her, and was always surprised. There is something both gruesome and fascinating about this book - it has a lingering sense of Miss Haversham about it.
—Rachel Crooks
The premise to On Agate Hill is a good one. A box of mementos from a once stately southern plantation house is found, offering a glimpse into the past and an introduction to a young girl who lived in the house during the years following the Civil War. The author, Lee Smith, uses a variety of narrative tools to acquaint the reader with young Molly Petree, but I found these to create a disjointedness about the novel. For starters, we have young Molly's diary - a laundry list of people that left me more confused than anything about who these people were. Next came letters from two women who ran the school Molly later attended. This tool was better, but the author created whole scenes and dialogues from the letters that seemed very unlikely to have appeared in a letter. Lastly, Smith incorporates newspaper clippings, which in and of itself were alright, but when you place all these different types of narratives together, it greatly affects the fluidity of the book.I enjoyed the story of Molly Petree, but was not appreciative of the means Lee Smith used to tell it.
—Suzanne
I hardly know where to start with this review. The book begins in the years following the civil war told mainly from journal entries and letters. Molly as a 14 year old writes, "I want to live so hard and love so much I will use myself all the way up like a candle, it seems to me like this is the point of it all, not Heaven”The rest of the book details how she lives her life up like a candle. She leads a tragic life from the very first "dear diary," and although there are wonderful times filled with warmth and joy in the end I felt completely depressed. One of the closing thoughts is this, “love lives not in places nor even bodies but in the spaces between them, the long and lovely sweep of air and sky, and in the living heart and memory until that is gone too, and we are all wanderers, as we have always been, upon the earth” I loved the author's descriptions and voice. I would love to read more by her but I'm already haunted enough by this one.FYI: There is some language and some difficult scenes like a young girl being raped.
—Erin
