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Now in November
Brilliant, evocative, poetic, savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) written when Josephine Winslow Johnson was only 24, depicts a white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the thirties. The novel moves through a single year and, at the same time, a decade of years, from the spring arrival of the family at their mortgaged farm to the winter 10 years later, when the ravages of drought, fire, and personal anguish have led to the deaths of two of the five. Like Ethan Frome, the relatively brief, intense story evokes the torment possible among people isolated and driven by strong feelings of love and hate that, unexpressed, lead inevitably to doom. Reviewers in the thirties praised the novel, calling its prose "profoundly moving music," expressing incredulity "that this mature style and this mature point of view are those of a young woman in her twenties," comparing the book to "the luminous work of Willa Cather," and, with prescience, suggesting that it "has that rare quality of timelessness which is the mark of first-rate fiction."
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
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9978 people want to read
About the author
Josephine Winslow Johnson
18books53followersAmerican novelist, poet, and essayist who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1935 at age 24 for her first novel, Now in November. Shortly thereafter, she published Winter Orchard, a collection of short stories that had previously appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, The St. Louis Review, and Hound & Horn. Of these stories, "Dark" won an O. Henry Award in 1934[1], and "John the Six" won an O. Henry Award third prize the following year. Johnson continued writing short stories and won three more O. Henry Awards: for "Alexander to the Park" (1942), "The Glass Pigeon" (1943), and "Night Flight" (1944).
Johnson was bornin Kirkwood, Missouri. She attended Washington University from 1926 to 1931, but did not earn a degree. She wrote her first novel, Now In November, while living in her mother's attic in Webster Groves, Missouri. She remained on her farm in Webster Groves and completed Winter Orchard in 1935. She published four more books before marrying Grant G. Cannon, editor in chief of the Farm Quarterly, in 1942. The couple moved to Iowa City, where she taught at the University of Iowa for the next three years. They moved to Hamilton County, Ohio in 1947, where she published Wildwood.
Johnson had three children. The Cannons continued to move beyond the advancing urban sprawl of Cincinnati, finally settling on the wooded acreage in Clermont County, Ohio, which is the setting of The Inland Island. In 1955, Washington University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
She published four more books before her death, from pneumonia, on February 27, 1990, in Batavia, Ohio at age 79.[2] (Wiki)
Johnson was bornin Kirkwood, Missouri. She attended Washington University from 1926 to 1931, but did not earn a degree. She wrote her first novel, Now In November, while living in her mother's attic in Webster Groves, Missouri. She remained on her farm in Webster Groves and completed Winter Orchard in 1935. She published four more books before marrying Grant G. Cannon, editor in chief of the Farm Quarterly, in 1942. The couple moved to Iowa City, where she taught at the University of Iowa for the next three years. They moved to Hamilton County, Ohio in 1947, where she published Wildwood.
Johnson had three children. The Cannons continued to move beyond the advancing urban sprawl of Cincinnati, finally settling on the wooded acreage in Clermont County, Ohio, which is the setting of The Inland Island. In 1955, Washington University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
She published four more books before her death, from pneumonia, on February 27, 1990, in Batavia, Ohio at age 79.[2] (Wiki)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 285 reviews
December 28, 2016
Our narrator Marget looks back twenty years trying to piece together the life of her family and in particular the year that would prove devastating, forever changing the contours of their family. She is ten, when her father loses his Job in the lumberyard and takes up tenant farming, land for which he takes on a ten year mortgage. Her elder sister Kerran and her younger sister Merle, mother and father, a father ill suited to farming but due to the depression has little recourse.
Beautiful prose, the writing is outstanding and the story has a depth to it that I found amazing. Not only do we learn of the different personalities of the sisters, but we see how varied their responses are to the hardships they encounter. There are of course hardships a plenty, the weather, drought, things they cannot control. Prices and the manipulation of these, always one step away from disaster, losing everything. Marget loves the land, her descriptions of the beauty, the changing season are wonderful, expressive. Likewise her descriptions of this same land dying, horrible to experience. This is a hard, well thought out look at a family struggling against nature that can be both beautiful and cruel. It is told in a linear and consecutive manner which I felt both heightened the impact and my understanding of how these hardworking people were effected by the economy and nature itself.
This book was published in the thirties, people still reeling from the depression and it was very well received. The author was only in her twenties when this was written and I find the maturity in her writing simply amazing. There was an afterward that explains much and this gave me an additional understanding of what this novel was portraying. I don't always agree with prize winning books but in this case I believe they got it right.
Beautiful prose, the writing is outstanding and the story has a depth to it that I found amazing. Not only do we learn of the different personalities of the sisters, but we see how varied their responses are to the hardships they encounter. There are of course hardships a plenty, the weather, drought, things they cannot control. Prices and the manipulation of these, always one step away from disaster, losing everything. Marget loves the land, her descriptions of the beauty, the changing season are wonderful, expressive. Likewise her descriptions of this same land dying, horrible to experience. This is a hard, well thought out look at a family struggling against nature that can be both beautiful and cruel. It is told in a linear and consecutive manner which I felt both heightened the impact and my understanding of how these hardworking people were effected by the economy and nature itself.
This book was published in the thirties, people still reeling from the depression and it was very well received. The author was only in her twenties when this was written and I find the maturity in her writing simply amazing. There was an afterward that explains much and this gave me an additional understanding of what this novel was portraying. I don't always agree with prize winning books but in this case I believe they got it right.
October 18, 2021
is ’s novel of a depression era farming family, caught up in the everyday hardness of the farm and the growing darkness of a world in financial crisis. The drought that overtakes Marget and her family, is more than a drought of the land, it is a drought of the soul.
The interpersonal relationships described by Marget are those of people caught in an eddy that drags them deeper and deeper into themselves and separates them further and further from one another. There is a genuine sense of desperation in each of the three daughters, Kerrin, Marget, and Merle, and there is a shadow of unavoidable failure that encompasses the father, who must try to keep a farm alive in the absence of sons.
although I was quick to hate him when he would turn on us suddenly and shout out, “eat your dinner, you girls, stop messing with your food!� But all the time I would feel us there on his shoulders, heavy as stone on his mind--all four of our lives to carry everywhere. And no money.
While the book is about the depression and the struggle to survive against nature and obligation, it is also about what it is to love, or at least to seek love, hopelessly.
Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How can I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?
It is about how to survive, or at least how to keep moving forward, against a headwind that never diminishes.
I was afraid though and prayed--Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind!
Finally, it is about loss, looking back, finding that the days you thought hard were the closest you would get to days of joy and lightness.
Once I thought there were words for all things except love and intolerable beauty. Now I know that there is a third thing beyond expression--the sense of loss. There are no words for death.
When you put this book into the perspective of being the debut work of a 24 year old writer and then consider that it won the Pulitzer Prize for 1935, you realize just how remarkable a work of fiction it truly is. I felt akin to these people and wrapped up in their travails and their fates, and a bit hopeless in the face of their sorrows.
The interpersonal relationships described by Marget are those of people caught in an eddy that drags them deeper and deeper into themselves and separates them further and further from one another. There is a genuine sense of desperation in each of the three daughters, Kerrin, Marget, and Merle, and there is a shadow of unavoidable failure that encompasses the father, who must try to keep a farm alive in the absence of sons.
although I was quick to hate him when he would turn on us suddenly and shout out, “eat your dinner, you girls, stop messing with your food!� But all the time I would feel us there on his shoulders, heavy as stone on his mind--all four of our lives to carry everywhere. And no money.
While the book is about the depression and the struggle to survive against nature and obligation, it is also about what it is to love, or at least to seek love, hopelessly.
Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How can I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?
It is about how to survive, or at least how to keep moving forward, against a headwind that never diminishes.
I was afraid though and prayed--Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind!
Finally, it is about loss, looking back, finding that the days you thought hard were the closest you would get to days of joy and lightness.
Once I thought there were words for all things except love and intolerable beauty. Now I know that there is a third thing beyond expression--the sense of loss. There are no words for death.
When you put this book into the perspective of being the debut work of a 24 year old writer and then consider that it won the Pulitzer Prize for 1935, you realize just how remarkable a work of fiction it truly is. I felt akin to these people and wrapped up in their travails and their fates, and a bit hopeless in the face of their sorrows.
September 21, 2021
This book won the 1932 Pulitzer and is sort of a precursor to Steinbeck's . It deals with a drought in Oregon and how it affects a poor family of settler farmers and their three growing, but all very different, daughters. I found the text was quite beautiful and the protagonists very engaging. It was not really up in the classic category but probably benefited from 1933 being a rather weak year in publishing. I imagine that its most still competition was which may or may not have been under consideration as Stein was living in Paris at the time.
The father "hadn't the resignation that a farmer has to have - that resignation which knows how little to use to hope or hate, or pray for even a bean before its appointed time." (p.5) In this way, he reminds me of Nathan the preacher in . A litte further on the same page, "He'd saved and come up hard and slow like an oak or ask that grows with effort but is worth much more than any poplar shotting two feet high in a season. But now he was chopped down back to root again. It's a queer experience for a man to go through, to work years for security and peace, and then in a few months' time have it all dissolve into nothing; to feel the strange blankness and dark of being neither wanted nor necessary any more. Things had come slow to him and gone fast, and it made him suspicious even of the land."
The writing is often about what is going on inside the head of our protagonist as she takes on more and more responsibility during the crisis.
"I didn't have anything to say. I was afraid to start probing again about the knife. Nothing was changed, but the afternoon seemed cold and chilly...Merle started off down the hill. She was always thinking of Mother having to do the work alone, and was always the first to start at whatever there was to be done. Something was in her, even then, that kept walking foot after foot down a straight path to some clear place, and I wished then, and still do, that there was something in me too also that would march steadily in one road instead of down here or there or somewhere else, the mind running a net of rabbit-paths that twisted and turned and doubled on themselves, pursued always by the hawk-shadow of doubt. But even though I despised myself, it seemed that earth wa snot less beautiful or less given to me in my littleness than to Merle who had twice as much good in her. And it seemed unjust and strange, but would probably balance up some day. (p. 10)
Books from the 30s tend to talk nostalgically about the shift from a rural to an industrial economy and how society was changing: "It was true and it wasn't true - what she said about the children. People weren't born and fastened to earth any more. They came and went, returning and leaving, not like a tide but in scattered ways and times. People came back to the land as we had come, after years of another life, bringing with them a newness to told things, a different seeing from the sight of men born with the sound of calve's bawling in their ears and the taste of mud in their mouths from the beginning." (p. 31)
A very interesting and insightful description of the father's relationship to his three daughters: "He looked at us from across the misty gulf that he thought was between him and all women, and thought of the place in which they moved around and did things as a long way off - a place from which they might step across this gulf to marry a man, but any time might go back again." (p. 45)
The conclusion of the book has this nice phrase: "I cannot believe this is the end. Nor can I believe that death is more than the blindness of those living. And if this is only the consolation of a heart in its necessity, or that easy faith born of despair, it does not matter, since it gives us corage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can risk sometimes." (p. 164)
A very good read, an excellent first effort by Johnson, and a good choice by the Pulitzer committee.
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):
The father "hadn't the resignation that a farmer has to have - that resignation which knows how little to use to hope or hate, or pray for even a bean before its appointed time." (p.5) In this way, he reminds me of Nathan the preacher in . A litte further on the same page, "He'd saved and come up hard and slow like an oak or ask that grows with effort but is worth much more than any poplar shotting two feet high in a season. But now he was chopped down back to root again. It's a queer experience for a man to go through, to work years for security and peace, and then in a few months' time have it all dissolve into nothing; to feel the strange blankness and dark of being neither wanted nor necessary any more. Things had come slow to him and gone fast, and it made him suspicious even of the land."
The writing is often about what is going on inside the head of our protagonist as she takes on more and more responsibility during the crisis.
"I didn't have anything to say. I was afraid to start probing again about the knife. Nothing was changed, but the afternoon seemed cold and chilly...Merle started off down the hill. She was always thinking of Mother having to do the work alone, and was always the first to start at whatever there was to be done. Something was in her, even then, that kept walking foot after foot down a straight path to some clear place, and I wished then, and still do, that there was something in me too also that would march steadily in one road instead of down here or there or somewhere else, the mind running a net of rabbit-paths that twisted and turned and doubled on themselves, pursued always by the hawk-shadow of doubt. But even though I despised myself, it seemed that earth wa snot less beautiful or less given to me in my littleness than to Merle who had twice as much good in her. And it seemed unjust and strange, but would probably balance up some day. (p. 10)
Books from the 30s tend to talk nostalgically about the shift from a rural to an industrial economy and how society was changing: "It was true and it wasn't true - what she said about the children. People weren't born and fastened to earth any more. They came and went, returning and leaving, not like a tide but in scattered ways and times. People came back to the land as we had come, after years of another life, bringing with them a newness to told things, a different seeing from the sight of men born with the sound of calve's bawling in their ears and the taste of mud in their mouths from the beginning." (p. 31)
A very interesting and insightful description of the father's relationship to his three daughters: "He looked at us from across the misty gulf that he thought was between him and all women, and thought of the place in which they moved around and did things as a long way off - a place from which they might step across this gulf to marry a man, but any time might go back again." (p. 45)
The conclusion of the book has this nice phrase: "I cannot believe this is the end. Nor can I believe that death is more than the blindness of those living. And if this is only the consolation of a heart in its necessity, or that easy faith born of despair, it does not matter, since it gives us corage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can risk sometimes." (p. 164)
A very good read, an excellent first effort by Johnson, and a good choice by the Pulitzer committee.
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):
December 19, 2022
4.25 stars
“I wanted to give a beautiful and yet not incongruous form to the ordinary living of life,� (Josephine Johnson)
Published in 1934, this was Johnson’s first novel (aged 24) and it won the Pulitzer Prize. It is set on a failing family farm in the Great Depression over the period of a year, during a drought. It is written from the point of view of Marget, one of three daughters (Merle is younger and Kerrin is older). There is also mother and father and a hired hand, Grant. The family are in debt and life is a struggle:
“This year will have to be different,� I thought. ‘We’ve scrabbled and prayed too long for it to end as the others have.� The debt was still like a bottomless swamp unfilled, where we had gone year after year, throwing in hours of heat and the wrenching on stony land, only to see them swallowed up and then to creep back and begin again.�
The scope is small, mainly just the family farm, and there is a real connection to nature: colours, weather, plants and animals. This is a description of the high summer on the farm in drought:
“In August the smell of grapes poured up like a warm flood through the windows. But they ripened unevenly, with hard green balls all through the purple. The apples fell too soon, crackling in the dry grass,–gold summer apples mushed and brown, and the sour red winesaps with white flesh. The creek stopped running altogether, and the woods were full of dead things–leaf-dust and thorny vines brittle to the touch. It was chill and quiet sometimes in the early mornings, but the head returned, the sun blasting fierce as ever, and the red plums fell like rain in the cindered grass. In places the grasshoppers left nothing but the white bones of weeds, stripped even of pale skin, and the corn-stalks looked like yellow skeletons.�
You can taste the dry dust and thirst, but there are other less tangible thirsts. The relationships within the family, the feelings of the daughters in relation to the hired hand, the lack of an intrinsic justice.
This is a bleak and tragic book and we see close up the effects of drought and economic depression. It is compelling and rivals anything Steinbeck wrote along the same lines. The prose is profound and poetic and for once I think this deserved accolades, it’s very good.
“This is not all behind us now, outgrown and cut away. It is of us and changed only in form. I like to pretend that the years alter and revalue, but begin to see that time does nothing but enlarge without mutation. You have a chance here � more than a chance, it is thrust upon you � to be alone and still. To look backward and forward and see with clarity. To see the years behind, the essential loneliness, and the likeness of one year to the next. The awful order of cause and effect. Root leading to stem and inevitable.� growth, and the same sap moving through tissue of different years, marked like the branches with inescapable scars of growth�
“I wanted to give a beautiful and yet not incongruous form to the ordinary living of life,� (Josephine Johnson)
Published in 1934, this was Johnson’s first novel (aged 24) and it won the Pulitzer Prize. It is set on a failing family farm in the Great Depression over the period of a year, during a drought. It is written from the point of view of Marget, one of three daughters (Merle is younger and Kerrin is older). There is also mother and father and a hired hand, Grant. The family are in debt and life is a struggle:
“This year will have to be different,� I thought. ‘We’ve scrabbled and prayed too long for it to end as the others have.� The debt was still like a bottomless swamp unfilled, where we had gone year after year, throwing in hours of heat and the wrenching on stony land, only to see them swallowed up and then to creep back and begin again.�
The scope is small, mainly just the family farm, and there is a real connection to nature: colours, weather, plants and animals. This is a description of the high summer on the farm in drought:
“In August the smell of grapes poured up like a warm flood through the windows. But they ripened unevenly, with hard green balls all through the purple. The apples fell too soon, crackling in the dry grass,–gold summer apples mushed and brown, and the sour red winesaps with white flesh. The creek stopped running altogether, and the woods were full of dead things–leaf-dust and thorny vines brittle to the touch. It was chill and quiet sometimes in the early mornings, but the head returned, the sun blasting fierce as ever, and the red plums fell like rain in the cindered grass. In places the grasshoppers left nothing but the white bones of weeds, stripped even of pale skin, and the corn-stalks looked like yellow skeletons.�
You can taste the dry dust and thirst, but there are other less tangible thirsts. The relationships within the family, the feelings of the daughters in relation to the hired hand, the lack of an intrinsic justice.
This is a bleak and tragic book and we see close up the effects of drought and economic depression. It is compelling and rivals anything Steinbeck wrote along the same lines. The prose is profound and poetic and for once I think this deserved accolades, it’s very good.
“This is not all behind us now, outgrown and cut away. It is of us and changed only in form. I like to pretend that the years alter and revalue, but begin to see that time does nothing but enlarge without mutation. You have a chance here � more than a chance, it is thrust upon you � to be alone and still. To look backward and forward and see with clarity. To see the years behind, the essential loneliness, and the likeness of one year to the next. The awful order of cause and effect. Root leading to stem and inevitable.� growth, and the same sap moving through tissue of different years, marked like the branches with inescapable scars of growth�
July 9, 2024
“I like to pretend that the years alter and revalue, but begin to see that time does nothing but enlarge without mutation. � To see the years behind, the essential loneliness, and the likeness of one year to the next. The awful order of cause and effect. Root leading to stem and inevitable growth, and the same sap moving through tissue of different years, marked like the branches with inescapable scars of growth.�
“Here were all of us then, I thought, crawling along the ruts, and shoving our debts ahead like the ball of dung- beetles. Worse off than the beetles themselves who can bury their load and be done.�
“� it gives us courage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can ask at times.�
Written in 1934, this Pulitzer Prize winner tells the story of a year in the life of the Haldemarne family. Trying to farm in the Dust Bowl, and during the Depression, was a constant struggle against drought, dust and debt.
Told from the pov of middle sister Marget, the book is very good at describing the various members of the family and their neighbors. The inclusion of a new hired hand sets off tensions among the three sisters. The book was more realistic and candid than I expected it to be about many topics, including mental illness and racism. This book was very good, although it definitely packed less of a gut punch than “The Grapes of Wrath�. It was beautifully written by the author, who was only 24 when she wrote it. 4.5 stars
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher
“Here were all of us then, I thought, crawling along the ruts, and shoving our debts ahead like the ball of dung- beetles. Worse off than the beetles themselves who can bury their load and be done.�
“� it gives us courage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can ask at times.�
Written in 1934, this Pulitzer Prize winner tells the story of a year in the life of the Haldemarne family. Trying to farm in the Dust Bowl, and during the Depression, was a constant struggle against drought, dust and debt.
Told from the pov of middle sister Marget, the book is very good at describing the various members of the family and their neighbors. The inclusion of a new hired hand sets off tensions among the three sisters. The book was more realistic and candid than I expected it to be about many topics, including mental illness and racism. This book was very good, although it definitely packed less of a gut punch than “The Grapes of Wrath�. It was beautifully written by the author, who was only 24 when she wrote it. 4.5 stars
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher
April 14, 2018
Now in November is arguably the most relentlessly tragic novel I've read and, yet, I loved it. Josephine W. Johnson tells the grinding story of a year (and more) in the life of a farming family during the Dust Bowl. In it, she paints a highly detailed picture of the bucolic life that preceded this environmental catastrophe as well as the inexorable extinguishment of hope that accompanied it. She creates a world in which the peach blossoms of a bountiful spring are eventually replaced by drought-stricken maples whose dying leaves look like the "folded wings of bats".
The subtle lyricism of Johnson's style is the binding force of this poignant telling. She portrays in tender prose the powerful communion with nature that takes place with some regularity on a farm and she does so firmly within the context of the brutalizing effects of the bare subsistence existence that was farming life in America in the 1930's.
The story is told through the eyes of the middle sister of three, and she is plagued through most of the telling by a love unrequited. This, in turn, serves as the perfect analog for the passionate and tireless devotion this family pours into their farmstead, only to have all of their efforts come undone by the simple act of nature's withholding, in this case, of rain. The remote, masculine beauty of the man she can't have serves as the maddening personification of imagined bounty from a farm, and from a life, that never quite comes to fruition.
I deeply appreciated Johnson's skill as a writer and even more so for the fact that she created this insightful telling, populated by honest, recognizable characters and glorious, lyrical descriptions, all before she reached the age of twenty-five. As first novels go, Josephine Johnson's Now in November is a formidable achievement, well-deserving of the Pulitzer it received and, once I've had a good cry, a whisky and a long soak, I may be ready to tackle some of her subsequent works.
The subtle lyricism of Johnson's style is the binding force of this poignant telling. She portrays in tender prose the powerful communion with nature that takes place with some regularity on a farm and she does so firmly within the context of the brutalizing effects of the bare subsistence existence that was farming life in America in the 1930's.
The story is told through the eyes of the middle sister of three, and she is plagued through most of the telling by a love unrequited. This, in turn, serves as the perfect analog for the passionate and tireless devotion this family pours into their farmstead, only to have all of their efforts come undone by the simple act of nature's withholding, in this case, of rain. The remote, masculine beauty of the man she can't have serves as the maddening personification of imagined bounty from a farm, and from a life, that never quite comes to fruition.
I deeply appreciated Johnson's skill as a writer and even more so for the fact that she created this insightful telling, populated by honest, recognizable characters and glorious, lyrical descriptions, all before she reached the age of twenty-five. As first novels go, Josephine Johnson's Now in November is a formidable achievement, well-deserving of the Pulitzer it received and, once I've had a good cry, a whisky and a long soak, I may be ready to tackle some of her subsequent works.
November 29, 2023
Poetisch-lyrische Entschleunigung
„November ist für mich das Norwegen des Jahres.� (Emily Dickinson)
Allgemein kommt der November ja nicht gut weg, aber allein durch das einleitende Zitat sollte man ins Nachdenken kommen � ganz unrecht hat Frau Dickinson nicht ha ha ha.
Und auch die Ich-Erzählerin Marget in Josephine W. Johnson´s Roman „Die November-Schwestern�, für den die Autorin 1935 den renommierten Pulitzer-Preis gewann und der 2023 dank des Aufbau-Verlags und der überragenden Übersetzung von Bettina Abarbanell endlich auch in Deutschland erschienen ist, kann dem November etwas „abgewinnen�:
„Jetzt im November sehe ich unsere Jahre im Ganzen. Dieser Herbst ist zugleich wie ein Ende und ein Anfang für unser Leben […]� (S. 7)
Sie blickt zurück � auf ein Jahr im Kreislauf der Natur und auf private Tragödien, die die Geschichte und Geschicke der Familie Haldmarne lenken und nachhaltig beeinflussen. Dabei spielt eins ins andere � ohne die vorherrschende Dürre wäre Grant wahrscheinlich nie in das Leben der Haldmarne´s getreten und hätte die Schwestern Marget, Merle und Kerrin nicht in so ein (Gefühls-)Chaos stürzen können.
Die Geschichte könnte also vorhersehbar sein (Mann verdreht Frau(en) den Kopf), ist sie aber nicht. Stattdessen ist es der Autorin hervorragend gelungen, mit eindrucksvollen Natur- und Stimmungsbeschreibungen von Anfang an eine poetisch-bedrohliche Spannung zu erzeugen, die es in der (meiner Meinung nach) heutigen Literatur nicht bzw. nur sehr selten und punktuell gibt und die leider in der Masse der Veröffentlichungen untergeht. Aber das ist ein anderes Thema�
Jetzt, wo ich die Lektüre von „Die November-Schwestern� Revue passieren lasse, komme ich immer mehr zu der Überzeugung, dass der Roman zu den besten poetisch-lyrischen Entschleunigungen gehört, die ich je gelesen habe � trotz der Schwere des Schicksals, trotz der „Heimtücken� von Mutter Natur und der großen „Konkurrenz� ähnlich gelagerter Geschichten. Aber Sätzen wie den folgenden kann ich einfach nicht (mehr) abschwören:
„Einmal ging mir plötzlich auf, ohne Grund, aber mit einer Gewissheit, die nichts erschüttern oder ändern konnte, dass weder Mutter noch Grant zu irgendjemandem aufschauten, irgendwen beneideten. Das war nicht etwa Hochmut oder das Gefühl, anders zu sein. Überhaupt nicht. Sondern eine Art Glaube an die Würde des menschlichen Geistes. Ich stammle nur bei dem Versuch, es zu erklären. Es ist nichts, was sich in kleinen Buchstaben einfangen und kleinen Kindern vorlesen lässt.� (S. 138)
„Wenn ich laut geschrien und gekreischt hätte, dass ich es nicht ertragen könne, hätten sie geglaubt, ich wäre verrückt geworden; dabei ist es das Schweigen, das wirklich verrückt ist, das Stummbleiben, Stillhalten, Weitermachen, als wäre alles wie immer.� (S. 205)
„Es gab keine Berührung von ihm, an die ich mich hätte erinnern können � nur seine Worte; und Worte sind etwas Kaltes, Grabähnliches, möglich, dass sie länger halten als selbst die stärkste und leidenschaftlichste Berührung, aber sie sind steinern.� (S. 207)
Ich könnte jetzt hier das ganze Buch zitieren…Nein, Spaß. Kauft es euch lieber oder lasst es euch schenken und lasst euch be- bzw. verzaubern von dieser poetischen Sprachgewalt.
Glasklare Leseempfehlung und 10 von 5*.
©쾱ԲǴڳܲ
„November ist für mich das Norwegen des Jahres.� (Emily Dickinson)
Allgemein kommt der November ja nicht gut weg, aber allein durch das einleitende Zitat sollte man ins Nachdenken kommen � ganz unrecht hat Frau Dickinson nicht ha ha ha.
Und auch die Ich-Erzählerin Marget in Josephine W. Johnson´s Roman „Die November-Schwestern�, für den die Autorin 1935 den renommierten Pulitzer-Preis gewann und der 2023 dank des Aufbau-Verlags und der überragenden Übersetzung von Bettina Abarbanell endlich auch in Deutschland erschienen ist, kann dem November etwas „abgewinnen�:
„Jetzt im November sehe ich unsere Jahre im Ganzen. Dieser Herbst ist zugleich wie ein Ende und ein Anfang für unser Leben […]� (S. 7)
Sie blickt zurück � auf ein Jahr im Kreislauf der Natur und auf private Tragödien, die die Geschichte und Geschicke der Familie Haldmarne lenken und nachhaltig beeinflussen. Dabei spielt eins ins andere � ohne die vorherrschende Dürre wäre Grant wahrscheinlich nie in das Leben der Haldmarne´s getreten und hätte die Schwestern Marget, Merle und Kerrin nicht in so ein (Gefühls-)Chaos stürzen können.
Die Geschichte könnte also vorhersehbar sein (Mann verdreht Frau(en) den Kopf), ist sie aber nicht. Stattdessen ist es der Autorin hervorragend gelungen, mit eindrucksvollen Natur- und Stimmungsbeschreibungen von Anfang an eine poetisch-bedrohliche Spannung zu erzeugen, die es in der (meiner Meinung nach) heutigen Literatur nicht bzw. nur sehr selten und punktuell gibt und die leider in der Masse der Veröffentlichungen untergeht. Aber das ist ein anderes Thema�
Jetzt, wo ich die Lektüre von „Die November-Schwestern� Revue passieren lasse, komme ich immer mehr zu der Überzeugung, dass der Roman zu den besten poetisch-lyrischen Entschleunigungen gehört, die ich je gelesen habe � trotz der Schwere des Schicksals, trotz der „Heimtücken� von Mutter Natur und der großen „Konkurrenz� ähnlich gelagerter Geschichten. Aber Sätzen wie den folgenden kann ich einfach nicht (mehr) abschwören:
„Einmal ging mir plötzlich auf, ohne Grund, aber mit einer Gewissheit, die nichts erschüttern oder ändern konnte, dass weder Mutter noch Grant zu irgendjemandem aufschauten, irgendwen beneideten. Das war nicht etwa Hochmut oder das Gefühl, anders zu sein. Überhaupt nicht. Sondern eine Art Glaube an die Würde des menschlichen Geistes. Ich stammle nur bei dem Versuch, es zu erklären. Es ist nichts, was sich in kleinen Buchstaben einfangen und kleinen Kindern vorlesen lässt.� (S. 138)
„Wenn ich laut geschrien und gekreischt hätte, dass ich es nicht ertragen könne, hätten sie geglaubt, ich wäre verrückt geworden; dabei ist es das Schweigen, das wirklich verrückt ist, das Stummbleiben, Stillhalten, Weitermachen, als wäre alles wie immer.� (S. 205)
„Es gab keine Berührung von ihm, an die ich mich hätte erinnern können � nur seine Worte; und Worte sind etwas Kaltes, Grabähnliches, möglich, dass sie länger halten als selbst die stärkste und leidenschaftlichste Berührung, aber sie sind steinern.� (S. 207)
Ich könnte jetzt hier das ganze Buch zitieren…Nein, Spaß. Kauft es euch lieber oder lasst es euch schenken und lasst euch be- bzw. verzaubern von dieser poetischen Sprachgewalt.
Glasklare Leseempfehlung und 10 von 5*.
©쾱ԲǴڳܲ
May 25, 2016
I’d never heard of this 1935 Pulitzer Prize winner before I saw a large display of titles from publisher Head of Zeus’s new imprint, Apollo, at Foyles bookshop in London. Apollo, which launched with eight titles in April, aims to bring lesser-known classics out of obscurity: by making “great forgotten works of fiction available to a new generation of readers,� it intends to “challenge the established canon and surprise readers.�
Missouri-born Johnson was just 24 years old when she published Now in November. The novel is narrated by the middle Haldmarne daughter, Marget, looking back at a grueling decade on the family farm. She recognizes how unsuited her father, Arnold, was to farming: “He hadn’t the resignation that a farmer has to have � that resignation which knows how little use to hope or hate.� The remaining members of this female-dominated household are mother Willa, older sister Kerrin and younger sister Merle. Half-feral Kerrin is a creature apart. She’s always doing something unpredictable, like demonstrating knife-throwing to disastrous effect or taking over as the local schoolteacher, a job she’s not at all right for.
The arrival of Grant Koven, a neighbor in his thirties hired to help Arnold with hard labor, seems like the only thing that might break the agricultural cycle of futile hope and disappointment. Marget quickly falls in love with him, but it takes her a while to realize that her sisters are smitten too. They all keep hoping their fortunes will change:
Yet as drought settles in, things only get worse. The fear of losing everything becomes a collective obsession; a sense of insecurity pervades the community. The Ramseys, black tenant farmers with nine children, are evicted. Milk producers go on strike and have to give the stuff away before it sours. Nature is indifferent and neither is there a benevolent God at work: when the Haldmarnes go to church, they are refused communion as non-members.
Marget skips around in time to pinpoint the central moments of their struggle, her often fragmentary thoughts joined by ellipses � a style that seemed to me ahead of its time:
Michael Schmidt, the critic who selected the first eight Apollo books, likens Now in November to the work of two very different female writers: Marilynne Robinson and Emily Brontë. What I think he is emphasizing with those comparisons is the sense of isolation and the feeling that struggle is writ large on the landscape. The Haldmarne sisters certainly wander the nearby hills like the Brontë sisters did the Yorkshire moors.
As points of reference I would also add Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and Joan Chase’s During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (resurrected by NYRB Classics in 2014), which also give timeless weight to the female experience of Midwest farming. Like the Smiley, Now in November stars a trio of sisters and makes conscious allusions to King Lear. Kerrin reads the play and thinks of their father as Lear, while Marget quotes it as a prophecy that the worst is yet to come: “I remembered the awful words in Lear: ‘The worst is not so long as we can say “This is the worst.”� Already this year, I’d cried, This is enough! uncounted times, and the end had never come.�
Johnson lived to age 80 and published another 11 books, but nothing ever lived up to the success of her first. This is an atmospheric and strangely haunting novel. The plot is simple enough, but the writing elevates it into something special. The plaintive tone, the folksy metaphors, and the philosophical earnestness all kept me eagerly traveling along with Marget to see where this tragic story might lead. Apollo has done the literary world a great favor in bringing this lost classic to light.
With thanks to Blake Brooks at Head of Zeus for the free copy.
Originally published with images on my blog, .
Missouri-born Johnson was just 24 years old when she published Now in November. The novel is narrated by the middle Haldmarne daughter, Marget, looking back at a grueling decade on the family farm. She recognizes how unsuited her father, Arnold, was to farming: “He hadn’t the resignation that a farmer has to have � that resignation which knows how little use to hope or hate.� The remaining members of this female-dominated household are mother Willa, older sister Kerrin and younger sister Merle. Half-feral Kerrin is a creature apart. She’s always doing something unpredictable, like demonstrating knife-throwing to disastrous effect or taking over as the local schoolteacher, a job she’s not at all right for.
The arrival of Grant Koven, a neighbor in his thirties hired to help Arnold with hard labor, seems like the only thing that might break the agricultural cycle of futile hope and disappointment. Marget quickly falls in love with him, but it takes her a while to realize that her sisters are smitten too. They all keep hoping their fortunes will change:
‘This year will have to be different,� I thought. ‘We’ve scrabbled and prayed too long for it to end as the others have.� The debt was still like a bottomless swamp unfilled, where we had gone year after year, throwing in hours of heat and the wrenching on stony land, only to see them swallowed up and then to creep back and begin again.
Yet as drought settles in, things only get worse. The fear of losing everything becomes a collective obsession; a sense of insecurity pervades the community. The Ramseys, black tenant farmers with nine children, are evicted. Milk producers go on strike and have to give the stuff away before it sours. Nature is indifferent and neither is there a benevolent God at work: when the Haldmarnes go to church, they are refused communion as non-members.
Marget skips around in time to pinpoint the central moments of their struggle, her often fragmentary thoughts joined by ellipses � a style that seemed to me ahead of its time:
if anything could fortify me against whatever was to come […] it would have to be the small and eternal things � the whip-poor-wills� long liquid howling near the cave� the shape of young mules against the ridge, moving lighter than bucks across the pasture� things like the chorus of cicadas, and the ponds stained red in evenings.
Michael Schmidt, the critic who selected the first eight Apollo books, likens Now in November to the work of two very different female writers: Marilynne Robinson and Emily Brontë. What I think he is emphasizing with those comparisons is the sense of isolation and the feeling that struggle is writ large on the landscape. The Haldmarne sisters certainly wander the nearby hills like the Brontë sisters did the Yorkshire moors.
As points of reference I would also add Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and Joan Chase’s During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (resurrected by NYRB Classics in 2014), which also give timeless weight to the female experience of Midwest farming. Like the Smiley, Now in November stars a trio of sisters and makes conscious allusions to King Lear. Kerrin reads the play and thinks of their father as Lear, while Marget quotes it as a prophecy that the worst is yet to come: “I remembered the awful words in Lear: ‘The worst is not so long as we can say “This is the worst.”� Already this year, I’d cried, This is enough! uncounted times, and the end had never come.�
Johnson lived to age 80 and published another 11 books, but nothing ever lived up to the success of her first. This is an atmospheric and strangely haunting novel. The plot is simple enough, but the writing elevates it into something special. The plaintive tone, the folksy metaphors, and the philosophical earnestness all kept me eagerly traveling along with Marget to see where this tragic story might lead. Apollo has done the literary world a great favor in bringing this lost classic to light.
With thanks to Blake Brooks at Head of Zeus for the free copy.
Originally published with images on my blog, .
October 21, 2013
I know I'm always searching for novels like this with characters that are as deeply committed to the land as they are to investigating the heft of their hearts.
Marget, Merle and Kerrin three sisters so unlike each other, with very individual hungers and yet all tied to a fierce, desperate existence on a farm that betrays them into poverty.
This Pulitzer Prize winning novel far surpassed any expectation I could have dreamed up. I could have been fooled into thinking I was reading Carson McCullers, there is that same lonely introspection, poetic sensibility and willed-to-secrecy-love.
'There must be some reason, I thought, why we should go on year after year, with this lump of debt, scrailing earth down to stone, giving so much and with no return. There must be some reason why I was made quiet and homely and slow, and then given this stone of love to mumble'
The seasons - Nature's moods, gifts and punishments imprison the fracturing family to minute daily tasks but in the imagination and hunger of these three sisters there is a tremendous sense of freedom.
“The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.�
If there was ever a book I just wanted everyone to have the chance to read, this is it - I can't recommend it highly enough.
Marget, Merle and Kerrin three sisters so unlike each other, with very individual hungers and yet all tied to a fierce, desperate existence on a farm that betrays them into poverty.
This Pulitzer Prize winning novel far surpassed any expectation I could have dreamed up. I could have been fooled into thinking I was reading Carson McCullers, there is that same lonely introspection, poetic sensibility and willed-to-secrecy-love.
'There must be some reason, I thought, why we should go on year after year, with this lump of debt, scrailing earth down to stone, giving so much and with no return. There must be some reason why I was made quiet and homely and slow, and then given this stone of love to mumble'
The seasons - Nature's moods, gifts and punishments imprison the fracturing family to minute daily tasks but in the imagination and hunger of these three sisters there is a tremendous sense of freedom.
“The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.�
If there was ever a book I just wanted everyone to have the chance to read, this is it - I can't recommend it highly enough.
October 9, 2022
When I saw it available on my book app with cover and all, I really thought this was a story written in this time and not a classic being republished. But I'm glad I gave it a go since I hadn't heard of it before
Read
December 26, 2022Esta novela de 1935 cuenta la lucha por la supervivencia de una familia urbana que, huyendo de la Gran Depresión, se refugia en el campo alquilando una granja y trabajando la tierra. La monotonía del trabajo y la miseria se rompe en el momento en el que llega a trabajar a la granja un hombre local que trastoca la compleja relación que existe entre las tres hermanas.
Lo que más me ha gustado de este libro ha sido la ambientación: la maestría con la que Josephine Johnson te hace sentir cómo van pasando las estaciones de manera imperceptible e imparable. También está muy bien tratado el tema de las tensiones internas que hay en todas las familias y que suelen ser invisibles desde fuera.
Me ha parecido un libro interesante para el público lector interesado en la vida cotidiana en el ámbito rural de los Estados Unidos, en la naturaleza y en las relaciones familiares complejas.
Lo que más me ha gustado de este libro ha sido la ambientación: la maestría con la que Josephine Johnson te hace sentir cómo van pasando las estaciones de manera imperceptible e imparable. También está muy bien tratado el tema de las tensiones internas que hay en todas las familias y que suelen ser invisibles desde fuera.
Me ha parecido un libro interesante para el público lector interesado en la vida cotidiana en el ámbito rural de los Estados Unidos, en la naturaleza y en las relaciones familiares complejas.
December 30, 2020
I'd like to give this a better review, but I can't. This has been on my shelf since 2013, so I figured I'd give it a read. So bleak and depressing, no hope on the horizon. The Depression, drought, poverty; maybe this was not the right time to read this one, but I'm not sure there is a right time. Beautiful prose is the only reason I finished this.
June 23, 2019
I feel the author, tried to copy 's writing style and with , she failed miserably. In my opinion, can't hold a candle to .
The beginning of the book read like Little House on the Prairie, although I'm only basing that opinion on the TV show, as I've never read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
I can see why this book is a forgotten Pulitzer Prize Winner. It just droned on and on. I mean how many pages does it take to describe farmland and a drought? Apparently 231 pages! 😁
The beginning of the book read like Little House on the Prairie, although I'm only basing that opinion on the TV show, as I've never read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
I can see why this book is a forgotten Pulitzer Prize Winner. It just droned on and on. I mean how many pages does it take to describe farmland and a drought? Apparently 231 pages! 😁
May 12, 2025
“Something had hardened and dried up in me in those last few months. Something that had been hardening before, all through the rest of our pinched and scrawling life.�
You know about the drought of the 1930’s. Josephine Johnson knew too, having lived on her mother’s farm in Missouri, where she wrote this book, published when she was only 24, that won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
This is a sad and realistic account of the Haldmarne family who in hard times moved to a mortgaged farm in the hopes of somehow eking out a living. The father is desperate; the mother resolute, and a rock to her three daughters. “� and that she was there, believing and not shaken, or not seeming so at least, was all that we needed then to know.� Kerrin, Marget and Merle are sisters but each so unique: restless, quiet and tough in turn.
Marget is our narrator, and her story takes them from their arrival at the farm to the year of extreme drought ten years later. Parts are lovely, especially the way Marget and Merle find enjoyment in the simple pleasures of the seasons and nature around them. But the troubles build and the reader feels them: family clashes, distraught neighbors, never-ending toil. Still throughout, Marget is a young girl, with dreams of love.
This might be lacking in complexity and plot, but it makes up for it in poetic honesty. I was in awe of Johnson’s description of the drying up of the land, and the way it paralleled their personal tragedies. I found the last third of the novel riveting but also devastating. All I can say is sometimes pain can be beautiful, and this is a beautiful book.
“When everything was finally dead, I thought that relief from hope would come, but hope’s an obsession that never dies.�
You know about the drought of the 1930’s. Josephine Johnson knew too, having lived on her mother’s farm in Missouri, where she wrote this book, published when she was only 24, that won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
This is a sad and realistic account of the Haldmarne family who in hard times moved to a mortgaged farm in the hopes of somehow eking out a living. The father is desperate; the mother resolute, and a rock to her three daughters. “� and that she was there, believing and not shaken, or not seeming so at least, was all that we needed then to know.� Kerrin, Marget and Merle are sisters but each so unique: restless, quiet and tough in turn.
Marget is our narrator, and her story takes them from their arrival at the farm to the year of extreme drought ten years later. Parts are lovely, especially the way Marget and Merle find enjoyment in the simple pleasures of the seasons and nature around them. But the troubles build and the reader feels them: family clashes, distraught neighbors, never-ending toil. Still throughout, Marget is a young girl, with dreams of love.
This might be lacking in complexity and plot, but it makes up for it in poetic honesty. I was in awe of Johnson’s description of the drying up of the land, and the way it paralleled their personal tragedies. I found the last third of the novel riveting but also devastating. All I can say is sometimes pain can be beautiful, and this is a beautiful book.
“When everything was finally dead, I thought that relief from hope would come, but hope’s an obsession that never dies.�
March 6, 2014
Opening: Now in November I can see our years as a whole.This autumn is like both an end and a beginning to our lives, and those days which seemed confused with the blur of all things too near and too familiar are clear and strange now.
Well over expected enjoyment levels with this and I just so love pleasant surprises. Picked this up for the seasonal title, and as a hattip to US flisters celebrating their Turkey Day
What a shame this book has been smothered out of sight by The Grapes of Wrath; this is a fabulous telling of the US depression and dustbowl years, and came five years before Steinbeck's fantastic masterpiece.
Both books deserve to be read and loved.
4* Now in November
1* The Gates of November
3* Moominvalley in November
November by Flaubert was a self-inflicted disaster: I ordered the German Language translation DOH!
September 8, 2020
This is a wonderfully written story of the struggles of a small family farm told from the view point of the daughter shifting from childhood to adulthood. Set during the drought of the 1930s, this is a story of loss on many levels, loss of the crops and the family livelihood, of a young girl’s sense of security and hope, of any sense of agency or of an understanding of the forces that shape reality, of community disintegration and of death.
July 24, 2021
This 1935 Pulitzer winner is a fairly low-key examination of 10 or 11 years in the life of a rural family operating a small farm during the 1920s and 1930s, a time when the financial and weather-relation problems force difficult situations on the farm.
The story is narrated by the middle of three daughters of the farmer and his wife. The other important character is a 30ish hired hand who all three daughters have feelings for. Other characters include a more successful farmer and his family and a black farmer with a large family who struggles the most.
Not much of a story happens until the last quarter of the book. The emphasis before then is on the lyrical descriptive prose of the routine struggles of operating the farm. I appreciated the beauty of the writing early on but, as the book progressed to the middle, I found my interest in the story lagging. After this longer, low-key period, the story does culminate in several very dramatic events, though. The author may have been purposely lulling the reader into thinking nothing eventful would happen to strengthen the impact of these events.
Another positive is that the narrator is a sympathetic character who, as the middle child, is less dramatic but also less distinctive than her sisters. I did have some trouble visualizing the ages of the sisters. I think they started the story at ages 10, 14 and 15 with most of the story occurring in the last year. If they did grow into the approximate ages of 20, 24 and 25, I confess to not noticing the difference between the sisters as tweenage girls and young women in their twenties. Also, while some of the characterization was done well, I wish we had been given more insight into the why behind some of the odd actions of the troubled oldest sister.
Overall, I enjoyed the book but was not enamored with it. However, I can also see where some readers may fall in love with the poetic writing and the narrator. Historically, the book was of interest to me as it shows the struggles of a farm family as the Depression and Dust Bowl conditions occur in the early 1930s. Thankfully, it is not that political of a book, though the Introduction states that the author’s writing became more political, resulting in a lack of popularity. I would also note that there was some social commentary in a very interesting scene in the local church.
The story does not state a location for the farm, although the author was from Kirkwood and Webster Groves, Missouri, southwest suburbs of St. Louis. The lack of location specificity may have been an attempt to make the story more widely applicable.
For those reading Pulitzer winners, this is an easy and fairly short (202 pages) read. While I enjoyed it, at times the poetic writing had my mind wandering and failed to hold my interest. Overall, though, it was a satisfying read. I rate it as 3.5 stars rounded down to 3 stars.
The story is narrated by the middle of three daughters of the farmer and his wife. The other important character is a 30ish hired hand who all three daughters have feelings for. Other characters include a more successful farmer and his family and a black farmer with a large family who struggles the most.
Not much of a story happens until the last quarter of the book. The emphasis before then is on the lyrical descriptive prose of the routine struggles of operating the farm. I appreciated the beauty of the writing early on but, as the book progressed to the middle, I found my interest in the story lagging. After this longer, low-key period, the story does culminate in several very dramatic events, though. The author may have been purposely lulling the reader into thinking nothing eventful would happen to strengthen the impact of these events.
Another positive is that the narrator is a sympathetic character who, as the middle child, is less dramatic but also less distinctive than her sisters. I did have some trouble visualizing the ages of the sisters. I think they started the story at ages 10, 14 and 15 with most of the story occurring in the last year. If they did grow into the approximate ages of 20, 24 and 25, I confess to not noticing the difference between the sisters as tweenage girls and young women in their twenties. Also, while some of the characterization was done well, I wish we had been given more insight into the why behind some of the odd actions of the troubled oldest sister.
Overall, I enjoyed the book but was not enamored with it. However, I can also see where some readers may fall in love with the poetic writing and the narrator. Historically, the book was of interest to me as it shows the struggles of a farm family as the Depression and Dust Bowl conditions occur in the early 1930s. Thankfully, it is not that political of a book, though the Introduction states that the author’s writing became more political, resulting in a lack of popularity. I would also note that there was some social commentary in a very interesting scene in the local church.
The story does not state a location for the farm, although the author was from Kirkwood and Webster Groves, Missouri, southwest suburbs of St. Louis. The lack of location specificity may have been an attempt to make the story more widely applicable.
For those reading Pulitzer winners, this is an easy and fairly short (202 pages) read. While I enjoyed it, at times the poetic writing had my mind wandering and failed to hold my interest. Overall, though, it was a satisfying read. I rate it as 3.5 stars rounded down to 3 stars.
November 8, 2015
This novel is like a strange and beautiful mashup between Faulkner, Upton Sinclair and Willa Cather. (One of the characters is even named “Willa,�--probably a nod toward Cather who was clearly an influence on the author.) While the writing in Now in November isn’t nearly as strong as any of those great three, it’s still worth a read.
The Haldemarnes are a repressed and frightened family struggling desperately to hold on to their farm during a long drought in the middle of the Depression. Told from the perspective of Marget, the middle of three sisters, the story looks at what happens when six people—two of them deeply problematic—are faced with terrible hardship, loneliness and, in some cases, fatal bad luck.
Johnson does an especially good job describing women, often pairing them with something from the natural world. Here is Merle, Marget’s sister, making jam during the beginning of the drought.
This novel won a Pulitzer in 1935, when the author was only 24, and looking at its strengths, I can see why. In addition to great characters and poetic descriptions, there are subtle statements about politics, race, gender and people’s relationships with nature that no doubt caused a lot of discussion at the time.
So why only three stars? For starters, even though this book has sexual tension, unrequited love, mental illness, natural disaster and the threat of homelessness, it’s still surprisingly slow reading. There’s something about the cadence of the writing that makes it, not boring exactly, but lacking in urgency. The protagonist is so meditative and so detailed in her thinking that it slows down the pace.
Yet, don’t let that discourage you if you have even the slightest interest in reading this book! Marget and her sad family still feel alive and relevant 80 years later.
The Haldemarnes are a repressed and frightened family struggling desperately to hold on to their farm during a long drought in the middle of the Depression. Told from the perspective of Marget, the middle of three sisters, the story looks at what happens when six people—two of them deeply problematic—are faced with terrible hardship, loneliness and, in some cases, fatal bad luck.
Johnson does an especially good job describing women, often pairing them with something from the natural world. Here is Merle, Marget’s sister, making jam during the beginning of the drought.
“For Merle there was a sort of glory in all things, a haloed way of seeing them—I do not know how to tell it…in everything she saw or did. In the stoning of cherries and the acid stain in her skin, and the heat and confusion of their preserving…the stove raging and too hot to come near, and the steam from the boiling glasses, cherries dissolving into a rich syrup-redness. She stormed among the kettles, tasting and slopping--shouted Whoa! and Haw! to the cherries pouring over, dripped wax with one hand and stirred with the other, and sniffed at the strong smell of burned juice blackening where the stuff boiled over. I don’t know what it was—only health perhaps, too much to be contained inside and radiating out like her over-stoked ovens�.The smell of boiling cherries was sweet enough, with a good acid tang, but I kept thinking of how the sugar was getting down and wished that Merle would put less in and see if they’d keep that way. I wondered what good all the fruit was going to do us if we couldn’t pay for even the jar-rings soon.�
This novel won a Pulitzer in 1935, when the author was only 24, and looking at its strengths, I can see why. In addition to great characters and poetic descriptions, there are subtle statements about politics, race, gender and people’s relationships with nature that no doubt caused a lot of discussion at the time.
So why only three stars? For starters, even though this book has sexual tension, unrequited love, mental illness, natural disaster and the threat of homelessness, it’s still surprisingly slow reading. There’s something about the cadence of the writing that makes it, not boring exactly, but lacking in urgency. The protagonist is so meditative and so detailed in her thinking that it slows down the pace.
Yet, don’t let that discourage you if you have even the slightest interest in reading this book! Marget and her sad family still feel alive and relevant 80 years later.
April 22, 2020
The focus of this story is survival. Primarily a man against nature and with a bonus of man vs man story. We observe the challenges of the depression when a family's struggle leads the father of three daughters flees the city to a remote farming region in the mountains (we aren't sure where) to survive on the land. The land isn't very suitable and the weather is non-compliant. He is very traditional and though at times allows his daughters to assist him on 'manly tasks', he prefers to hire area males to assist them, though there is very little funds available.
The girls assist their mother taking care of the modest household, the oldest gets a job teaching local children, though her temperament is extremely unpredictable and frightening to those who are around her. The youngest daughter is has more or less made peace with their predicament. While the middle daughter, the narrator, is frustrated and seeking peace and consistency in her life.
The challenges they face seem to pile up on each other. The father hires a man to work for room and board. At first he falls for one sibling, then another. The narrator, who told us early on that she is plain, while her one sister is quite attractive and the other average, struggles to let go over her pain from loving from a far. She suspects this man knows her feelings but we aren't certain that he does since their dialogue never touches upon it. Further tragedy strikes leaving them with little hope for survival. This man leaves when he sees his love will not be fulfilled and the farm's prospects seem dismal.
The writing is profoundly good. The sentences are exact and you are seeing through the narrators words, and feel her emotions. The hopelessness of the situation is a character itself. The setting and atmosphere are so present, you can hear the critters in the night as the horses nay and the cows lowing murmurs into the otherwise still night. It is almost poetic. Their situation though dire is so realistic that instead of being to dreary to read, you feel as if a close friend is sharing their woes.
I almost didn't read it. I am so glad I did.
The girls assist their mother taking care of the modest household, the oldest gets a job teaching local children, though her temperament is extremely unpredictable and frightening to those who are around her. The youngest daughter is has more or less made peace with their predicament. While the middle daughter, the narrator, is frustrated and seeking peace and consistency in her life.
The challenges they face seem to pile up on each other. The father hires a man to work for room and board. At first he falls for one sibling, then another. The narrator, who told us early on that she is plain, while her one sister is quite attractive and the other average, struggles to let go over her pain from loving from a far. She suspects this man knows her feelings but we aren't certain that he does since their dialogue never touches upon it. Further tragedy strikes leaving them with little hope for survival. This man leaves when he sees his love will not be fulfilled and the farm's prospects seem dismal.
The writing is profoundly good. The sentences are exact and you are seeing through the narrators words, and feel her emotions. The hopelessness of the situation is a character itself. The setting and atmosphere are so present, you can hear the critters in the night as the horses nay and the cows lowing murmurs into the otherwise still night. It is almost poetic. Their situation though dire is so realistic that instead of being to dreary to read, you feel as if a close friend is sharing their woes.
I almost didn't read it. I am so glad I did.
November 17, 2012
Now in November was a fantastic read for me. This is coming from a to be 16 year old girl. I would have never read or even heard of this book if it wasn't for an English assignment I had to do on Pulitzer Prize winners.
I've never read a book like this before. I've always kept my range of books around the genre of fantasy. This was a truly breathtaking experience for me. There were several passages that I had to read over several times just to pick up all the information. Not in a bad way, of course, but because it was just too mind blowing. The beginning was slow, as most beginnings are.
I honestly have to say this is one of the best books I've read, ever. It's definitely in my top 5, and Josephine Johnson's words hit me in such a deep way that I became truly passionate for the novel. I have many quotes from the book pinned up in my room from when I did my assignment.
Reading the book was a journey. If you really read and feel the book, that is. I've lived through the year with the Haldmarne family. I suffered with them. I was given memories and an experience that weren't truly mine. I hope to read Now in November again very soon. I want to taste the experience once more, and hopefully get so much more out of my already great first time reading it.
I've never read a book like this before. I've always kept my range of books around the genre of fantasy. This was a truly breathtaking experience for me. There were several passages that I had to read over several times just to pick up all the information. Not in a bad way, of course, but because it was just too mind blowing. The beginning was slow, as most beginnings are.
I honestly have to say this is one of the best books I've read, ever. It's definitely in my top 5, and Josephine Johnson's words hit me in such a deep way that I became truly passionate for the novel. I have many quotes from the book pinned up in my room from when I did my assignment.
Reading the book was a journey. If you really read and feel the book, that is. I've lived through the year with the Haldmarne family. I suffered with them. I was given memories and an experience that weren't truly mine. I hope to read Now in November again very soon. I want to taste the experience once more, and hopefully get so much more out of my already great first time reading it.
December 13, 2023
Eine Sprache wie ein warmer Sommerregen, sie klingt in den Ohren wie ein leiser Wind, der rauscht.
Jedes Wort ist genau da angekommen, wo es immer sein sollte.
Jedes Wort ist genau da angekommen, wo es immer sein sollte.
February 13, 2022
Nature and Farming no great ebb and flow of the earth. They do not live a majestic life. Their days are spent overwhelmed by a great deal of little things. It stops them from living a fullfilled life. The days are never ending and a job is never completed while each day turns into a month and into a year dragging by. This life is snatching all that is good and necessary to make them feel like they are living. Nature gives them no hope but they must endure and so...they must hope. Beauty of nature and farming in all it's twisted forms, always mixed with what is sour or what is desert heat of the sun. There is no question of what the family needs to do, it is as plain as is the dried up and shriveled cornfields. They are not trapped in this world any more than any one else trying to make a living and home for their families. How much of what tragedy came to them is their own doing? Could they have done something different for a better outcome. The drought? Gods doing? World agianst them. Was it deliberate? Are they against themselves? Was the road taken with it banks too high just too much! My interputation of page 226.
The novel starts out 10 years after the farm is started by a family of five. No boys just 3 girls. The father works the farm with one single helper. The girls personalities are so different. Margaret and Merle help mother with the household chores. Kerrin the oldest is quite the girl, obnoxious and not a family team player to a mental mess. The Depression period is felt hard from the drought. Not being able to sell the only thing they really had to make money on...milk. Slopped to the pigs and given away until finally the buyers decided to pay a tad bit more. They sell the cows for $2 not a head the whole group! Loss from fire brings everything to ten fold within the months that follow.
Now in November won the Pulitzer Prize for a debut novel by Josephine W Johnson in 1935 at the age of 24. The descriptions are beautiful of the surrounding woods, flowers and birds.
"It was hot still, and ink-blotter clouds messed up the sky but brought no rain. The spring green was like green sunlight or green fire more lovely than just leaves-- and there were yellow clouds of sassafras along the pasture."
4 1/2 Stars!
The novel starts out 10 years after the farm is started by a family of five. No boys just 3 girls. The father works the farm with one single helper. The girls personalities are so different. Margaret and Merle help mother with the household chores. Kerrin the oldest is quite the girl, obnoxious and not a family team player to a mental mess. The Depression period is felt hard from the drought. Not being able to sell the only thing they really had to make money on...milk. Slopped to the pigs and given away until finally the buyers decided to pay a tad bit more. They sell the cows for $2 not a head the whole group! Loss from fire brings everything to ten fold within the months that follow.
Now in November won the Pulitzer Prize for a debut novel by Josephine W Johnson in 1935 at the age of 24. The descriptions are beautiful of the surrounding woods, flowers and birds.
"It was hot still, and ink-blotter clouds messed up the sky but brought no rain. The spring green was like green sunlight or green fire more lovely than just leaves-- and there were yellow clouds of sassafras along the pasture."
4 1/2 Stars!
October 8, 2022
"Estaba esa doble vida, dos planos de nuestra existencia que ni siquiera eran paralelos. Uno estaba formado por las cosas que hacíamos día a día, lo tangible, tiempos duros pero sólidos. Y luego estaba el caminar oculto por los límites de la oscuridad, el observar por las puertas negras...la respuesta no revelada que debe estar en alguna parte..."
Me entristece pensar en cuántos buenos libros caen en el olvido. Cuántas obras que podrían marcarnos son condenadas al ostracismo por no considerarse lo suficientemente atractivas para el mercado editorial. Por eso es de agradecer que se rescaten libros como Ahora en noviembre.
Un libro publicado en 1935 con reminiscencias de los clásicos victorianos pero que a su vez aborda tema de rabiosa actualidad. El cuidado y el respeto a la tierra. El asfixiante y a la vez aterrador paso del tiempo. El miedo hacia el comportamiento extraño, inexplicable de Kerrin, bajo el que se intuye subyace un problema de salud mental. Las mujeres en lo rural. El primer amor: la idealización de la persona amada, y el dolor por el rechazo de un amor no correspondido. Una familia que, en plena recesión estadounidense, intenta sacar adelante una pequeña granja hipotecada. Que lucha por sobrevivir.
Un canto a la naturaleza, que es a su vez vida y muerte, amor y horror. Con una prosa cuidada, sutil y sumamente bella, la voz de la protagonista nos mimetiza con los dorados maizales, el dulce olor de los manzanos y el rojo color de las fresas silvestres. También con el terror que provoca la sequía, el salvaje ardor del fuego que todo lo destruye. Porque lo que la tierra te da, también te lo quita. Es un libro muy lírico, evocador, que te acaricia mientras a la vez te empuja hacia la angustia y el desasosiego. Una auténtica maravilla que te cautivará tanto si eres aficionada a los clásicos como si no.
La autora de esta joya, Josephine Johnson, es a día de hoy la mujer más joven en ganar un premio Pulitzer. Ojalá ocupe el lugar que merece en el escenario literario español, porque los lectores nos merecemos que novelas así sean rescatadas del olvido.
Me entristece pensar en cuántos buenos libros caen en el olvido. Cuántas obras que podrían marcarnos son condenadas al ostracismo por no considerarse lo suficientemente atractivas para el mercado editorial. Por eso es de agradecer que se rescaten libros como Ahora en noviembre.
Un libro publicado en 1935 con reminiscencias de los clásicos victorianos pero que a su vez aborda tema de rabiosa actualidad. El cuidado y el respeto a la tierra. El asfixiante y a la vez aterrador paso del tiempo. El miedo hacia el comportamiento extraño, inexplicable de Kerrin, bajo el que se intuye subyace un problema de salud mental. Las mujeres en lo rural. El primer amor: la idealización de la persona amada, y el dolor por el rechazo de un amor no correspondido. Una familia que, en plena recesión estadounidense, intenta sacar adelante una pequeña granja hipotecada. Que lucha por sobrevivir.
Un canto a la naturaleza, que es a su vez vida y muerte, amor y horror. Con una prosa cuidada, sutil y sumamente bella, la voz de la protagonista nos mimetiza con los dorados maizales, el dulce olor de los manzanos y el rojo color de las fresas silvestres. También con el terror que provoca la sequía, el salvaje ardor del fuego que todo lo destruye. Porque lo que la tierra te da, también te lo quita. Es un libro muy lírico, evocador, que te acaricia mientras a la vez te empuja hacia la angustia y el desasosiego. Una auténtica maravilla que te cautivará tanto si eres aficionada a los clásicos como si no.
La autora de esta joya, Josephine Johnson, es a día de hoy la mujer más joven en ganar un premio Pulitzer. Ojalá ocupe el lugar que merece en el escenario literario español, porque los lectores nos merecemos que novelas así sean rescatadas del olvido.
December 12, 2011
Rating it 4 stars, but this could easily be 5 stars. Yes it is 5 stars, I'm going back and changing it.
This book starts easily enough, and continues so for at least one-third of the book. I kept thinking they must have been hard up for choices for the Pulitzer in 1935. It is told in the first person by the middle daughter, Marget Haldmarne.
Now in November I can see our years as a whole. ... It has been a long year, longer and more full of meaning than all those ten years that went before it.
One cannot help but appreciate the wonder of nature and yearn to live simply with it. Marget, with her younger sister Merle:
This book starts easily enough, and continues so for at least one-third of the book. I kept thinking they must have been hard up for choices for the Pulitzer in 1935. It is told in the first person by the middle daughter, Marget Haldmarne.
Now in November I can see our years as a whole. ... It has been a long year, longer and more full of meaning than all those ten years that went before it.
One cannot help but appreciate the wonder of nature and yearn to live simply with it. Marget, with her younger sister Merle:
We wanted to reach the woods and be hidden in it. Shut ourselves off in the sparse green shadows. The hollows were full of the wild thin pansies, blue as if frost or fog were laid there--acres, it seemed, and covering the ground thick as grass itself. We went up past the pond where already there were clusters of slimy eggs from the frogs and salamanders, transparent and round like a bunch of tapioca balls black-specked and stuck together.I was filled with a false sense of security and had no sense of foreboding. Sometimes I wonder at being so naive! I will not spoil it for you, but if you're intent on reading all Pulitzers, take the time to seek this one out. You won't be disappointed.
December 8, 2017
A SOLID piece of work- Heavy too though.
I loved the sincere and honest voice of the narrator just trying to make it through the (not so) good old days.
I loved the sincere and honest voice of the narrator just trying to make it through the (not so) good old days.
January 31, 2017
Tension pulled to the tautest line. Poignant and incredible experience of teenager angst and in some cases misery. But the drought escalates the entire to a pitch. It deserves 4 stars, but I can't round it up. It was not an easy book to read and the depth of the characterizations so profound that the reading, at times, became painful. I picked it up and down, changed books several times. This family held some 5 or 6 different brands of misery. And the language style was similar in that it wasn't a flow but a cracked or blackened clay.
Sad and miserable situations with the narrator having enough cognition about it, that that knowledge even made it worse somehow. Especially when the most normal in tone who she loved, left.
This is masterful for a dust bowl Nebraska experience. But I honestly did not enjoy reading it much because of the starkness of the hope. Terrible, terrible time.
Sad and miserable situations with the narrator having enough cognition about it, that that knowledge even made it worse somehow. Especially when the most normal in tone who she loved, left.
This is masterful for a dust bowl Nebraska experience. But I honestly did not enjoy reading it much because of the starkness of the hope. Terrible, terrible time.
November 15, 2021
Now in November is a debut story written by Josephine Winslow Johnson; it won the Pulitzer Prize. The book tells the story of 4 daughters who live on a farm with their parents. Heavily mortgaged, the Great Depression and Dust Bowl is causing the family to struggle to survive. Written with insight and compassion, and the descriptions of life during this time is so vivid that even very young readers will feel they better understand the hardships faced by so many people throughout the 1930s. I love that we are able to see and experience everything with the narrator who shares her fears, emotions, experiences and hopes.
This is a quiet, melancholy, and unhurried book. This is not a book that makes you guess at where it is going, and the pace is muted. It is a simple story about people, and lets the reader experience a way of life that we no longer know.
This is a quiet, melancholy, and unhurried book. This is not a book that makes you guess at where it is going, and the pace is muted. It is a simple story about people, and lets the reader experience a way of life that we no longer know.
August 29, 2022
AMAZING! This is such a great book. If I could buy 100 copies of this book and give them away to all of you, I would. It's a devastating story, but the writing is phenomenal. VIDEO REVIEW COMING SOON to my Booktube channel if you'd like to hear more of my thoughts.
July 30, 2022
I have often wondered if I could write fiction, would I be happier if I wrote what was considered to be one great novel or if I wrote a number of novels that were either considered to be good or were simply successful? Josephine Winslow Johnson didn't write just one novel, but her first novel, published at the age of 24, won the Pulitzer Prize. While she wrote three other novels and two short story collections, it is difficult to find much information on these works. She is really only known today for Now In November.
It is easier to answer my either/or questions when given a specific situation. If the either/or question presented to me centered around Now In November, I would have chosen to be the author of Now In November. Now In November tells the story of a farming family over a period of 10 years during the depression in the US. While Now In November may lack the grand scope of The Grapes of Wrath, it tells a story that is dark, sad and honest and every bit as poignant as The Grapes of Wrath. I happened, out of pure circumstance, to be reading this novel at the same time I was reading a book of non-fiction that covered the time of the Great Depression, and this novel truly made the whole time period come alive for me. It somehow seems wrong or unfair that a 24-year old can provide insights into her characters that are so thoughtful and though-provoking while at the same time feeling true to the characters and their situation. The 10-year period covered as well as the story's progression through a single growing season were very important structural components to creating the story's full impact.
"It’s a queer experience for a man to go through, to work years for security and peace, and then in a few months� time have it all dissolve into nothing; to feel the strange blankness and dark of being neither wanted nor necessary any more. Things had come slow to him and gone fast, and it made him suspicious even of the land."
I don't know if I will try anything else by Josephine Winslow Johnson, but I am very appreciative that I found Now In November.
It is easier to answer my either/or questions when given a specific situation. If the either/or question presented to me centered around Now In November, I would have chosen to be the author of Now In November. Now In November tells the story of a farming family over a period of 10 years during the depression in the US. While Now In November may lack the grand scope of The Grapes of Wrath, it tells a story that is dark, sad and honest and every bit as poignant as The Grapes of Wrath. I happened, out of pure circumstance, to be reading this novel at the same time I was reading a book of non-fiction that covered the time of the Great Depression, and this novel truly made the whole time period come alive for me. It somehow seems wrong or unfair that a 24-year old can provide insights into her characters that are so thoughtful and though-provoking while at the same time feeling true to the characters and their situation. The 10-year period covered as well as the story's progression through a single growing season were very important structural components to creating the story's full impact.
"It’s a queer experience for a man to go through, to work years for security and peace, and then in a few months� time have it all dissolve into nothing; to feel the strange blankness and dark of being neither wanted nor necessary any more. Things had come slow to him and gone fast, and it made him suspicious even of the land."
I don't know if I will try anything else by Josephine Winslow Johnson, but I am very appreciative that I found Now In November.
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