Four Spirits: A Novel

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		Four Spirits: A Novel
		Four Spirits: A Novel

基本信息·出版社：Harper Perennial
·页码：560 页
·出版日期：2004年09月
·ISBN：006093669X
·条形码：9780060936693
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
·丛书名：P.S.
·外文书名：四种精神(小说)

内容简介 在线阅读本书

From the acclaimed author of the national bestseller Ahab's Wife comes an inspiring, brilliantly rendered novel of the awakening conscience of the South and of an entire nation.

Twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student raised by her genteelaunts, is not prepared for the events of 1963 in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. At first, she keeps a safe distance, but the mounting tragedies send Stella reeling off her measured path. She plunges into the midst of the conflict, setting off a series of changes -- in herself, her relationships, and her future -- as dazzling and powerful as the civil rights movement itself.

This inspiring novel weaves together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression to create both an intimate and epic tapestry of American social transformation. Filled with the humanity that is the hallmark of Naslund's fiction, rich in historical detail and evocative in the way the best fiction should be, this novel goes beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph.

作者简介

Sena Jeter Naslund is Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, program director of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate. Recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award, she is editor of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press. She is the author of the novels Ahab's Wife, Four Spirits, and Sherlock in Love and a collection of stories, The Disobedience of Water. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

媒体推荐 From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-The author of Ahab's Wife (Morrow, 1999), a feminist corrective to Moby-Dick, has picked an equally ambitious subject for this novel: the racial injustice, hatred, and horror of Birmingham, AL, circa 1963. With a full cast of fictional characters, and a few historical figures (Police Commissioner Bull Connor, the Reverends Shuttlesworth, King, and Abernathy), Naslund weaves a busy but satisfying story of real and imagined events: lunch-counter sit-ins, fire-hosed demonstrators, police dogs at children's heels. The title refers to the spiritual presence (felt by several characters) of the four young girls who died in the horrendous bombing of their church. One matronly woman "sees" them as honeybees on roses, one bee to a rose. Because of this and other such contrivances, some readers might find the narrative strained, and the principal characters either too good or too horrible. For the most part, though, the author manages to keep this big story under control, in part by employing a measured narrative pace. There is plenty of value here for strong, informed teens. Undoubtedly, some readers will find the novel too slow, or too full of names and events, and thus confusing. But for those who can handle the mature themes, Four Spirits is an excellent history lesson, and a story not soon forgotten.
Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile
It is 1963, in Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes his now famous "Letter From the Birmingham Jail," Police Chief Bull Connor uses fire hoses and attack dogs on peaceful demonstrators, and four young girls are murdered when the Baptist church is bombed. Amid these real events, Isabel Keating brings Naslund's many fictional characters into vivid relief. Her Southern accents are never caricatures. Her authentic rendering of supremacists and integrationists, the blessed and the abused in this time of cultural upheaval, spotlights ordinary souls who must face their personal demons, their heritage of bigotry, and the moral complexities of a changing world. Naslund's compassion and understanding of the time, the people, and the events, combined with a sensitive reading by Keating, elevate Four Spirits into quality fiction. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist
In the highly acclaimed novel Ahab's Wife (1999), Naslund took a telling core sample of nineteenth-century American manners and customs by way of her own interpretation of the life of the wife of the captain of the Pequod. Now comes an equally dynamic and instructive novel, this time about southern American life in the early 1960s. The specific setting is Birmingham, Alabama, a locus of the civil rights struggle now erupting into flames. The author's note appended to the novel acknowledges Naslund's desire to limn the "acts of courage and tragedy" that marked daily life in Birmingham during these fractious but course-altering years; her method is to mix fictional characters with real ones to give alternating perspectives on the events that transpired. Gender, race, and racial attitudes span the spectrum as Naslund embeds personal stories--individuals' needs, goals, and frustrations--within the overall context of the country's changing climate. The ultimate effect is not a patchwork of tales but a smoothly flowing composite narrative of how life was led at the time and how it was irreparably altered. A vivid picture, rendered on a large but focused screen. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

编辑推荐 From Publishers Weekly
During the civil rights conflict, Birmingham, Ala., was notorious for the ferocity of its racial bigotry: peaceful demonstrators attacked with fire hoses and dogs by police chief Bull Connor; the Klan-set explosion at a black church that killed four little girls. The four victims are only background figures in Naslund's (Ahab's Wife) faithful and moving evocation of the city and the era, but they appear to several characters in the form of spirits who promise the reconciliation to come. The novel is constructed as a series of vignettes that follow a dozen or so characters whose lives finally intersect in entirely credible ways, and who serve as emblems of the divided citizens of Birmingham, some who bitterly fought integration and others who persevered in their struggle for equality. As such, it's a panorama of the social landscape of the Deep South during its violent crucible of change. Naslund, who grew up in Alabama, writes with a deep, instinctive compassion for the South's tragic heritage of racial hatred, and an understanding of the high toll paid by people committed to justice. She develops her plot in a leisurely fashion that initially may leave readers somewhat frustrated, but her method eventually pays off in stunning scenes, vivid with action, color and emotion, that recreate both the horror and the heroism. The characters pivot around Stella Silver, a white college student who is horrified by the glee in her community when JFK is assassinated, and who is moved to activism. In its authentic, balanced evocation of daily life across a wide spectrum of the black and white communities, this novel justifies its length and measured pace, and credibly renders the faith and courage that brought redemption to a blood-soaked city.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
During the civil rights conflict, Birmingham, Ala., was notorious for the ferocity of its racial bigotry: peaceful demonstrators attacked with fire hoses and dogs by police chief Bull Connor; the Klan-set explosion at a black church that killed four little girls. The four victims are only background figures in Naslund's (Ahab's Wife) faithful and moving evocation of the city and the era, but they appear to several characters in the form of spirits who promise the reconciliation to come. The novel is constructed as a series of vignettes that follow a dozen or so characters whose lives finally intersect in entirely credible ways, and who serve as emblems of the divided citizens of Birmingham, some who bitterly fought integration and others who persevered in their struggle for equality. As such, it's a panorama of the social landscape of the Deep South during its violent crucible of change. Naslund, who grew up in Alabama, writes with a deep, instinctive compassion for the South's tragic heritage of racial hatred, and an understanding of the high toll paid by people committed to justice. She develops her plot in a leisurely fashion that initially may leave readers somewhat frustrated, but her method eventually pays off in stunning scenes, vivid with action, color and emotion, that recreate both the horror and the heroism. The characters pivot around Stella Silver, a white college student who is horrified by the glee in her community when JFK is assassinated, and who is moved to activism. In its authentic, balanced evocation of daily life across a wide spectrum of the black and white communities, this novel justifies its length and measured pace, and credibly renders the faith and courage that brought redemption to a blood-soaked city.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-The author of Ahab's Wife (Morrow, 1999), a feminist corrective to Moby-Dick, has picked an equally ambitious subject for this novel: the racial injustice, hatred, and horror of Birmingham, AL, circa 1963. With a full cast of fictional characters, and a few historical figures (Police Commissioner Bull Connor, the Reverends Shuttlesworth, King, and Abernathy), Naslund weaves a busy but satisfying story of real and imagined events: lunch-counter sit-ins, fire-hosed demonstrators, police dogs at children's heels. The title refers to the spiritual presence (felt by several characters) of the four young girls who died in the horrendous bombing of their church. One matronly woman "sees" them as honeybees on roses, one bee to a rose. Because of this and other such contrivances, some readers might find the narrative strained, and the principal characters either too good or too horrible. For the most part, though, the author manages to keep this big story under control, in part by employing a measured narrative pace. There is plenty of value here for strong, informed teens. Undoubtedly, some readers will find the novel too slow, or too full of names and events, and thus confusing. But for those who can handle the mature themes, Four Spirits is an excellent history lesson, and a story not soon forgotten.
Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile
It is 1963, in Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes his now famous "Letter From the Birmingham Jail," Police Chief Bull Connor uses fire hoses and attack dogs on peaceful demonstrators, and four young girls are murdered when the Baptist church is bombed. Amid these real events, Isabel Keating brings Naslund's many fictional characters into vivid relief. Her Southern accents are never caricatures. Her authentic rendering of supremacists and integrationists, the blessed and the abused in this time of cultural upheaval, spotlights ordinary souls who must face their personal demons, their heritage of bigotry, and the moral complexities of a changing world. Naslund's compassion and understanding of the time, the people, and the events, combined with a sensitive reading by Keating, elevate Four Spirits into quality fiction. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist
In the highly acclaimed novel Ahab's Wife (1999), Naslund took a telling core sample of nineteenth-century American manners and customs by way of her own interpretation of the life of the wife of the captain of the Pequod. Now comes an equally dynamic and instructive novel, this time about southern American life in the early 1960s. The specific setting is Birmingham, Alabama, a locus of the civil rights struggle now erupting into flames. The author's note appended to the novel acknowledges Naslund's desire to limn the "acts of courage and tragedy" that marked daily life in Birmingham during these fractious but course-altering years; her method is to mix fictional characters with real ones to give alternating perspectives on the events that transpired. Gender, race, and racial attitudes span the spectrum as Naslund embeds personal stories--individuals' needs, goals, and frustrations--within the overall context of the country's changing climate. The ultimate effect is not a patchwork of tales but a smoothly flowing composite narrative of how life was led at the time and how it was irreparably altered. A vivid picture, rendered on a large but focused screen. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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