Miss Shelf
New Member
I'm from the 'old school' of fiction appreciators, by which I mean that I admire the way fiction used to be up until around the 1960's. Fiction up until the age of free love was just that-pure fiction, which means a story has a beginning, middle and end, and left the reader satisfied they'd read a good story. I've found it difficult in recent years to find a fiction book that had a minimum of what passes these days for drama or comedy. I am not a prude, but I don't appreciate fiction that includes a lot of unneccessary prurient content, much of which seems shoehorned in to the plot line to titillate readers and keep them reading, hoping for more.
Good, old-fashioned fiction manages to tell a compelling story without dwelling too much on what goes on behind the bedroom door, so to speak. It also doesn't go into gory detail of murders, child abuse, rapes, tortures and other social horrors that seem to be so much in the forefront of the news these days. I feel that fiction should be entertainment, not just convenient platforms for an author's social awareness. Yes, there is a place for fiction that raises the consciousness of the reader and hopefully helps make the world a better place-such as the works of James Baldwin- but for the most part, I read to escape the chaos of the modern world.
This is why I am fond of books like the "Miss Julia...." series by Ann B. Ross. Set in a small North Carolina town where everyone seems to know everyone else's business and gossip spreads faster than wildfire, the books focus on Miss Julia, a widow of indeterminate age. When most of us encounter the word "elderly", we get a picture in our heads of an old person, bent over a walker, dependent on an enormous amount of medication just to survive. Miss Julia is an elder person who is quite fit. In the first book, she received the shock of a lifetime-after decades of enjoying an elevated social status as the wife of a banker, and a wealthy, respected one at that, she finds that her late husband had had an affair with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, that produced a son named after his father. At first Miss Julia is horrified and is eager to keep the matter quiet to protect her social standing. But her husband's will provides for the boy, so she is forced to accept that her wealth is now decreased by a good half, although it's still plenty. In the face of public awareness of the news, she eventually makes friends with her husband's mistress, Hazel Marie, and grows fond of the boy, nicknamed Little Lloyd, and even invites them to live in her home, where she can supervise the boy's upbringing according to her idea of what's proper, while educating Hazel Marie on the finer points of dress and social graces. This all sounds drearily condescending, but the author has a fine hand and Miss Julia eventually comes down off her high horse, thwarted by the newcomers' refusal to conform to her standards. But everyone compromises and everyone benefits. The subsequent books put Miss Julia into situations she never thought she'd be in, her prim-and-properness are thrown by the wayside as she attempts to get herself out of scrapes, aided and abetted by Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd and her housekeeper, Lillian, who in the later books acquires a hilariously entertaining, talkative great-grandchild. In the midst of her travails, Miss Julia is also pursued by fortune hunters, chief of which is the money-hungry pastor of her church, always eager to hit her up for money for his grandiose ideas of expanding his church, using means that stop just short of blackmail. Also, she is courted by her husband's lawyer, Sam, who is wealthy in his own right and has admired Julia for years, and these attentions she fends off while being confused about her own feelings for him.
The books are rich in varied characters, and the adventures, while comic, are neither too tooth-achingly sweet nor too serious, striking just the right note. This is what I feel fiction ought to be--entertaining. I look forward to successive books with great relish.
Good, old-fashioned fiction manages to tell a compelling story without dwelling too much on what goes on behind the bedroom door, so to speak. It also doesn't go into gory detail of murders, child abuse, rapes, tortures and other social horrors that seem to be so much in the forefront of the news these days. I feel that fiction should be entertainment, not just convenient platforms for an author's social awareness. Yes, there is a place for fiction that raises the consciousness of the reader and hopefully helps make the world a better place-such as the works of James Baldwin- but for the most part, I read to escape the chaos of the modern world.
This is why I am fond of books like the "Miss Julia...." series by Ann B. Ross. Set in a small North Carolina town where everyone seems to know everyone else's business and gossip spreads faster than wildfire, the books focus on Miss Julia, a widow of indeterminate age. When most of us encounter the word "elderly", we get a picture in our heads of an old person, bent over a walker, dependent on an enormous amount of medication just to survive. Miss Julia is an elder person who is quite fit. In the first book, she received the shock of a lifetime-after decades of enjoying an elevated social status as the wife of a banker, and a wealthy, respected one at that, she finds that her late husband had had an affair with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, that produced a son named after his father. At first Miss Julia is horrified and is eager to keep the matter quiet to protect her social standing. But her husband's will provides for the boy, so she is forced to accept that her wealth is now decreased by a good half, although it's still plenty. In the face of public awareness of the news, she eventually makes friends with her husband's mistress, Hazel Marie, and grows fond of the boy, nicknamed Little Lloyd, and even invites them to live in her home, where she can supervise the boy's upbringing according to her idea of what's proper, while educating Hazel Marie on the finer points of dress and social graces. This all sounds drearily condescending, but the author has a fine hand and Miss Julia eventually comes down off her high horse, thwarted by the newcomers' refusal to conform to her standards. But everyone compromises and everyone benefits. The subsequent books put Miss Julia into situations she never thought she'd be in, her prim-and-properness are thrown by the wayside as she attempts to get herself out of scrapes, aided and abetted by Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd and her housekeeper, Lillian, who in the later books acquires a hilariously entertaining, talkative great-grandchild. In the midst of her travails, Miss Julia is also pursued by fortune hunters, chief of which is the money-hungry pastor of her church, always eager to hit her up for money for his grandiose ideas of expanding his church, using means that stop just short of blackmail. Also, she is courted by her husband's lawyer, Sam, who is wealthy in his own right and has admired Julia for years, and these attentions she fends off while being confused about her own feelings for him.
The books are rich in varied characters, and the adventures, while comic, are neither too tooth-achingly sweet nor too serious, striking just the right note. This is what I feel fiction ought to be--entertaining. I look forward to successive books with great relish.
