The Golden Apples

(Paperback)

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Description

Welty's incisive, deeply evocative tales capture the sultry, close atmosphere of small-town life in the American Deep South First published in 1949, THE GOLDEN APPLES is an acutely observed, richly atmospheric portrayal of small town life in Morgana, Mississippi. There's Snowdie, who has to bring up her twin boys alone after her husband, King Maclain, disappears one day, discarding his hat on the banks of the Big Black. There's Loch Morrison, convalescing with malaria, who watches from his bedroom window as wayward Virgie Rainey meets a sailor in the vacant house opposite. Meanwhile, Miss Eckhart the piano teacher, grieving the loss of her most promising pupil, tries her hand at arson. Eudora Welty has a fine ear for dialogue and describes each of the characters in incisive, haunting prose. '...in the South,' she says, 'everybody stays busy talking all the time - they're not sorry for you to overhear their tales'. Welty deftly picks up their stories to create an unflinching potrait of everyday life in the American South and offers a deeply moving look at human nature.

Reviews

A great and generous achievement -- Jonathan Raban
I doubt that a better book about 'the South' - one that more completely gets the feel of the particular texture of Southern life and its special tone and pattern - has ever been written * New Yorker *
A hauntingly beautiful work...This excellent new edition is prefaced with an essay by Paul Binding which sheds light on the mythic structures that underpin the tales * The Independent, Paperbacks of the Year *

Author Bio

Eudora Alice Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University. She set most of her short stories and novels in the American South, where she was raised, exquisitely capturing the quotidien life of people from all social classes . A photographer as well, Welty's photographs from the Great Depression formed the basis for several of her short stories. Amongst her many awards, Welty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her novel The Optimist's Daughter and in 1996 received the French Legion d'Honneur. By the time of her death, at the age of 92, Welty had established herself as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.