The Grandmothers by Glenway Wescott

(Harper & Brothers, 1927)

 

A Family Portrait.  I had bought this book many years ago when I had first become interested in Glenway Wescott after reading Continual Lessons (his fascinating journals).   I've read The Pilgrim Hawk (of course) and Apartment in Athens, but for some reason never read this early book -- his first, I think, published in 1927 when Wescott as 26. [Note: Actually, it is his second novel, following The Apple of the Eye in 1924.] 

    The Grandmothers is a beautiful and moving tribute to Wescott's forebears, particularly his great grandparents, grandparents, parents, and great- aunts and uncles .  The family has been (paternally) renamed the Towers, and the book follows them through the last half of the 19th century, as they settle in the wilderness of Wisconsin.  Wescott writes movingly and perceptively about his assorted relatives, and his description of the Arcadian world around them is tender and beautiful.  The Grandmothers memorably recreates a way of life and a type of American that have both disappeared.