No memory of reading. ( )

I finally finished FOX'S EARTH by Anne Rivers Siddons (1981) and no, I haven't been reading it since that time. It has 546 pages in a small font, so it's not a book that you can just zip through. In it, the author tells the story of five generations of Georgia women, so I can't think of any way the size of the book could have been reduced and still tell the complete story. The first generation woman is dirt-poor and married to a man who has a streak of madness. She coaches her one beautiful and smart daughter on ways to escape the beatings and poverty, and the daughter, Ruth, learns her lessons well. Ruth is the central figure in the book, and having attained her primary goal, spends the remainder of her long life protecting her own interests and manipulating others.
There is naturally a lot of dialogue between the central characters and their black servants. This exceptional author reproduces the dialect beautifully, and it keeps the book sounding authentic. ( )

I think this is just about Siddons best! A real gothic novel. It would make a great movie! ( )

Siddon's southern sagas are often riddled with mental illness boiling just below the surface and this is no exception. We meet Ruth Yancy as a child, living in poverty and the daughter of a crazed street preacher and a mother who has, in her own mind, elevated herself far beyond her social status. Her mother's mantras of how to deal with men and a society that has suppressed her leave more than a lasting impression on this oldest daughter. When Ruth is brought to the southern estate Fox's Earth as a child to be "adopted" by the wealthy family who owns it, she quickly learns to manipulate those around her. Her madness makes her the matriarch of Fox's Earth at a young age and through deception linked with her madness, she changes the fates of all those around her. An engrossing read. ( )

For the most part, Siddons writes about an American south not populated by Black peop[e. This book is perhaps an attempt to address that, but it doesn't quite come off. ( )