Now in November

By Josephine Johnson

Pulitzer Prize winning novel, 1935.

This is the story of a farm family, barely getting by, making just enough to meet their mortgage payments. Each year they hope maybe they will be able to get a little ahead but it never seems to happen. Then a drought strikes, lasting several years. Things go from bad to worse when the farm catches on fire. They are able to save the house and barn, but the mother is mortally injured.
The farm family consists of the father and mother, and three daughters. The father is angry, loud and stupid. The mother is quiet and loving and faithful. One daughter is stolid, one is quiet and one is unbalanced. The father hires a man to help out on the farm and the man falls for the stolid daughter who couldn't care less. The other two daughters fall for the hired man but he only has eyes for the stolid daughter. The hired man finally figures out the stolid one is never going to love him and he quits the farm. The unbalanced daughter kills herself. And the quiet one quietly suffers.

I didn't like this story. It was boring and depressing. I was glad when it came to its dull ending. Apparently it is designed to extoll the virtues of endurance; at the end the quiet daughter sums it all up, "And if this is only the consolation of a heart in its necessity, or that easy faith born of despair, it does not matter, since it gives us courage somehow to face the mornings." Eh. Do I really need a novel to tell me that life sucks? No.
After reading this dark and brooding story, do yourself a favor and read Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. It is a fun and light satire of just the sort of novel as Now in November.

Review by Rebecca Foster on Bookish Beck:   https://bookishbeck.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/now-in-november-by-josephine-johnson/.