The Optimist´s Daughter

At the time of her death, Eudora Welty of Mississippi was generally considered America´s greatest living author. Although Welty made her reputation with and is best remembered for her remarkable short stories, she also wrote a number of novels, including THE OPTIMIST´S DAUGHTER, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. THE OPTIMIST´S DAUGHTER provokes a very divided response in readers. This largely due to the nature of the work, which is character rather than plot driven, and which although quite short requires a slow reading in order to develop clearly in mind. Perhaps more so than in any other work, Welty writes "below the surface" here: the story itself, which concerns a daughter who returns to her tiny Mississippi home town when her respected father dies, is quite slight--but Welty endows it with a surprising depth of meaning, transforming what would otherwise be pure character study into a sharply focused and deeply moving statement on the nature of love, loss, life, and the passage of time we must all endure...