VARINA by Charles Frazier (2018) FICTION F Viewed superficially this historical novel is the recollected fictional biography of the First lady of the Confederate states of America told in a stream of consciousness style. That style blurs the distinction between fact and fiction for the reader and between facts and memory for the characters in the book. That ploy becomes even murkier when you discover that the first lady like many upper class women of that time freely indulged in drugs for both recreational and quasi medicinal purposes. It took me a while to get used to that style but I did come to appreciate if not like it. It just feels right in the context of the story; that is it seems like the languid pace of life people of means had in the antebellum south with their parties and social events with match making and jockeying for position. Did these people have any idea how the other half lived? Probably not, not until the war when it was thrust upon them. V though was a rarity in that world, smart savvy and well educated with a reading knowledge of Classical Greek. She understood the irony and hypocrisy of their pretensions and had empathy for the suffering of commoners and slaves. Her children were her children, black or white, adopted or not. In spite of her intellectual prowess and empathy she was still forced into the subservient role of women at that time and despite her lofty position in a gilded cage she was unable to do anything about the devastation and misery all around her. She was in effect a prisoner long before Union soldiers caught up with her and her caravan struggling to get to Cuba and she knew it the moment she married the much older Jeff. The portrait painted by the author of slave owning southerners is a very human one and an often sympatric one at that but perhaps not entirely accurate from a historic point of view. Frazer’s cold mountain has been referred to as his odyssey and Varina as his Iliad, a generalization which seems astute. Like Homer’s Iliad, Varina only coveys a small slice of the horrors of war as seen by a key figure in the war. Perhaps all the more shocking is the off handed way events are portrayed – the stench of Atlanta burning, the gangs of deserters and criminals pillaging the countryside, the disorientation of newly freed slaves still without a future or any hope of one – as if these horrors were so commonplace that there’s no need to give any more than a passing glimpse. Like Cold Mountain the characters in Varina are on the move in search of a home. Their movement is a basic support for the novel’s storyline but it also brings the characters in contact with others along the way, others whom no first lady or aristocrat would have had any contact with otherwise. And everyone they meet along the way of course has their own horror story to tell and those stories of war and suffering and loss are both particular and universal. To keep the book from being weighed down by its collective sorrows the author moves back and forth in time and place splitting up the war with scenes from her pre and post war life in London or Louisiana told to her adopted black son who as an adult was privy to her life story. The tone of the book was also lightened by the author’s character portrayals of Jeff and his relatives and others in the book. These portrayals were often both critical and sympathetic at the same time but they also seemed somewhat contemporary as well. Many people then as now were doubtless cynical and opportunistic but back then that was kept behind a vale of southern manners and civility which V didn’t seem observe and which she took as hypocrisy. Yet a great many people in both the north and the south believed that slavery was the natural god given order of things. V’s position in this and the war between the states is ambiguous throughout but that may be a device used by the author to keep the story from being polarized which is also a contemporary perspective given the controversy that surrounds the civil war even now. Reviewers all seem to agree that she was complacent in her role of first lady of the confederacy and that she went along with and supported the confederacy. The book portrays her as basically a political but women of that era lacked basic civil rights including the right to vote. Clearly a women’s place in the 19th century was in the home although upper class women had servants or slaves to do the house and farm work their main function was to give birth preferably to sons. V’s position of course placed her in the political spotlight without the freedom to take meaningful action hence the complacency which explains but not necessarily excuses it. Some 400 women fought in the civil war on both sides disguised as men because because women were forbidden by law to fight. Other women served as spies in both the north and south including one woman servant in Jefferson Davis’s confederate white house. Cleary though these examples are rare exceptions of women who fought directly or indirectly in the war. The vast majority of people men and women caught up in the conflict just wanted to survive. Frazier I think, attempts to use V’s story to illuminate the era and chose her because her life story while central to the war does not overshadow other people or events. My main criticism of the book therefore is that V maybe too slight and unexceptional a figure to carry an epic story like the Civil War and Reconstruction. For that reason the story seemed somewhat disjointed and fragmentary. Nevertheless I found it a worthwhile and enjoyable read. Matthew Day – Salter Book Group Coordinator