Varina - Charles Frazier

Written by Charles Frazier
Read by Molly Parker
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperAudio
Release date: April 3, 2018
Duration: 12:07:37

In his powerful fourth novel, Charles Frazier returns to the time and place of Cold Mountain, vividly bringing to life the chaos and devastation of the Civil War.

Intimate in its detailed observations of one woman’s tragic life and epic in its scope and power, Varina is a novel of an American war and its aftermath. Ultimately, the audiobook is a portrait of a woman who comes to realize that complicity carries consequences.

Varina Howell Davis (1826–1906), wife and widow of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, is an inspired choice as heroine for Frazier’s riveting fourth novel (following Nightwoods). “Being on the wrong side of history carries consequences,” he writes, and the events of Varina’s life propel a suspenseful narrative. A quotation from her letters, “my name is a heritage of woe,” is an apt description of the life depicted: Varina, called “V” throughout, is married at 18 to the much older Davis; becomes the mother of six children, only one of whom survives her; flees the collapse of the South as a desperate fugitive with a bounty on her head; and, later, is forced to earn a penurious living as a journalist.

She is a flawed but fascinating woman—educated beyond the interests of most southern belles of her time, she is an avid reader of classical literature, fluent in Greek, and possesses a quick intelligence. Frazier alternates V’s chapters with those of James Blake, an orphaned black boy rescued from the streets of Richmond and raised with V’s brood. Frazier’s interjection of historical detail is richly informative, and his descriptions of the natural world of the South are lyrical. While V’s emotional reserve and stoic narration keep her from becoming a fully vibrant character, this is a sharp, evocative novel.

In a soft Southern accent, Molly Parker narrates Frazier’s recent novel about the life and times of Varina, wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Varina describes her life and times in a nonlinear manner, from the 1840s through the early 1900s, through flashbacks and memories. The dialogue flows into the narrative without shifts in tone or accent, making it difficult to differentiate between the two. Shunning false drama, Parker’s narration drifts along the days, months, and years of Varina’s life on the plantation until her harrowing escape to Florida after the war and then her new life in New York City. Varina’s high-strung temperament is cushioned by regular indulgence in laudanum, capably captured in Parker’s cadence. M.B.K. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine