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Penhally

Caroline Gordon

出版	Cooper Square Publishers, 1971
主題	Fiction / General
ISBN	081540395X9780815403951
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=ejogAQAAIAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋

This narrative of a landed Kentucky family, traced over four generations, shows the decline of its patriarchal order, overwhelmed in the twentieth century by an irresponsible individualism. Penhally is the family home of the Llewellyn family in Kentucky (near the Tennessee border), where Gordon is from. The book follows the fortunes of family from 1826 up to the time when Gordon wrote the book (i.e. a hundred years later). Though a story of a family it is also, in many respects, the story of the South. The story starts with Nicholas Llewellyn deciding not to divide his inheritance of the Penhally property with his half-brother, Ralph, leading to a family split (the two brothers never speak to one another again). His reason is that he wishes to maintain the grandeur of this branch of the family (the rest of the family is in Virginia). Neither Nicholas nor his successors feel fully in control of Penhally, as it is entailed down the generations. Nor are they in control of their lives, as they are dominated firstly by the house, then love and then outside events (initially the Civil War, then events in the South after the Civil War, such as emancipation) and finally personal failure (fratricide and wanton spending). The fratricide is only the final nail in the coffin, after the house has passed out of the family.