tritter72's Full Review: Laurie Graham - The Future Homemakers of America
The year is 1952, and we find a group of five American women living in Drampton, England. They are brought together by one main commonality: all are married to men in the Air Force. It is the friendships between these women that form the basis for the rest The Future Homemakers of America, written by Laurie Graham.
Peggy Dewey is the woman in the group who can always be counted on. Though she is stable and hard-working, Peggy is not quite satisfied with the life she is leading. She feels frustrated that she isn't able to begin any kind of career, knowing that she'll be moving when her husband's next orders come.
Lois Moon is the party-girl. Always looking for fun and adventure, Lois talks before she thinks and has a bit of an acid tongue.
Gayle Jackson is a bit younger than her four friends, and she is looking forward to starting a family. She is known to have a bit of a drinking problem.
Betty Gillis is the character to whom the title of the book most refers. She was the president of her high school's Future Homemakers of America group and seems completely content in her lifestyle. Despite suffering both physical and mental abuse, Betty claims to love keeping the family going.
Audrey Rudman is a woman with a plan. Knowing that starting a career for herself isn't a possibility with a husband in the Air Force, she sets about making sure that his career goes as far as possible. Audrey stands firmly on the ground of politeness and social expectation.
The five American women meet a sixth woman, Kath Pharoah, who becomes the only Englishwoman in their group. Kath has been struggling to survive through her circumstances in post-World War II England but delights in being hospitable to her new American friends.
Brought together more by circumstance than by affection, the six women are a support system for each other while they live their lives on foreign soil. Their lives and personalities are not always compatible, but they realize how important it is to have a family away from home.
It isn't long before our six women are split apart by circumstances from pregnancy to differing sets of Air Force orders. It is through Peggy, who tells the story as first-person narrator, that we keep track of the lives of the other women through the decades (from the 1950s through the 1980s). As the years bring triumph and heartbreak to each of the women, Peggy is the glue within the group. She's the one who writes the letters and makes the phone calls that keep everyone in touch. We're along for the ride as we witness the years flying by.
Graham includes a number of actual recipes in the book, meant to give us some insight into the characters from whom she got them. While thinking about those recipes, I was struck by something. Any 1950s homemaker worth her salt would know that there are certain key elements to recipes, ingredients that just can't be omitted. No substitutions will do it. Maybe the same can be said of writing fiction. Sadly, Graham has made a few substitutions and omissions that just didn't work for me.
Unfortunately, one of the first impressions I had of this book was negative and concerned the use of dialect. Graham chose to use what she must consider to be a "Texas accent" for Peggy. Rather than getting any genuine feel for the dialect, however, Graham has simply used poor grammar throughout the book and tried to pass that off as the way Texans speak. As an example of how poorly she pulls off the accent, Peggy's dialogue is practically indistinguishable from both her husband's (who is from Maine) and Lois's (who is from NYC). I would rather she didn't use any dialect at all as it was a continuous distraction.
The characters in the book had the potential to be interesting, but there was really very little character development. I felt like I was reading about a few general stereotypes, rather than fleshed-out characters. Perhaps she initially went for the stereotypes in order to relate to the 50s, but after Graham send the six women on their separate ways we never see them mature. We know only what Peggy learns from phone calls, visits, or letters. Peggy was most developed and was therefore the one I ended up caring for most. As I learned about the experiences her friends had over the years, I was detached from most of it and felt as if I was looking at a scrapbook full of pictures of people I didn't know. It's interesting to hear their stories, perhaps, but it's not something that affects you or sticks with you. I just needed more from them.
At different points in the book, one character after another makes derogatory remarks about just about every minority group you can think of. Though I honestly think the author meant these comments to be "signs of the times," they didn't lend anything at all to the story, and they were in many cases irrelevant to the plot. I wasn't sure exactly what commentary Graham was trying to make, if any, because none of it was ever addressed. Instead of teaching me about the times, the remarks just left an ugly jingle in my ears.
Perhaps what let me down the most was the fact that this book had the potential to really show the changes that women of the 50s had to learn to accept. The lives of women in this generation changed dramatically, yet we never went deep enough into any of the characters to feel the shifting within them. Graham chose to sprinkle the book with historical events from the death of King Edward VI to the Civil Rights movement to Peggy's daughter's involvement in the hippie movement, yet those things were like paintings on the wall. Though we were supposed to think they made a difference to these women, that was never clearly illustrated. I almost felt like their inclusion was disingenuous.
Major issues like alcoholism and abuse were brushed over lightly, as if their consequences really weren't that dire. Though the issues were central to the characters to whom they applied, I was never able to really feel any of their pain or enjoy any of their victories.
The Future Homemakers of America is benign enough, and maybe that was my problem with it. I don't mind reading fluff now and then, but this book could have been so much more. Where it could have had a lasting impact on me, it really only kept me mildly entertained. I came out of it as if I had just seen your average television miniseries. It won't be the worst thing you ever read, but it had so much potential...
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