CANR

PERSONAL

Born June 18, 1937, in Birmingham, AL; daughter of Mose Winston and Kathleen Krahenbuhl Godwin; married Douglas Kennedy (a photographer), 1960 (divorced, 1961); married Ian Marshall (a psychiatrist), 1965 (divorced, 1966); partner of Robert Starer (died, 2001).

Attended Peace Junior College, 1955-57; University of North Carolina, B.A., 1959; University of Iowa, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1971.

ADDRESS

• Home - Woodstock, NY.
• Agent - John Hawkins, Paul R. Reynolds, Inc., 71 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER

Journalist, writing instructor, and writer. Miami Herald, Miami, FL, reporter, 1959-60; U.S. Embassy, London, England, travel consultant in U.S. Travel Service, 1962-65; Saturday Evening Post, editorial assistant, 1966; University of Iowa, Iowa City, instructor in English literature, 1967-71, instructor in Writer’s Workshop, 1972-73; University of Illinois, Center for Advanced Studies, Urbana-Champaign, fellow, 1971-72; freelance writer. Special lecturer in Brazil for United States Information Service, State Department Cultural Program, spring, 1976; lecturer in English and creative writing at colleges and universities, including Vassar College, 1975, and Columbia University, 1978, 1981.

Authors Guild, Authors League of America, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

National Endowment for the Arts grant in creative writing, 1974-75; National Book Award three-time nominee; Guggenheim fellowship in creative writing, 1975-76; National Endowment for the Arts grant for librettists, 1977-78; American Book Awards nomination, 1980, for Violet Clay, and 1982, for A Mother and Two Daughters; Award in Literature, American Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters, 1981; Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award, Lipinsky Endowment of Western North Carolina Historical Association, 1988; Janet Kafka Award, University of Rochester, 1988. Honorary doctorates from University of North Carolina, 1987, University of the South, Sewanee, 1994, and State University of New York, 1996.

WRITINGS

• NOVELS
• The Perfectionists, Harper (New York, NY), 1970
• Glass People, Knopf (New York, NY), 1972
• The Odd Woman, Knopf (New York, NY), 1974
• Violet Clay, Knopf (New York, NY), 1978
• A Mother and Two Daughters, Viking (New York, NY), 1982
• The Finishing School, Viking (New York, NY), 1985
• A Southern Family, Morrow (New York, NY), 1987
• Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991
• The Good Husband, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1994
• Evensong, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1999
• Evenings at Five, illustrated by Frances Halsband, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2003
• Queen of the Underworld, Random House (New York, NY), 2006
• Unfinished Desires, Random House (New York, NY), 2009
• Flora, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2013
• Grief Cottage, Bloomsbury USA (New York, NY), 2017
• Old Lovegood Girls, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2020
• OTHER
• Dream Children (short stories), Knopf (New York, NY), , reprinted, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1976
• Mr. Bedford and the Muses (a novella and short stories), Viking (New York, NY), 1983
• (Editor, with Shannon Ravenel) The Best American Short Stories, 1985, Houghton Mifflin (New York, NY), 1985
• Heart: A Personal Journey through Its Myths and Meanings (nonfiction), Morrow (New York, NY), 2001
• The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963, edited by Rob Neufeld, Random House (New York, NY), 2006
• Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir, illustrated by Frances Halsband, Bloomsbury USA (New York, NY), 2015
• Getting to Know Death: A Meditation, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2024

Author of introduction for Pushcart Prize VIII: Best of the Small Presses, 1983-84, edited by Bill Henderson, Pushcart Press, 1983; and Woodstock Landscapes: Photographs, by John Kleinhans, Golden Notebook Press (Woodstock, NY)/Precipice Publications (West Hurley, NY), 2000. Contributor to books, including The Writer on Her Work (essays), edited by Janet Sternburg, Norton (New York, NY), 1980; and Real Life (short stories), Doubleday, 1981. Also contributor of essays and short stories to periodicals, including Atlantic, Antaeus, Ms., Harper’s, Writer, McCall’s, Cosmopolitan, North American Review, Paris Review, and Esquire. Reviewer for North American Review, New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune Books, and New Republic. Member of editorial board, Writer.

SIDELIGHTS

“More than any other contemporary writer, Gail Godwin reminds me of nineteenth century pleasures, civilized, passionate about ideas, ironic about passions,” reflected Carol Sternhell in a Village Voice review of The Finishing School. “Her characters—sensible, intelligent women all—have houses, histories, ghosts; they comfortably inhabit worlds both real and literary, equally at home in North Carolina, Greenwich Village and the England of Middlemarch.” Yet Godwin, a best-selling novelist who has been nominated for the American Book Award, creates protagonists who are modern women, often creative and frequently southern. And like many other writers of her era, she tends to focus “sharply on the relationships of men and women who find their roles no longer clearly delineated by tradition and their freedom yet strange and not entirely comfortable,” as Carl Solana Weeks wrote in Dictionary of Literary Biography. “Godwin’s great topic,” noted Lee Smith, reviewing Father Melancholy’s Daughter in the Los Angeles Times, “is woman’s search for identity: A death in the family frequently precipitates this search. The tension between art and real life (many of her women are artists or would-be artists) is another thematic constant in her work. Her literate, smart women characters possess the free will to make choices, to take responsibility for their lives.”

Literature has figured in Godwin’s life from an early age. She grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, in the shadow of another writer, Thomas Wolfe. During World War II her mother was a reporter, and Godwin recalled in an essay in The Writer on Her Work, edited by Janet Sternburg, that “whenever Mrs. Wolfe called up the paper to announce, ‘I have just remembered something else about Tom,’” her mother “was sent off immediately to the dead novelist’s home on Spruce Street.” Godwin’s parents were divorced, and while Godwin was growing up, her mother taught writing and wrote love stories on the weekend to support her daughter, while Godwin’s grandmother ran the house. Although her mother never sold any of her novels, Godwin wrote in the essay, “already, at five, I had allied myself with the typewriter rather than the stove. The person at the stove usually had the thankless task of fueling. Whereas, if you were faithful to your vision at the typewriter, by lunchtime you could make two more characters happy—even if you weren’t so happy yourself. What is more, if you retyped your story neatly in the afternoon and sent it off in a manila envelope to New York, you’d get a check back for one hundred dollars within two or three weeks (300 words to the page, sixteen to seventeen pages, two cents a word: in 1942, one hundred dollars went a long way).” Godwin once told CA that her mother was her first teacher, saying, “She was doing things with her mind, using her imagination and making something out of nothing, really. I remember when she would read to me at night. My favorite book that she read was a little empty address book—it had a picture of some faraway place on the front—and she would read stories out of this blank book. It was just fascinating.”

Not that her grandmother was dispensable. Godwin explained in The Writer on Her Work: “In our manless little family, she also played the mother and could be counted on to cook, sew on buttons, polish the piano, and give encouragement to creative endeavors. She was my mother’s first reader, while the stories were still in their morning draft; ‘It moves a little slowly here,’ she’d say, or ‘I didn’t understand why the girl did this.’ And the tempo would be stepped up, the heroine’s ambiguous action sharpened in the afternoon draft; for if my grandmother didn’t follow tempo and motive, how would all those other women who would buy the magazines?”

Godwin did not meet her father until he showed up many years later at her high school graduation when, as she recalled in her essay, he introduced himself and she flung herself, “weeping,” into his arms. He invited her to come and live with him, which she did, briefly, before he shot and killed himself like the lovable ne’er-do-well Uncle Ambrose in Violet Clay.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Godwin was hired as a reporter for the Miami Herald and was reluctantly fired a year later by a bureau chief who felt he had failed to make a good reporter out of her. She married her first husband, newspaper photographer Douglas Kennedy, around that time. After her divorce, she completed her first novel, the unpublished Gull Key, the story of “a young wife left alone all day on a Florida island while her husband slogs away at his job on the mainland,” according to Godwin in The Writer on Her Work. (She worked on the book during her slow hours at the U.S. Travel Service in London.) Having submitted the manuscript to several English publishers without good results, she related that she even sent a copy to a fly-by-night agency that advertised in a magazine: “WANTED: UNPUBLISHED NOVELS IN WHICH WOMEN’S PROBLEMS AND LOVE INTERESTS ARE PREDOMINANT. ATTRACTIVE TERMS.” She was never able to track down the agency or anyone associated with it.

Not satisfied with her work at the time, Godwin found it helpful to focus on characters and themes outside of herself. She got the idea for one of her most highly regarded short stories, “An Intermediate Stop” (now included in her collection Dream Children), in a writing class at the London City Literary Institute after the teacher instructed the students to write a 450-word story beginning with the sentence “‘Run away,’ he muttered to himself, sitting up and biting his nails.” Godwin wrote in The Writer on Her Work that “when that must be your first sentence, it sort of excludes a story about a woman in her late twenties, adrift among the options of wifehood, career, vocation, a story that I had begun too many times already—both in fiction and reality—and could not resolve. My teacher wisely understood Gide’s maxim for himself as writer: ‘The best means of learning to know oneself is seeking to understand others.’”

Godwin described “An Intermediate Stop” as a story “about an English vicar who has seen God, who writes a small book about his experience, and becomes famous. He gets caught up in the international lecture-tour circuit. My story shows him winding up his exhausting American tour at a small Episcopal college for women in the South. He is at his lowest point, having parroted back his own written words until he has lost touch with their meaning.” New York Times Book Review critic Anatole Broyard indicated that here, “another kind of epiphany—in the form of a [young woman]—restores his faith. The brilliance with which this girl is evoked reminds us that love and religion both partake of the numinous.” A draft of the story also got the author accepted into the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

The Perfectionists

Godwin’s novel The Perfectionists, a draft of which was her Ph.D. thesis at Iowa, was published in 1970. It relates the story of the disintegrating “perfect” marriage of a psychiatrist and his wife while they are vacationing in Majorca with the man’s son. Robert Scholes wrote in the Saturday Review that “the eerie tension that marks this complex relationship is the great achievement of the novel. It is an extraordinary accomplishment, which is bound to attract and hold many readers.”

Scholes described the book as “too good, too clever, and too finished a product to be patronized as a ‘first novel.’” Joyce Carol Oates, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called it “a most intelligent and engrossing novel” and “the paranoid tragedy of our contemporary worship of self-consciousness, of constant analysis.”

Glass People

In Godwin’s Glass People, Francesca Bolt, a pampered and adored wife in a flawless but sterile marital environment, leaves her husband in a brief bid for freedom. This book, too, was praised as “a formally executed, precise, and altogether professional short novel” by Oates in the Washington Post Book World. Weeks, however, felt that in Glass People, Godwin is exploring “a theme introduced in The Perfectionists, that of a resolution of woman’s dilemma through complete self-abnegation; but the author, already suspicious of this alternative in her first novel, presents it here as neither fully convincing nor ironic.”

A critic asked in the New York Times Book Review: “Are we really to root for blank-minded Francesca to break free, when her author has promised us throughout that she’s totally incapable of doing so?” Genevieve Stuttaford, though, argued in the Saturday Review that “the characters in Glass People are meticulously drawn and effectively realized, the facets of their personalities subtly, yet precisely, laid bare. The author is coolly neutral, and she makes no judgments. This is the way it is, Godwin is saying, and you must decide who the villains are.”

The Odd Woman

“Marking a major advance in Godwin’s development as a novelist,” wrote Weeks in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, “her third book, The Odd Woman, is twice as long as either of her previous novels, not from extension of plot but from a wealth of incidents told in flashback and in fantasy and a more thorough realization of present action.” The odd woman of the book—“odd” in this case meaning not paired with another person—is Jane Clifford, a thirty-two-year-old teacher of Romantic and Victorian literature at a midwestern college, who is engaged in a sporadic love affair with an art historian who teaches at another school. For Jane, Susan E. Lorsch pointed out in Critique, “the worlds of fiction and the ‘real’ world are one.” Not only does Jane experience “literary worlds as real,” continued Lorsch, “she treats the actual world as if it were an aesthetic creation.” Lorsch further noted that “the entire book moves toward the climax and the completion of Jane’s perception that the worlds of life and art are far from identical.”

The Odd Woman ‘s major theme, Anne Z. Mickelson stated in her book Reaching Out: Sensitivity and Order in Recent American Fiction by Women, is “how to achieve freedom while in union with another person, and impose one’s own order on life so as to find self-fulfillment.” Because literature is explored in the novel as one means of giving shape to life, the book is generally regarded as cerebral and allusive. In the Times Literary Supplement, critic Victoria Glendinning said the book is “too closely or specifically tied to its culture” to be considered universal. New York Times Book Review writer Lore Dickstein, however, called the novel “a pleasure to read. Godwin’s prose is elegant, full of nuance and feeling, and sparkling with ironic humor.”

Violet Clay

Violet Clay, Weeks commented, confirms Godwin’s “mastery of the full, free narrative technique of The Odd Woman —the integration of fantasy and flashback into the narrative line—while also recalling the clean, classic structure of her two earlier novels.” Weeks continued: “In Violet Clay Godwin raises a question that is central to understanding her work as a whole: what is the relationship between the artist and her art? The answer implied in Violet Clay’s achievement as a painter reflects directly Godwin’s ideals as a writer.”

The title character of the novel, Violet Clay, leaves the South for New York at age twenty-four to become an artist, but “nine years later,” John Leonard explained in the New York Times, “all that she paints are covers on Gothic romances for a paperback publishing house.” Violet finally loses her job at Harrow House because the new art director wants to use photographs of terrorized women on the jackets of the romances rather than the idealized paintings Violet creates. When Violet finds out that her only living relative, Uncle Ambrose, a failed writer, has shot himself, she journeys to the Plommet Falls, New York, cabin in which he died to claim his body and bury him. Then, in Washington Post Book World critic Susan Shreve’s words, “she decides to stay on and face the demons with her paint and brush.”

Violet Clay reflects “the old-fashioned assumption that character develops and is good for something besides the daily recital to one’s analyst,” pointed out a Harper’s critic. In Leonard’s opinion, however, Violet Clay is “too intelligent for its own good. It is overgrown with ideas. You can’t see the feelings for the ideas.” Katha Pollitt commented in the New York Times Book Review that Violet Clay “has the pep-talk quality of so many recent novels in which the heroine strides off the last page, her own woman at last.” Sternhell argued, though, that Godwin’s novels “are not about book-ness, not about the idea of literature, but about human beings who take ideas seriously. Clever abstracts are not her medium: her ‘vital artistic subject,’ like Violet Clay’s is, will always be the ‘living human figure.’”

A Mother and Two Daughters

Godwin’s next novel, A Mother and Two Daughters, is a comedy of manners that portrays women who “are able to achieve a kind of balance, to find ways of fully becoming themselves that don’t necessitate a rejection of everything in their heritage,” as Susan Wood related in the Washington Post Book World. Set against a current-events background of the Iranian revolution, Three Mile Island, and Skylab, the novel opens in the changing town of Mountain City, North Carolina (a fictional city), with the death of Leonard Strickland of a heart attack as he is driving home with his wife from a party. The book records “the reactions and relationships of his wife Nell and daughters Cate and Lydia, both in their late thirties, as the bereavement forces each of them to evaluate the achievement and purpose of their own lives,” Jennifer Uglow explained in the Times Literary Supplement. Josephine Hendin wrote in the New York Times Book Review: “As each woman exerts her claims on the others, as each confronts the envy and anger the others can inspire, Gail Godwin orchestrates their entanglements with great skill.” And “for the first time,” according to John F. Baker in Publishers Weekly, “Godwin enters several very different minds and personalities, those of her three protagonists.”

Godwin once told Baker that she thinks of A Mother and Two Daughters as “a broadening of my canvas,” remarking: “It most surprised me that I could get into the head of an elderly woman, but in fact it was easy. Nell’s state of calm acceptance, her ability to sense the stillness at the center of things, is what I most aspire to.” Nell, Lisa Schwarzbaum commented in the Detroit News, “raised to be a gracious gentlewoman—albeit sharper, more direct, less genteel, more ‘North-thinking’ than the other good ladies of Mountain City, N.C.—faces her future without the philosophical, steadying man on whom she had relied so thoroughly for support and definition.” Here, according to Anne Tyler in the New Republic, Godwin provides the reader with a “meticulous” documentation of small-town life with its “rituals of Christmas party and book club meeting.”

Not content to focus only on the three main characters, though, Godwin portrays “one great enormous pot of people,” declared Caroline Moorhead in the Spectator, a whole “series of characters in all their intertwined relationships with each other, each other’s lovers, children, parents, acquaintances.” According to Uglow, the cast of A Mother and Two Daughters includes “a Southern grande dame with a pregnant teenage protégé; a pesticide baron with two sons, one retarded, the other gay; a hillbilly relative whose nose was bitten off in a brawl; [and] a one-legged Vietnam veteran whose wife runs a local nursery school.” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said in the New York Times that these characters are amazingly vivid, citing “the sense one gets that their lives are actually unfolding in the same world as yours.” Tyler indicated that “there’s an observant, amused, but kindly eye at work here, and not a single cheap shot is taken at these people who might so easily have been caricatures in someone else’s hands.”

A Mother and Two Daughters is “the richest, and most universal” of Godwin’s books, “with a wholeness about its encompassing view of a large Southern family,” according to Louise Sweeney in the Christian Science Monitor, and it is widely regarded as an unusually artful best seller, appealing not only to the general public but also to Godwin’s longtime followers. Washington Post Book World reviewer Jonathan Yardley considered A Mother and Two Daughters to be “a work of complete maturity and artistic control, one that I’m fully confident will find a permanent and substantial place in our national literature.” He further commented that Godwin “turns out—this was not really evident in her four previous books—to be a stunningly gifted novelist of manners.”

The Finishing School

In The Finishing School, Godwin uses a first-person voice to create “a narrative of humanly impressive energies, as happy-sad in its texture as life itself may be said to be,” according to William H. Pritchard in the New Republic. Shifting from one age perspective to another, Justin Stokes, a successful forty-year-old actress, tells the story of the summer she turned fourteen and her life changed forever when she underwent what Time reviewer Paul Gray called “a brief but harrowing rite of passage toward maturity.” After her father and grandparents die in quick succession, the young Justin, her mother, and her brother leave Fredericksburg, Virginia, to live with her aunt in an upstate New York industrial town. There she makes friends with the local bohemian, Ursula DeVane, a forty-four-year-old failed actress who lives with her brother Julian, a talented musician of little consequence, in an old rundown home.

Ursula takes Justin on as her protégé, and they begin to meet in an old stone hut in the woods, the “Finishing School,” in which Ursula “enthralls Justin with tales of her past and encourages her artistic aspirations,” as Susan Wood put it in a Washington Post Book World review. The novel “charts the exhilaration, the enchantment, the transformation, then the inevitable disillusionment and loss inherent in such a friendship and self-discovery,” according to Frances Taliaferro in the New York Times Book Review. And, as Sternhell related, it is essentially “the tale of a daughter with two mothers.” Where A Mother and Two Daughters “was symphonic—many movements, many instruments— The Finishing School plays a gentle, chilling theme with variations.” Sternhell further commented that the book, despite its realistic form, “often reads like a fable, a contemporary myth; daughters love mothers, and—variations on a theme—daughters betray mothers, repeatedly, inevitably.”

The Finishing School may be “old fashioned,” according to Lehmann-Haupt, “in its preoccupation with such Aristotelian verities as plot, reversal, discovery, and the tragic flaw. But Miss Godwin’s power to isolate and elevate subtle feelings makes her traditional story seem almost innovative.” Although it doesn’t quite meet the definition of true tragedy, the book is “a finely nuanced, compassionate psychological novel, subtler and more concentrated” than A Mother and Two Daughters, Taliaferro maintained. And Lehmann-Haupt pointed out that Godwin’s characters serve to lend the novel a variety “as well as to distinguish the two worlds that Justin Stokes inhabits—the two dimensional world of the [industrial] look-alikes and the rich, mysterious kingdom where ‘art’s redemptive power’ is supposed to prevail.” The characterization of Justin “is one of the most trustworthy portraits of an adolescent in current literature” said Taliaferro, and the book itself, she concluded, is “a wise contribution to the literature of growing up.”

A Southern Family

With her seventh novel, 1987’s A Southern Family, Godwin returns to the setting of Mountain City first found in A Mother and Two Daughters. Another novel of manners in the Victorian tradition, this work revolves around the death of a member of the Quick family. Theo, a twenty-eight-year-old divorced father of a young son, is found dead after he apparently killed his girlfriend and committed suicide. The novel focuses on reactions from family members, including novelist Clare, her quirky mother, Lily, and Clare’s alcoholic half-brother, Rafe. A Southern Family, according to Susan Heeger in the Los Angeles Times, “takes off from Theo’s death on a discursive exploration of family history and relationships as the Quicks struggle to measure their blame and—belatedly—to know the brother and son they failed in life.”

Several reviewers considered A Southern Family to be one of Godwin’s most accomplished works. “Suffice it to say that A Southern Family is an ambitious book that entirely fulfills its ambitions,” declared Yardley in the Washington Post Book World. “Not merely is it psychologically acute, it is dense with closely observed social and physical detail that in every instance is exactly right.” Likewise, Beverly Lowrey, writing in the New York Times Book Review, proclaimed that Godwin’s A Southern Family “is the best she’s written,” concluding that Godwin’s works “all give evidence of a supple intelligence working on the page.”

Father Melancholy's Daughter

Father Melancholy’s Daughter is the story of Margaret Gower, whose mother, Ruth, leaves the family when Margaret is six years old and is killed in a car crash a year later. Margaret and her father, Walter, an Episcopal priest, are thrust into an especially close father-daughter relationship in which much of their time is devoted to puzzling over Ruth’s absence. The narrative switches time tracks from twenty-two-year-old Margaret, who is in love with a fortyish counselor named Adrian Bonner, to the younger Margaret of Ruth’s disappearance. Calling the novel “a penetrating study of a child’s coming to terms with her world,” Nancy Wigston wrote in Toronto’s Globe and Mail that “the real achievement here is Margaret herself: Gail Godwin has created that rarity in fiction, a character who evolves, believably.”

New York Times Book Review contributor Richard Bausch, however, expressed dissatisfaction with Margaret’s lack of self-awareness, but he attested that the novel has “a number of real satisfactions, namely the characters that surround Margaret and her father—the parishioners of St. Cuthbert’s. … Gail Godwin is almost Chaucerian in her delivery of these people, with their small distinguishing characteristics and their vibrant physicality.” “Born in the South,” Gray wrote in Time, “Godwin appears to be one of those writers who inherited a subject for life; then she developed the wisdom and talent to make her birthright seem constantly fresh and enthralling.”

The Good Husband

In her ninth novel, The Good Husband, Godwin portrays four characters undergoing profound change. Magda is a middle-aged English professor who is dying of cancer, while her dutiful husband, Francis, copes gamely with her impending death. Meanwhile, their friends Alice and Hugo Henry are facing the collapse of their marriage. As Alice visits Magda to comfort her during her illness, Alice gradually falls in love with Francis. “It is [Alice’s] chaste pursuit of [Francis], which the dying woman encourages, that holds our attention through much of the novel,” remarked Chicago Tribune Books reviewer Penelope Mesic. Although critical of the “small defects” in Godwin’s prose, remarking that “sentences too often trickle to a vague conclusion,”Mesic praised the author’s handling of Magda’s feverish, combative decline and “steady, lucid exposition of the action.”

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Sara Maitland commended many of the novel’s elements: “The four main characters are interesting and convincing; their difficulties are real and persuasive; the principal plot is well constructed and involving.” However, Maitland faulted Godwin for trying to infuse the plot with more symbolic significance than it can carry. She concluded: “Gail Godwin is a good writer, but The Good Husband is not a good novel.” While conceding that readers will find the novel “either extremely moving or extremely sentimental,” Anita Brookner, writing in the Spectator, commended Godwin’s “calm and unassuming” style and felt that the book is “guileless, dignified, and ultimately persuasive.”

Evensong

With 1999’s Evensong, Godwin returns to her characters from Father Melancholy’s Daughter. Margaret is now a fully grown woman and married to Adrian; she has also become an ordained Episcopal pastor at All Saints High Balsam. Much admired in her Smoky Mountain community, she seems like a model of goodness, proving her selflessness to her neighbors in one episode by preventing a mugging without thought to her own safety. She is frequently praised by her parishioners for her inspirational speaking ability and community leadership. But beneath this surface of model citizenry there are many problems and doubts in Margaret’s life. Her husband, who is the local school headmaster, is harried in his schedule and plagued by self-doubt, which has led to his becoming distant toward his wife. Also, as the town endures tough economic times with the approach of the millennium, Margaret doubts her own abilities to help her community. This is seen more clearly as several characters enter her life, including a teenager from Adrian’s school who has been expelled and has come to live with them, and a poor, elderly man named Tony who also requests aid from the Bonners. Added into this mix is a woman named Grace Munger, who begins preaching in town, saying that she has been divinely inspired to organize a “Millennium Birthday March for Jesus.” Grace urges Margaret to help her in her cause, but Margaret resists such outwardly showy expressions of religious faith in favor of quietly performing good deeds. Nevertheless, Grace’s presence causes Margaret to question her own character more deeply.

Several critics found much to praise in Godwin’s tenth novel. For one thing, Time reviewer Gray found the ending refreshing, as it “not only ties up loose ends but also dares to be, in these uncertain times, optimistic.” Mary Kaiser, writing in World Literature Today, particularly enjoyed Godwin’s accurate portrayal of the daily life of a priest. However, she felt that there was too much melodrama and “coincidence of an almost Dickensian implausibility. … The high drama conflicts with the otherwise believable presentation of Margaret’s routine as the rector of a small parish.” On the other hand, a Publishers Weekly contributor asserted: “Gracefully written and embracing a worldly but genuine sense of goodness and human possibility, this kind of book is rare these days”; and Karen Anderson concluded in her Library Journal assessment that Evensong is “a touching portrait of love and loss and the many paths to redemption.”

Heart and Evenings at Five

Although the two books to follow Evensong are very different in nature, they both deal with matters of the heart. Heart: A Personal Journey through Its Myths and Meanings is a nonfiction journey through the history of what the heart has come to symbolize in human civilization, while Evenings at Five is a very personal novel that fictionalizes the last years of a very important relationship in Godwin’s life. A Publishers Weekly writer was impressed by the amount of research that went into Heart, which goes back in time to the depiction of the heart on cave walls and notes the symbolism of the heart in the arts, sciences, and lore of humanity up through the more recent times when it has lost ground to the preeminence of the brain and intellectualism. But while the critic said that fans of Godwin “will appreciate her occasional references to her characters and the glimpses of her personal life here, her scholarly approach is unlikely to capture the fancy of most of the readers of her novels.” Library Journal contributor Richard Burns further considered Heart a mere “historical curiosity” whose desultory organization results in a book “without firm definition.”

Similarly, reviewers considered Godwin’s Evenings at Five to be a minor addition to her fiction oeuvre, although it is a work of interest because of its links to the author’s own life. Godwin completed this short novel after the death of her longtime companion, composer Robert Starer. Though she and Starer never married, they had a relationship that lasted almost thirty years, and Godwin especially cherished the cocktail hours they shared together, a time when they could reflect on the events in their lives and take the time to enjoy each other’s company. In the novel, Godwin fictionalizes this relationship to create the characters Christina and Rudy; she explores their relationship deeply, as well as Christina’s grief after Rudy passes away. “For a book that can be read in an hour,” observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “it is remarkably dense.” Book contributor Beth Kephart described Evenings at Five as “heartrending” and composed of “brilliantly webbed scenes.” Ann H. Fisher concluded in her Library Journal assessment that “fans of Godwin’s other fiction will be fascinated by this minor piece.”

Unfinished Desires

Godwin published the novel Unfinished Desires in 2009. Set in the mountainous region of North Carolina in a Roman Catholic boarding school, the novel introduces a cast of ninth-grade girls who are determined to find out the dark secret of school director Mother Ravenel.

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Valerie Sayers commented that “the novel’s structure is odd and original, with multiple time frames and perspectives, and a large cast of characters—difficult to sort out at first. Soon enough, though, clear patterns emerge.” Sayers recalled that “Godwin has often written with precision and sympathy about religion, especially the Episcopal Church. Here she renders a fictional order of Catholic nuns with authority and ease, making their spiritual and corporeal concerns convincing, funny, moving.” Reviewing the novel in the San Francisco Chronicle, Elizabeth Fishel suggested that “for a longtime fan of Godwin’s work, Unfinished Desires offers a door into the novelist’s traditional Catholic education and roots as a writer. But for a new reader of this master storyteller, earlier novels may be a more accessible pleasure.” Katie Ward, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, explained that “this is a story of tentacular, grudge-holding friendships, as well as an expose on the prickly dealings of mothers and daughters. It’s no High School Musical, and it’s certainly vampire-less, but Unfinished Desires still catches the zeitgeist of teenage relationships.” In an article in the New York Times Book Review, Dominique Browning opined that “Godwin has created several deeply affecting characters. Bold, imaginative, acerbic and funny Tildy is a ringleader who has learned from her mother,” appending that “Chloe is a marvelous creation. She appears mousy but is quietly, determinedly, profoundly strange.” In a review in the Denver Post, Robin Vidimos claimed that it is the novel’s “rich world, and a thoughtful one, that draws and holds the reader from the first to the final pages of the work.”

Flora

In the New York Times Book Review, Leah Hager Cohen wrote that Godwin’s fourteenth novel, Flora, “offers a veritable taxonomy of orphans: from the conventional, both-parents-died variety to the quasi-orphan (one parent still nominally in the picture) to the elective orphan (a runaway) to the reverse-orphan (a parent unmoored by the loss of a child). In fact, as the story unfolds, we realize it’s populated almost exclusively by orphans of different stripes.” Cohen went on to remark: “It’s a mark of Godwin’s light, sure touch that this doesn’t feel contrived.”

The novel is narrated by Helen Anstruther, who looks back decades later to an eight-week period during the summer when she was ten years old. The year is 1945. Helen has just lost her grandmother, Nonie, who raised her after her mother died when she was three. Helen’s father, a troubled, hard-drinking principal at a North Carolina high school, needs someone to care for Helen while he does secret war work for the government in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He asks Flora, the twenty-two-year-old cousin of Helen’s mother, to come from Alabama to take on the task. But when one of Helen’s friends contracts polio, the father insists that Flora and Helen remain quarantined at his isolated mountaintop home to avoid the risk of infection—with the result that little “happens” in the novel. As the story unfolds, with its mental games pitting Flora against her charge, it appears that Helen is snobbish and mean-spirited while Flora is lachrymose and, in the eyes of Helen, an unsophisticated hick. But what becomes equally apparent is that Helen is cruel because she is frightened: She has lost her mother and grandmother, she is afraid that her friend with polio will die, and another friend is about to move away. Along the way, the novel examines the racism and snobbery of the period and recreates many of the details of wartime domestic life: food rationing, serialized radio programs, news reports and rumors about the war, and phone conversations that eavesdropping operators could overhear. More important, however, truths about Helen’s mother and grandmother are revealed, and when Finn, a returned soldier who makes deliveries to the house, sparks Helen’s jealousy with his attentions to Flora, the novel builds to a climax and a terrible error of judgment that will alter the course of Helen’s life and consume her with remorse.

Reviewers responded to Flora with high praise. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that “Godwin skillfully peels back layers of family history” and concluded with this verdict: “Unsparing yet compassionate; a fine addition to Godwin’s long list of first-rate fiction bringing 19th-century richness of detail and characterization to the ambiguities of modern life.” Lisa Block, writing in Booklist, called the book a “superbly crafted, stunning novel” and “an unforgettable, heartbreaking tale of disappointment, love, and tragedy.” Ron Charles, in a review in the Washington Post Book World, calling the novel “thoughtful” and praising it for its “unsettling effectiveness,” wrote that Helen’s narrative voice is “piquant” and that the effect of having Helen narrate the story years later is “witty and moving.” Charles concluded: “The success of this trim novel rests entirely on Godwin’s ability to maintain the various chords of Helen’s voice, which are by degrees witty, superior, naïve.” Valerie Miner agreed, writing in the Boston Globe that “ Flora is Godwin at her best, a compelling story about Helen’s growth of consciousness told with fearless candor and the poignant wisdom of hindsight.” So, too, did Lucy Scholes, who remarked in the London Observer Online: “It’s a brave decision to take as one’s subject a ‘boring, exasperating summer,’ as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl, but Gail Godwin’s gamble pays off magnificently. The chilling sense of a catastrophe about to unfold cuts through the increasingly languid days.”

Publishing

Godwin offers her reflections on the book trade in Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir. The book underscores the stamina needed to survive as a writer in the modern, corporate publishing industry. Godwin describes her early writing efforts as a college student and recounts the story of her first submission to Knopf, which was rejected. She depicts her turbulent relationships with publishers and editors, in particular Robert Gottlieb, the editor at Knopf who guided her to two National Book Award nominations but from whom Godwin split when he did not offer her enough money for what turned out to be her breakthrough novel. Readers will learn about her time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop under the tutelage of Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Coover, as well as her friendship with novelist John Irving and her enduring, five-decade-long relationship with her agent, John Hawkins. Overall, the memoir maps not only Godwin’s obsession with writing but also the evolution of the publishing industry from its earlier genteel days when Godwin published her first novels to a new, more profit-driven era when writers must bear the responsibility for branding themselves.

Critics were pleased that Godwin shared her insights into the publishing world with readers. A Kirkus Reviews contributor labeled the book an “engaging memoir,” adding that it “is interesting primarily for its mildly gossipy anecdotes about various publishing executives and glimpses of stories begun and abandoned or morphing into other novels. No blindingly brilliant insights into the seismic changes that have transformed publishing but an agreeable memoir that captures its pleasures and pitfalls.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that the memoir is “often informative” but objected that at times it can “feel self-indulgent—the result of a surfeit of anecdotes.” The reviewer nevertheless concluded: “Still, this book succeeds at giving an eye-opening look at the reality of what it takes to publish just one novel—or, in Godwin’s case, 14.” Dinitia Smith, writing for the Wall Street Journal, found Publishing to be a “suspenseful account, with a degree of emotional depth,” while Able Greenspan, in a review for MBR Bookwatch, called it “an inherently fascinating read that is an informative as it is entertaining.” Finally, Charles Finch, assessing the book for USA Today, praised it for its “wry matter-of-factness” and concluded by calling it “an agile, winning book, never exactly riveting, but … pleasurable to read.”

Grief Cottage

An eleven-year-old boy named Marcus, who has recently lost his mother, is the narrator of Godwin’s 2017 novel, Grief Cottage. The book’s title refers to a physical location on the South Carolina island where Marcus lives. Marcus visits the cottage despite the scary stories he has heard involving it. In an interview with Scott Simon, host of the Weekend Edition Saturday radio program, Godwin explained how the cottage got its name. She stated: “The locals on this small island call it that because fifty years ago, in a hurricane, there was a family who came late in the season. It was October, hurricane season. And they never knew what happened to the family. The mother and the father and the boy just disappeared during the hurricane. So the cottage had a dark aura to it. And so they just called it Grief Cottage.” Regarding Marcus’s attraction to the cottage, she told Simon: “If you are an eleven-year-old boy with a bike and lots of time on your hands and you’d heard about this, of course, you’d be going up there.” Marcus also focuses his attentions on the migration of loggerhead turtles across the island. Another main character in the book is Marcus’s elderly great-aunt, with whom he is living.

“Readers willing to suspend disbelief in the paranormal occurrences facing the pubescent Marcus may still struggle with the unusually high levels of awareness—of self and others—in his narration,” opined a Kirkus Reviews writer. Other assessments of the novel were more favorable. Washington Post contributor Carole Burns suggested: “Marcus’ story remains beguiling, with its array of Southern characters, each living in a cottage of grief with their own ghosts and their own ways of finding a way forward.” Lauren Bufferd, a reviewer in BookPage, remarked: “Godwin shows she is still at the top of her craft, using the fragile link between living and spirit to illuminate a young man’s coming of age.” Bufferd described Grief Cottage as “keenly observed, powerful.” Writing again in Booklist, Seaman commented: “With intriguingly eccentric supporting characters and a dramatic setting, Godwin’s riveting and wise story … subtly and insightfully explores different forms of haunting.” “Godwin’s forceful prose captivates with the quiet, renewing power of a persistent tide,” asserted a Publishers Weekly critic. In a lengthy review in the New York Times, Sarah Lyall discussed Godwin’s novel in the context of her oeuvre. Lyall noted: “The author of numerous novels, short stories and works of nonfiction, now approaching eighty, she remains a forensically skillful examiner of her characters’ motives, thoughts and behavior. Grief Cottage revisits some of her favorite themes—fractured families, parentless children, the initial shock and long-term repercussions of death and disappearance, how the future can run off course in a flash—to make the very good point that it doesn’t require a ghost to haunt a life.”

Old Lovegood Girls and Getting to Know Death

(open new)In the novel Old Lovegood Girls, Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe are paired together as roommates while attending Lovegood College. Feron’s alcoholic mother died recently, and she was more than happy to move away from her abusive step-father. Merry is a tobacco company heiress who leaves campus after just one semester to run her family business after her parents are killed in a plane crash. The polar opposites continue a long-distance relationship and both aspire to become writers. Although they rarely meet in person in the decades that followed their one semester living together, both girls hold the other in high esteem.

Writing in Washington Post Book World, Ron Charles summarized that “the story travels nimbly through an enormous swath of American history while remaining grounded in the particular experiences of these women who would seem to have nothing in common. But Godwin writes in a voice elastic enough to capture each woman’s mind and to trace the affections stretched between them ‘like gold to airy thinness beat.’ The result is an extraordinary novel about the nature of those rare friendships that fade for long periods of time only to rekindle in an instant when the conditions are right again.”

A Kirkus Reviews contributor found the characters to be “nuanced.” The same reviewer called the novel “intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly pointed out that repetition and “dull descriptions of the writing process unfortunately blunt this otherwise moving reflection on long-term friendship.” Booklist contributor Donna Seaman stated: “Godwin, as fluent in humor as in sorrow, sagely illuminates matters of faith, art, ambition, and generosity while celebrating change and steadfastness, friendship and love.”

With the memoir Getting to Know Death, Godwin reflects on her advanced age and those who have already passed from her life. The memoir was partially inspired by an incident in the summer of 2022 when she slipped and broke her neck while watering her garden. She suffered through a neck brace for six months before having neck surgery that only partially fixed it. During this time, though, she thought about her life and the friends who she had already lost along the way. Godwin also discusses her father’s and brother’s suicides, living without her husband for two decades, and her relationship with her doctors and a home health nurse. Godwin links several of the more notable events in her life with scenes from her novels. A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that “Godwin makes for good company, and the text sparkles with flashes of insight and humor.” The same reviewer concluded by calling Getting to Know Death “a tart, mordantly witty glimpse at losses past, as well as those to come.”(close new)

Author Comments

Godwin once told CA: “At this point I have four favorite [books], each for its own reason. I love Father Melancholy’s Daughter because I loved the sheer intensity and preoccupation of writing about a girl growing up with a father, an experience I hadn’t had. I am increasingly attracted by The Good Husband; it seems to have been written by unfamiliar parts of myself. Though I remember how it disappointed and angered some readers when it first came out (‘This isn’t like your other novels!’) my admiration for it continues to build, and it seems to be gathering its coterie of devotees. I cherish Evenings at Five because it taught me I could write in a different way, almost like creating a musical composition, a sonata in words, with its meshing of themes leading to a resolution that wasn’t there before. And I can’t wait to get up in the mornings and go back to Queen of the Underworld, with its young heroine—she’s twenty-two—and her energies and schemes. She drags me willingly into all these places she doesn’t know about yet, and I know better to patronize her with my ‘adult wisdom’ because I want to feel her experiences exactly as she feels them.

“A lifetime of reading and writing fiction has greatly increased my capacity for empathy, that activity of imagining from the inside out what it’s like to be someone else. I want my novels to be vehicles for what Ortega y Gasset called ‘the transmigration into other souls.’

“I am just now realizing how much I depend on the act of writing—I mean the physical setting down (or crossing out) one word after another, then reading it over, then adding or changing or subtracting more—to clarify my thoughts and orient myself in the world. Now there’s a daunting challenge to empathy: imagining and getting inside the self I might have been without the gift of literacy.”

Godwin later told CA: “I have never read through any of the fourteen novels I have written between 1970 and 2018. (I wonder how many writers do re-read their novels?) I dip into them now and again for various reasons. I reserve a fierce tenderness for The Good Husband because it alarmed or disappointed many readers when it came out in 1994 but has won a stalwart readership over time.

“As for favorites, my last two novels, Flora and Grief Cottage have been astonishments for me. They have surprised in the way I imagine smart and unusual late-born children surprise people who had thought bringing new life into the world was over for them. Both novels have eleven-year olds for protagonists, Helen in Flora and Marcus in Grief Cottage. I wrote both of them before showing them to anyone.

“‘There is a place in me I haven’t gone yet.’ from my notes at the beginning of the Flora.

“These two late borns have settled me into a new way of writing. More leisure and less fretting. More secrecy. Flora and Grief Cottage were not shown to anyone until they were completed. Now I write early drafts of my present novel (title is secret) longhand in notebooks (those Levenger Circa ones with the sewn spines), sitting in my armchair with my feet on a hassock, rather than perched upright at a keyboard. I am willing to let myself fail. Sometimes I actually encourage myself to fail, in order to get past old habits that have kept me from knowing all I was capable of.

“Today, my writing has become more like a beguiling treasure hunt. I want to discover my own mind a little more before I die. Recently a further new element has come into play. I make small drawings or paintings of the scenes I am working on. Some of these can be found in the blogs on my website. The pictures show me hidden aspects of a scene. Sometimes I will spend hours on a drawing. Then I will say, ‘You are indulging yourself. This drawing and painting is wasting time. You don’t get paid for drawing.’ But that is just my old self talking. My new self counters, ‘So what? Look what you just uncovered!’

“I want a reader to open my book and be attracted, taken in. ‘Oh, this is wonderful! I love this.’ And to experience a spreading out feeling, which, if put into words, would say, ‘This book has something for all the shelves of my mind.’ And, after two or three years or a decade, to say, ‘Something in that book is calling to me. I need to read it again.’”

BIOCRIT
BOOKS

• Anthony, Carolyn, editor, Family Portraits: Remembrances by Twenty Distinguished Writers, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1989.

• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 5, 1976, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 31, 1985, Volume 69, 1992.

• Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 6: American Novelists since World War II, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.

• Godwin, Gail, Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir, Bloomsbury USA (New York, NY), 2015.

• Halpern, Daniel, editor, Our Private Lives: Journals, Notebooks, and Diaries, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1998.

• Hill, Jane, Gail Godwin, Twayne (New York, NY), 1992.

• Kissel, Susan S., Moving On: The Heroines of Shirley Ann Grau, Anne Tyler, and Gail Godwin, Bowling Green State University Popular Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1996.

• Mandelbaum, Paul, editor, First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors, Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 1993.

• Mickelson, Anne Z., Reaching Out: Sensitivity and Order in Recent American Fiction by Women, Scarecrow (New York, NY), 1979.

• Neubauer, Alexander, editor, Conversations on Writing Fiction: Interviews with 13 Distinguished Teachers of Fiction Writing in America, Harper Perennial (New York, NY), 1994.

• Powell, Danny Romine, Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers, John F. Blair (Winston Salem, NC), 1994.

• Sternburg, Janet, editor, The Writer on Her Work, Norton (New York, NY), 1980.

• Xie, Lihong, The Evolving Self in the Novels of Gail Godwin, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1995.

PERIODICALS

• America, December 21, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 412; April 17, 1982, John B. Breslin, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 305; March 1, 2010, Ron Hansen, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 31.

• Antioch Review, June 22, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 120.

• Atlantic Monthly, May 1, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 108.

• Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, June 22, 1991, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 16.

• Best Sellers, September 1, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 174; March 1, 1982, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 450; November 1, 1983, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 281; April 1, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 10.

• Biography, March 22, 2006, Liesl Schillinger, review of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963.

• Book, May 1, 1995, Beth Kephart, review of Evenings at Five, p. 77.

• Booklist, November 15, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 274; March 1, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 670; March 1, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 959; May 15, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 1475; October 1, 1981, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 138; May 15, 1983, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 1166; October 15, 1984, review of The Finishing School, p. 265; July 1, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 1626; June 1, 1994, Mary Carroll, review of The Good Husband, p. 1724; November 15, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Evensong, p. 547; January 1, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Heart: A Personal Journey through Its Myths and Meanings, p. 869; February 1, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of Evenings at Five, p. 955; September 15, 2005, Donna Seaman, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 6; December 1, 2005, Donna Seaman, review of The Making of a Writer, p. 13; August 1, 2009, Donna Seaman, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 10; May 1, 2017, Donna Seaman, review of Grief Cottage, p. 56; April 15, 2020, Donna Seaman, review of Old Lovegood Girls, p. 22.

• Bookmarks, March 1, 2010, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 36.

• BookPage, June 1, 2017, Lauren Bufferd, review of Grief Cottage, p. 23.

• Books, October 1, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 23.

• Books & Bookman, March 1, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 30.

• Boston Globe, March 10, 1991, Gail Caldwell, “A Father and Daughter Making Peace with the Past,” p. B17; April 10, 1991, Patti Doten, “A Daughter of Father Melancholy,” p. 67; February 28, 1999, Gail Caldwell, “Fire and Ice,” p. F1.

• British Book News, August 1, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 525.

• Chicago, April 1, 1985, Molly McQuade, review of The Finishing School, p. 126.

• Choice, June 1, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 517.

• Christian Century, November 6, 1991, Peter S. Hawkins, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 1037; November 16, 1994, Trudy Bush, review of The Good Husband, p. 1088; October 9, 2002, review of Heart, p. 22.

• Christianity Today, August 12, 1988, Kate Andraski, review of A Southern Family, p. 68.

• Christian Science Monitor, November 20, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 9; April 1, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 31; June 23, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 19; September 2, 1983, Kathleen Leverich, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. B2; August 31, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 18; March 18, 1999, Ron Charles, review of Evensong, p. 19; February 22, 2001, review of Heart, p. 18; January 14, 2010, Katie Ward, review of Unfinished Desires.

• Commonweal, June 1, 1984, Jo-Ann Mort, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 345; March 25, 1988, Suzanne Rowen, review of A Southern Family, p. 187; April 23, 1999, review of Evensong, p. 26.

• Cosmopolitan, March 1, 1985, Carol E. Rinzler, review of The Finishing School, p. 28; March 1, 1991, Louise Bernikow, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 48.

• Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, December 1, 1978, Susan E. Lorsch, review of The Odd Woman, p. 21; spring, 1993, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 155.

• Denver Post, January 24, 2010, Robin Vidimos, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 10.

• Detroit Free Press, January 18, 2006, review of Queen of the Underworld.

• Detroit News, April 11, 1982, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of A Mother and Two Daughters.

• Entertainment Weekly, September 16, 1994, Rhonda Johnson, review of The Good Husband, p. 109; March 17, 2000, review of Evensong, p. 63.

• Esquire, December 1, 1970, review of The Perfectionists, p. 96.

• Glamour, May 1, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 180; January 1, 1982, Nancy Evans, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 86; September 1, 1983, Nancy Evans, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 200; March 1, 1985, Nancy Evans, review of The Finishing School, p. 226; October 1, 1987, Laura Mathews, review of A Southern Family, p. 230.

• Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 13, 1991, Nancy Wigston, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. C6; April 8, 2006, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. D31.

• Guardian (London, England), June 21, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 22.

• Harper’s, July 1, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 88.

• Hudson Review, March 22, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 158; September 22, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 521; September 22, 1991, William H. Pritchard, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 500.

• Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1970, review of The Perfectionists, p. 343; July 1, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 743; July 15, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 757; December 15, 1974, review of Dream Children, p. 1392; April 1, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 387; November 1, 1981, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 1358; June 15, 1983, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 675; November 15, 1984, review of The Finishing School, p. 1059; August 1, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 1094; June 1, 1994, review of The Good Husband, p. 719; November 15, 1998, review of Evensong, p. 1615; December 15, 2000, review of Heart, p. 1739; July 15, 2009, review of Unfinished Desires; February 15, 2013, review of Flora; November 1, 2014, review of Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir; April 1, 2017, review of Grief Cottage; March 1, 2020, review of Old Lovegood Girls; May 15, 2024, review of Getting to Know Death.

• Kliatt, December 22, 1985, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 30; March 22, 1986, review of The Finishing School, p. 8; January 1, 1989, review of A Southern Family, p. 8; September 1, 1986, Nola Theiss, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 44.

• Library Journal, April 15, 1970, review of The Perfectionists, p. 1502; August 1, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 2643; November 1, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 2871; May 15, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 1080; November 15, 1981, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 2252; August 1, 1983, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 1502; January 1, 1985, Janet Wiehe, review of The Finishing School, p. 100; September 1, 1987, Maurice Taylor, review of A Southern Family, p. 198; February 1, 1991, Mary Ellen Beck, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 103; June 1, 1994, Ann H. Fisher, review of The Good Husband, p. 158; December 1, 1995, review of Violet Clay, p. 165; December 1, 1998, Karen Anderson, review of Evensong, p. 154; February 15, 2001, Richard Burns, review of Heart, p. 176; January 1, 2003, review of The Odd Woman, p. 192; March 1, 2003, Ann H. Fisher, review of Evenings at Five, p. 119; January 1, 2006, Valeda F. Dent, review of The Making of a Writer, p. 118; August 1, 2009, Reba Leiding, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 67; May 1, 2013, Lisa Block, review of Flora, p. 73.

• Library Media Connection, January 1, 1986, review of The Finishing School, p. 31.

• Listener, June 9, 1977, review of Dream Children, p. 762; July 1, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 88; March 21, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 25.

• London Review of Books, March 15, 1984, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 20.

• Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1983, Valerie Miner, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 14; February 24, 1985, Lisa Mitchell, review of The Finishing School, p. 2; October 4, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 1; October 16, 1988, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 14; March 3, 1991, Lee Smith, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter; August 21, 1994, review of The Good Husband, p. 13; September 15, 1996, review of Dream Children, p. 11; March 14, 1999, review of Evensong, p. 15; March 20, 2001, Michael Harris, review of Heart, p. E3.

• Mademoiselle, February 1, 1985, Joyce Maynard, review of The Finishing School, p. 84.

• MBR Bookwatch, January 1, 2015, Able Greenspan, review of Publishing.

• Miami Herald, January 25, 2006, Amy Driscoll, review of Queen of the Underworld.

• Mississippi Quarterly, March 22, 1993, Lihong Xie, “A Dialogue with Gail Godwin,” p. 167.

• Ms., March 1, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 41; May 1, 1978, Katherine Bouton, review of Violet Clay, p. 32; January 1, 1982, Brigitte Weeks, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 39; February 1, 1985, Brigitte Weeks, review of The Finishing School, p. 75.

• National Catholic Reporter, April 30, 2010, Maureen Daly, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 5.

• National Observer, November 30, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 24; March 13, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 21.

• National Post (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), April 24, 2010, Debby Waldman, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 14.

• National Review, September 15, 1978, Zane Kotker, review of Violet Clay, p. 1154.

• New Directions for Women, July 1, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 14.

• New Leader, December 9, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 4.

• New Republic, January 25, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 26; July 8, 1978, Edith Milton, review of Violet Clay, p. 40; February 17, 1982, Anne Tyler, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 39; December 19, 1983, Kathleen Kearns, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 38; February 25, 1985, William H. Pritchard, review of The Finishing School, p. 31; February 29, 1988, Pearl K. Bell, review of A Southern Family, p. 38.

• New Statesman, August 15, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 204; January 14, 1977, Valentine Cunningham, review of Dream Children, p. 60; August 18, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 219; March 29, 1985, Sheila MacLeod, review of The Finishing School, p. 34.

• Newsweek, February 23, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 86; January 11, 1982, Walter Clemons, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 62; September 12, 1983, Gene Lyons, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 80; February 25, 1985, Gene Lyons, review of The Finishing School, p. 87.

• New York, March 11, 1991, Rhoda Koenig, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 86.

• New Yorker, October 7, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 159; November 18, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 234; January 18, 1982, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 129; February 18, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 121.

• New York Review of Books, February 20, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 34; April 1, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 34; July 20, 1978, Martha Duffy, review of Violet Clay, p. 46.

• New York Times, September 21, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 45; September 30, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 33; February 16, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 17; May 18, 1978, John Leonard, review of Violet Clay, p. C21; December 22, 1981, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 22; September 6, 1983, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 25; January 24, 1985, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Finishing School, p. 19; September 21, 1987, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of A Southern Family, p. 25; May 23, 2017, Sarah Lyall, “Where Mourning Resides,” review of Grief Cottage, p. C4.

• New York Times Book Review, June 7, 1970, Joyce Carol Oates, review of The Perfectionists, p. 5; October 15, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 2; October 20, 1974, Lore Dickstein, review of The Odd Woman, p. 4; February 22, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 5; May 21, 1978, Katha Pollitt, review of Violet Clay, p. 10; January 10, 1982, Josephine Hendin, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 3; September 18, 1983, Judith Gies, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 14; January 27, 1985, Frances Taliaferro, review of The Finishing School, p. 7; March 2, 1986, Patricia T. O’Conner, review of Violet Clay, p. 34; March 2, 1986, Patricia T. O’Conner, review of Glass People, p. 34; March 2, 1986, Patricia T. O’Conner, review of The Finishing School, p. 34; October 11, 1987, Beverly Lowrey, review of A Southern Family, p. 1; March 3, 1991, Richard Bausch, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 7; September 4, 1994, Sara Maitland, review of The Good Husband, p. 5; April 4, 1999, Claire Messud, review of Evensong, p. 8; April 8, 2001, Kathryn Shattuck, review of Heart, p. 20; April 6, 2003, John Hartl, review of Evenings at Five, p. 24; January 10, 2010, Dominique Browning, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 12; May 26, 2013, Leah Hager Cohen, “Absent Parents,” review of Flora, p. 11.

• Observer (London, England), August 24, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 21; January 23, 1977, review of Dream Children, p. 27; September 3, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 26; February 5, 1984, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 53; March 24, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 26.

• Parabola, November 1, 2001, Toinette Lippe, review of Heart, p. 106.

• Partisan Review, February 20, 1980, review of Violet Clay, p. 290.

• People, February 11, 1985, Campbell Geeslin, review of The Finishing School, p. 16.

• Playboy, March 1, 1982, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 35.

• Progressive, February 1, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 57; October 1, 1978, Roberta Rubenstein, review of Violet Clay, p. 56; May 1, 1982, Wendy Schwartz, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 59; May 1, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 45.

• Publishers Weekly, March 9, 1970, review of The Perfectionists, p. 80; June 26, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 57; August 26, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 299; January 5, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 59; March 27, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 65; December 4, 1981, John F. Baker, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 41; February 4, 1983, Sally A. Lodge, review of Dream Children, p. 367; July 15, 1983, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 42; November 23, 1984, review of The Finishing School, p. 68; December 20, 1985, John Mutter, review of The Finishing School, p. 64; August 14, 1987, Sybil Steinberg, review of A Southern Family, p. 93; December 21, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 45; June 20, 1994, review of The Good Husband, p. 94; January 4, 1999, review of Evensong, p. 69; January 8, 2001, review of Heart, p. 61; February 17, 2003, review of Evenings at Five, p. 55; October 10, 2005, review of The Making of a Writer, p. 44; October 10, 2005, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 34; September 7, 2009, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 24; November 24, 2014, review of Publishing, p. 66; April 24, 2017, review of Grief Cottage, p. 59; March 30, 2020, review of Old Lovegood Girls, p. 34.

• Punch, October 14, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 75.

• Rapport: The Modern Guide to Books, Music, & More, 2000, review of Evensong, p. 34.

• San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 2010, Elizabeth Fishel, review of Unfinished Desires.

• Saturday Review, August 8, 1970, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of The Perfectionists, p. 37; October 28, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 83; February 21, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 42; June 10, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 39; January 1, 1982, Laura Geringer, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 64.

• Savvy, March 1, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 116; November 1, 1987, Wendy Gimbel, review of A Southern Family, p. 22.

• School Library Journal, March 1, 1982, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 163; January 1, 1984, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 91; October 1, 1985, Diana Hirsch, review of The Finishing School, p. 193; February 1, 1993, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 34.

• Sewanee Review, January 1, 1977, review of Dream Children, p. 104; April 1, 1986, review of The Finishing School, p. 296.

• Sojourners, January 1, 2000, Jo Ann Heydron, review of Evensong, p. 59.

• Southern Literary Journal, March 22, 2001, Ron Emerick, review of A Southern Family, p. 134.

• Southern Living, May 1, 1988, review of A Southern Family, p. 118; May 1, 1991, Dianne Young, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 83; February 1, 2006, Allison Barnes, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 147.

• Spectator, January 15, 1977, review of Dream Children, p. 21; September 2, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 23; February 6, 1982, Caroline Moorhead, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 26; October 17, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 36; November 5, 1994, Anita Brookner, review of The Good Husband, p. 51.

• Time, January 25, 1982, Paul Gray, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 74; February 11, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 87; October 5, 1987, Paul Gray, review of A Southern Family, p. 82; March 25, 1991, Paul Gray, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 70; September 26, 1994, Paul Gray, review of The Good Husband, p. 82; March 29, 1999, Paul Gray, “Millennium Fevers: In Her Absorbing New Novel, Gail Godwin Tracks Modern Maladies into a Mountain Town,” p. 216.

• Times Literary Supplement, July 23, 1971, review of The Perfectionists, p. 850; July 4, 1975, review of The Odd Woman, p. 732; January 14, 1977, review of Dream Children, p. 25; September 15, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. 1011; March 5, 1982, Jennifer Uglow, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 246; March 29, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 340; November 20, 1989, Linda Taylor, review of A Southern Family, p. 1274; May 24, 1991, Isobel Armstrong, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 21; November 4, 1994, Juliet Fleming, review of The Good Husband, p. 22.

• Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), August 2, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 3; October 25, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 5; March 10, 1991, review of Father Melancholy’s Daughter, p. 1; August 28, 1994, review of The Good Husband, p. 3; January 8, 2006, Alan Cheuse, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 1.

• USA Today, March 2, 2006, Deirdre Donahue, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 4D; January 28, 2010, Deirdre Donahue, review of Unfinished Desires, p. 5D.

• Village Voice, November 7, 1974, review of The Odd Woman, p. 40; March 30, 1982, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 42; February 26, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 45.

• Virginia Quarterly Review, June 22, 1976, review of Dream Children, p. 95; December 22, 1988, review of A Southern Family, p. 21.

• Voice of Youth Advocates, February 1, 1986, review of The Finishing School, p. 384.

• Wall Street Journal, January 11, 1982, Edmund Fuller, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 20; February 13, 1985, Charles Monaghan, review of The Finishing School, p. 26.

• Washington Post, June 5, 2017, Carole Burns, review of Grief Cottage.

• Washington Post Book World, October 1, 1972, review of Glass People, p. 8; May 21, 1978, review of Violet Clay, p. E6; December 13, 1981, Jonathan Yardley, review of A Mother and Two Daughters, p. 3; February 7, 1983, review of Dream Children, p. 12; September 11, 1983, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 3; February 3, 1985, Susan Wood, review of The Finishing School, p. 1; October 27, 1985, review of The Perfectionists, p. 16; October 27, 1985, review of The Odd Woman, p. 16; September 13, 1987, review of A Southern Family, p. 3; December 4, 1994, review of The Good Husband, p. 3; March 28, 1999, review of Evensong, p. 5; February 9, 2001, Carolyn See, review of Heart, p. C2; February 26, 2006, Ron Charles, review of Queen of the Underworld, p. 9; January 19, 2010, Valerie Sayers, review of Unfinished Desires; May 5, 2020, Ron Charles, review of Old Lovegood Girls.

• West Coast Review of Books, January 1, 1984, review of Mr. Bedford and the Muses, p. 34.

• Wilson Library Journal, December 1, 1985, Patty Campbell, review of The Finishing School, p. 46.

• Women’s Review of Books, August 1, 1985, review of The Finishing School, p. 17.

• World and I, July 1, 1999, review of Evensong, p. 263.

• World Literature Today, June 22, 2000, Mary Kaiser, review of Evensong, p. 606.

ONLINE

• BookPage, http://www.bookpage.com/ (February 1, 2001), review of Heart.

• Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com/ (May 5, 2013), Valerie Miner, review of Flora.

• Gail Godwin website, http://www.gailgodwin.com/ (June 15, 2024).

• Observer Online, http://www.theguardian.com/ (August 3, 2013), Lucy Scholes, review of Flora.

• Southern Literary Review, https://compulsivereader.com/ (November 7, 2020), Karen Herceg, author interview.

• USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/ (January 17, 2015), Charles Finch, review of Publishing.

• Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/ (January 26, 2015), Dinitia Smith, review of Publishing.

• Washington Post Book World, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/ (May 14, 2013), Ron Charles, review of Flora.

• Weekend Edition Saturday, http://www.npr.org/ (2017), Scott Simon, author interview.