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WORK TITLE: Rebellion
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.mollypattersonwriter.com/
CITY: Eau Claire
STATE: WI
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in St. Louis, MO.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. St. Albans School, Washington, DC, writer-in-residence, 2012-13.
AWARDS:Pushcart Prize.
WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including the Iowa Review and the Atlantic Monthly.
SIDELIGHTS
Molly Patterson is a writer based in Eau Claire, WI. She has written articles that have appeared in publications, including the Iowa Review and the Atlantic Monthly.
In 2017, Patterson released her first book, Rebellion. The novel tells the stories of three women and their acts of self-actualization. The first is Addie, who goes with her missionary husband to China during the late-1800s. She leaves him and their children behind to follow another missionary across the country. Addie is the aunt of Hazel, a woman who raises her two children on her own after her husband dies. She manages the family farm and insists on driving when she becomes an elderly woman. The third women in the book is Juanlan, who goes back to her hometown of Heng’an to help her parents with their hotel.
In an interview with Anne Valente, contributor to the Vol. 1 Brooklyn website, Patterson explained how her personal experiences in China informed the book’s narrative. She stated: “When I was in college, I spent a semester studying abroad in Tianjin, a coastal Chinese city that saw a lot of action during the Boxer Rebellion. I think that was the first time I ever heard of the Boxer Rebellion, which really struck me: the event was such a flashpoint between China and the West, it happened only a century ago, and yet it’s not at all well known in the States. I lived in China for a few years after graduating college and then spent a few years working as a waitress while writing.” Patterson continued: “Later still, I attended an MFA program and at last worked up the nerve to try writing a novel. At that point, it had been several years since I’d moved back from China, and I was thinking a lot about the identity I’d constructed as a foreigner there, but since I’ve never been very interested in writing autobiographical fiction, I turned backward in time. This is where Addie came from. I started with her character and the idea that the book would lead up to the Boxer Rebellion. Everything else came from that.” Regarding the book’s setting, Patterson told Valente: “Ya’an is a town of more than 100,000, that—like so many towns in China—has changed incredibly rapidly in a short period of time. The geography of Heng’an overlays that of Ya’an pretty closely, but it’s a fictional town, which gives me leeway to imagine, add, and subtract what I need. … Heng’an is a fictional place that makes use of the real. The most important way that living in Ya’an informed the novel, though, is that I developed close friendships with several people who live there.” In an article she wrote on the Book Club Girl website, Patterson revealed that the character of Hazel was based on her grandmother. She stated: “In writing Rebellion, I was calling out to a place I no longer live but which continues to shape me; to a past version of myself; to a grandmother I loved in the simplest of ways when she was alive, and have missed in more complicated ones since her death. Calling out across the void may sound like a lonesome act, but I can assure you it wasn’t. There’s comfort to be found, after all, in listening to echoes.”
Reviews of Rebellion were favorable. “Three strong women and their acts of rebellion in disparate circumstances are intriguingly connected in this vividly rendered, impressive debut,” commented a Publishers Weekly writer. Mary Ellen Quinn, critic in Booklist, described the volume as a “remarkable debut.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor asserted: “Patterson manages to travel broad swaths of history and geography while creating intimate moments with a refreshing lack of sentimentality; and the novel’s sense of adventure makes it addictive reading.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2017, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Rebellion, p. 23.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2017, review of Rebellion.
Publishers Weekly, June 19, 2017, review of Rebellion, p. 86.
ONLINE
Book Club Girl, https://www.bookclubgirl.com/ (August 8, 2017), article by author.
Molly Patterson Website, http://www.mollypattersonwriter.com/ (April 11, 2018).
Vol. 1 Brooklyn, http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/ (August 8, 2017), Anna Valente, author interview.
Molly Patterson was born in St. Louis and lived in China for several years. Her work has appeared in several magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and The Iowa Review. She was the 2012-2013 Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, Rebellion, was published by Harper (HarperCollins) in 2017.
QUOTED: "In writing Rebellion, I was calling out to a place I no longer live but which continues to shape me; to a past version of myself; to a grandmother I loved in the simplest of ways when she was alive, and have missed in more complicated ones since her death. Calling out across the void may sound like a lonesome act, but I can assure you it wasn’t. There’s comfort to be found, after all, in listening to echoes."
August 08, 2017
Guest post by Molly Patterson, author of Rebellion
Today we're sharing a guest post by Molly Patterson, author of Rebellion. Download the reading group guide here and order a copy of Rebellion here.
From the Author:
For a long time, I thought this book was about China—how I missed living in a place that had accepted me as a visitor while keeping me apart as someone who would never belong. As it turned out, I was writing about longing, and trying to cross distances that can’t be crossed. A separation from China brought me to the page, but an entirely different loss ended up giving the book both its shape and its purpose.
When I began working on Rebellion, it had been four years since I’d left Ya’an, the town in China’s southwest where I lived from 2004 to 2006. I still felt as if there were two different versions of myself in existence: the me that resided in America, anonymous, individual, largely unaware of the cultural and historical forces that shaped me, and the me who had lived in China, an envoy from a foreign land who had never really understood her own country until she was away from it. In America, I was often reserved, even reticent; I was afraid of appearing vulnerable; I was cautious with my smiles. In China, on the other hand, I was affable—even open—and made friends easily. My humor was of a slapstick variety, which went over well with the host of young children, the sons and daughters of my friends, and friends of friends, to whom I was Moli Ayi (Auntie Molly).
Several years later, enrolled in a writing program and dreaming up stories, I found myself imagining a young woman who took herself far from everything she once knew. Clear-eyed in her mission at first, she would find herself growing unsure of herself and her purpose over time. The China she lived in was not the China I’d left. In writing her story, I turned backward to the Boxer Rebellion, a flashpoint between China and the West, when foreigners in the empire had to face the resentments and anger that had been boiling around them for decades. Here was Addie, a Christian missionary, who led me into the novel.
I had been writing for some months when another character—a wry, no-nonsense, intelligent woman named Hazel—appeared on the page. As I hovered my fingers over the keyboard, this woman who seemed to have no connection at all to Addie began telling her story. She was living on a farm in Illinois in the late 1950s. She was middle-aged and recently widowed. She was, I realized, the voice of my grandmother, Viola Stille, who had passed away just a year before.
I was missing my grandmother then, more and more as time passed, rather than less and less. It had to do with the fact that she had told me so little about her life. For ninety-five years, she lived in the same white clapboard house on an expanse of flat land, surrounded by corn, and for more than three decades she was completely alone. I’d spent plenty of time with her over the years, not only with my family but one-on-one, yet I couldn’t remember a single conversation about her; our talk was always of food and the weather and what I was doing in my life. Who was my grandmother, and what was her story, once I took out of the equation her relationship to me?
In the last year of her life, she no longer lived on the farm. She resided in an assisted living facility, where she didn’t know the tread of the carpet or the path to the bathroom in the dead of night, where the water had a different taste and the only routines that remained from her past involved watching television. After her death, I began to realize how much history was closed up inside her, and to regret that I had no way to hear it. Even when she was alive, I wouldn’t have been able to get it out of her. She wasn’t a woman to speak of what she had experienced, or what she felt, or who she was, independent of her family.
Hazel shares some elements of Viola Stille’s life—the geography of a house, the broad outlines of a marriage and widowhood—but they are not the same person. And yet, I am grateful to Hazel because in borrowing her perspective, I grew closer to my grandmother, who I still admire and miss, every day. And I am grateful to her, too, for helping me to understand what this book is about. In writing Rebellion, I was calling out to a place I no longer live but which continues to shape me; to a past version of myself; to a grandmother I loved in the simplest of ways when she was alive, and have missed in more complicated ones since her death. Calling out across the void may sound like a lonesome act, but I can assure you it wasn’t. There’s comfort to be found, after all, in listening to echoes.
QUOTED: "When I was in college, I spent a semester studying abroad in Tianjin, a coastal Chinese city that saw a lot of action during the Boxer Rebellion. I think that was the first time I ever heard of the Boxer Rebellion, which really struck me: the event was such a flashpoint between China and the West, it happened only a century ago, and yet it’s not at all well known in the States. I lived in China for a few years after graduating college and then spent a few years working as a waitress while writing."
"Later still, I attended an MFA program and at last worked up the nerve to try writing a novel. At that point, it had been several years since I’d moved back from China, and I was thinking a lot about the identity I’d constructed as a foreigner there, but since I’ve never been very interested in writing autobiographical fiction, I turned backward in time. This is where Addie came from. I started with her character and the idea that the book would lead up to the Boxer Rebellion. Everything else came from that."
"Ya’an is a town of more than 100,000, that—like so many towns in China—has changed incredibly rapidly in a short period of time. The geography of Heng’an overlays that of Ya’an pretty closely, but it’s a fictional town, which gives me leeway to imagine, add, and subtract what I need. ... Heng’an is a fictional place that makes use of the real. The most important way that living in Ya’an informed the novel, though, is that I developed close friendships with several people who live there."
History, Revision, and Rebellion: An Interview With Molly Patterson
By Anne Valente On August 8, 2017 · 1 Comment · In Featured, Interviews, Lit.
Molly Patterson
Molly Patterson’s debut novel, Rebellion, is notable in its sweep and scope, following the lives of four women across a variety of time periods, circumstances and countries. Centering on the turn of the century’s Boxer Rebellion, as well as mid-century America and modern China, Rebellion examines the ramifications of the choices women must make and the ways in which each of the novel’s four protagonists live broadly within – or rebel against – their assumed roles. A Pulitzer Prize winner and an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau-Claire, Patterson has written an intricate first novel that illuminates the intersections and subtleties of each woman’s life.
A longtime high school friend, Molly graciously made the time to email with me this summer about her new novel, due out August 8.
How did you first develop the idea for this novel?
When I was in college, I spent a semester studying abroad in Tianjin, a coastal Chinese city that saw a lot of action during the Boxer Rebellion. I think that was the first time I ever heard of the Boxer Rebellion, which really struck me: the event was such a flashpoint between China and the West, it happened only a century ago, and yet it’s not at all well known in the States. I lived in China for a few years after graduating college and then spent a few years working as a waitress while writing; later still, I attended an MFA program and at last worked up the nerve to try writing a novel. At that point, it had been several years since I’d moved back from China, and I was thinking a lot about the identity I’d constructed as a foreigner there, but since I’ve never been very interested in writing autobiographical fiction, I turned backward in time. This is where Addie came from. I started with her character and the idea that the book would lead up to the Boxer Rebellion. Everything else came from that.
The scope of Rebellion is incredibly impressive, following multiple lives across different landscapes and eras – sisters Louisa and Addie, Louisa’s daughter Hazel, and Juanlan. How did you decide on the book’s structure, and when and how to showcase each voice?
It wasn’t easy! I work from character and voice first; structure comes much later for me. I started the book in 2010, didn’t finish a full draft until 2015, and it wasn’t until the last year of that drafting process that I had a clear picture of what it would look like. Not long after I began, I decided it was going to be a book that featured a contemporary character discovering and retelling her great-aunt’s stories through a box of letters. I spent nearly a year with this character before coming to the realization that I was forcing something that just didn’t work. Her voice wasn’t authentic and her own story felt thin. So I abandoned that character and structure and was left with Addie and Hazel (who had asserted herself within the first few months of writing). I spent some more time in the wilderness and after a year or so, I began to tinker with a Chinese character who would be connected to the other two in specific but subtle ways. Later, Louisa came onto the page as a character in her own right, rather than just the recipient of letters that Addie wrote. Altogether, it took six or seven years to write Rebellion, and it took almost that long to figure out the structure.
On the topic of voice, the novel’s prologue is striking in its roving third-person point of view between multiple characters, before the novel delves into close-third seconds for each main character except for Hazel, who is narrated in first-person. How did you decide on the point of view for each character and section?
I have this concept that I call “the manner of telling”, which includes point of view and perspective, tense, and style: for me, it dictates everything else. Until it’s right, I can’t start to develop a plot at all. Given the scope of this book, I think I always knew it would be polyphonic to a certain extent, and in the end I do think of it as having five distinct voices: that of the “Driving” sections, and then one for each of the main characters. One theme that emerged in the construction of the book was that we get to see characters from different perspectives. We start the novel with Hazel at an old age and see her from the outside, not only in the third-person, but using different characters’ perceptions to form a multi-faceted impression of her. This makes it striking later when we first hear her voice, which is the only first-person perspective in the novel and comes from a different point in time than the first chapter. We get this same multi-faceted perspective on Louisa, who we see through Addie’s eyes, through Hazel’s eyes, and even through Edith’s and Bert’s eyes in the last “Driving” chapter. And of course we’re closest to her in the “Louisa” sections, which utilize a close third-person perspective. Juanlan is the only main character to speak for herself, without another perspective to contradict it. The book is constructed so that we meet her right after we meet Addie, which felt important to me in terms of the vision of China that the reader gets: Addie’s perspective is very limited, and Juanlan offers a much more nuanced vision of China that will likely be new for many American readers. And because Juanlan’s sections are in present tense, they feel more immediate for the reader, and perhaps more true. In the end, I think of Hazel and Juanlan as having the most authority in the book, and I feel that we get closest to them as characters.
Each character experiences her own version of what is expected of women. How are these women’s voices connected for you, and why was it crucial to privilege them together in this novel?
I think a lot about how women’s stories are considered and treated in the world of reading, writing, and publishing fiction. On the one hand, women make up a disproportionate segment of the fiction reading population. On the other hand, their stories are often considered light or frivolous. We have the (rather demeaning) term “chick lit” for popular fiction that features female protagonists, but we don’t have an equivalent term for popular fiction featuring male protagonists. And when it comes to what the culture deems “serious literature” male voices and protagonists are still given more credence. I don’t think male authors fear their book covers to the same extent that female authors do—the dreaded woman in a field, or the back of a woman’s neck, half-turned away! Rebellion is specifically about the experiences of women who feel boxed in by expectation and circumstance. Even so, I have this imaginary reader in my head who says, “But where are the male protagonists? How is a male reader supposed to relate?” It’s not like I read a book with a male protagonist, or a protagonist that’s not white, or a protagonist that’s not from the Midwest, and say, “Well, this book’s clearly not intended for me!” Yet still, I picture this reader, or this critic, or this publisher, and I don’t think that he’s entirely imagined.
In terms of connections among Rebellion’s characters, for me, it’s about the ways that women across culture and time have been expected to—or forced to—lead small lives, with small expectations. In some cases, I think that idea of smallness is actually misleading: Hazel spends her whole life in the same house on the same piece of land, but I consider her world expansive in terms of emotional experience and philosophical outlook. But in other cases, I think it’s frustrating, and it’s interesting to see what happens when that frustration finds an outlet. Thus Juanlan and Addie, and to a certain extent, Louisa.
Rebellion incorporates an incredible amount of historical research as well, from the landscapes of Illinois and Ohio to missionary life and the Boxer Rebellion in China. What kind of research did you have to do, and how did you organize so much information while writing the book?
I studied Mandarin in college and then lived in China for several years, so I was able to build Juanlan’s world out of my own observations and from talking to my Chinese friends. The China of the late nineteenth century was much harder to envision. I read many books about missions in China and about the Boxer Rebellion. I did a lot of research online, too—photographs are incredibly evocative for me. Most helpful, though, were journals and letters written by the missionaries themselves because these texts showcase the writers as much as they do the world they were writing about. In other words, they helped me to create characters. Addie’s story is very much from this point of view; she remains fairly blind to the perspectives and experiences of her Chinese contemporaries. As for Hazel, I unabashedly borrowed outlines of my grandmother’s life: the house she lives in very closely resembles my grandmother’s house; the farm is essentially my grandmother’s farm. But I had to fill in the psychology and the emotion. My grandmother never spoke to me about her life. Hazel’s story was partly my effort to get to know my grandmother better after her death.
You spent several years in China as well, in Ya’an in the Sichuan province. How did living in Ya’an inform your work on the novel?
Ya’an is a town of more than 100,000, that—like so many towns in China—has changed incredibly rapidly in a short period of time. The geography of Heng’an overlays that of Ya’an pretty closely, but it’s a fictional town, which gives me leeway to imagine, add, and subtract what I need. Just as Hazel’s house borrows much from my grandmother’s house, Heng’an is a fictional place that makes use of the real. The most important way that living in Ya’an informed the novel, though, is that I developed close friendships with several people who live there. I stayed in their homes, navigated the town and culture in their company, was “Auntie Molly” to their children, and learned a lot not only about China but about the U.S. as well—in particular, the stereotypes that those on either side construct about the other. This helped me to write from Juanlan’s perspective, and it helped me to write the character of Rob, an American who visits Heng’an in the contemporary Chinese storyline. More than anything, though, I love Ya’an, plain and simple, and I miss it a lot. I’ve always found that I tend to write about places only once I no longer live there.
In full disclosure, we went to high school together and both became writers. What were some of your earliest influences in writing, and some of the most important voices for you once you left St. Louis and studied creative writing and literature beyond high school?
Yes, we’ve led eerily similar lives! In terms of early influences, there were the teachers and then there were the writers. I remember writing an essay in fourth grade about seeing a moose in the wild, while on vacation in Wyoming; my teacher, Mrs. McCormick, was so encouraging, and that might be the first time I thought, “I’m a writer!” instead of “I want to be a writer when I grow up.” My earliest literary influence was Maya Angelou. She wrote a long poem called “On the Pulse of Morning” for Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, and I remember memorizing the whole thing and reciting it every day. (This made me a pretty weird ten-year old.) I also read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings around then—at probably too young an age—and I adored it without fully understanding everything. Maya Angelou was my first conception of a Writer, the first specific writer I sought out, as opposed to seeking out a book in a series (see: Nancy Drew, The Baby-Sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, etc.).
There have been so many influences over the years since then, however. In high school, I encountered Rick Bass in a creative writing class and I remember consciously mimicking his setting-driven technique. Nowadays, my influences tend to be writers who do interesting things with voice and perspective. I love Edward P. Jones for his roaming point of view and his use of the “flash-forward.” Likewise, I’m really excited by how Alice Munro moves around in time as needed. At the end of a story, she’ll suddenly leap forward a decade in a paragraph—that kind of thing thrills me. Louise Erdrich constructs novels with an intuitive logic that is simply stunning. I also adore a voice that’s fun and funny, like Zadie Smith, who’s a definite favorite. I’m always adding new influences. Last year I read Nathan Hill’s The Nix and instantly wanted to use a similar structure for my next novel.
What has been the novel’s journey from writing to publication?
I began the novel in 2010, initially writing about Addie. I spent a long time on her childhood in eastern Ohio, on meeting the man who would become her husband, and then a long time on their journey to China—none of that made it into the first full draft of the novel, much less the final one. I’m not a linear writer, so I spend a long time writing moments, images, backstory, and half-scenes, most of which is later cut, and a very little bit of which is eventually expanded and becomes the story. I like to think that it’s not wasted writing—it’s all helping me to understand the character and to home in on the voice—but in any case, there’s not much I can do about it; it’s simply my process.
I finished a full draft in the fall of 2015, which was about 50% longer than the published version. Then I cut and cut and cut, added a little, changed some more. Part of this process took place before finding an agent, part of it after (before selling the book), and part of it was working with my editor at Harper.
What was the revision process like for the book?
It was a long and ongoing process. I was revising for several years, long before I ever finished a full draft—mostly a lot of changing direction, which of course required throwing away quite a bit. The draft I sold to Harper is largely the same in terms of shape as it is now, but we spent some time reworking scenes. At one point, my editor said, “It seems we have a lot of scenes that take place in restaurants…” I’d never noticed, but thank goodness she did—it was something like nine! So some of revision was simply stagecraft. But we also worked on character arcs, and of course, cutting anything that wasn’t moving the story forward. I remember when I was younger hearing writers talk about how satisfying they found revision, and all I could think was how difficult it was. Now I feel like it’s both: it’s difficult and it’s satisfying. When you get to that point where you can see what the book will be and you know revision is getting you there—that’s the best.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve been working for about a year on a new novel, but it’s tough going—I’ve written about ninety thousand words, and I’m not sure that I have a usable one. My mentor, Erin McGraw, has likened writing a novel to feeling your way around a dark house—you discover a room, and then you discover the stuff that’s in the room, and then there’s another room and all the stuff that’s in that room…if the process is one of turning on the lights, one by one, then I’d say at this point that this new novel is still completely dark to me. Or maybe I’ve got big mittens on my hands that keep me from finding any of the switches…
That said, it’s very important to me to keep writing even when the writing isn’t going well. I finished a book this year and I also gave birth to twins, so I am, perhaps, a little exhausted in terms of creative output! For now, I’m maintaining the habit of writing and trying to keep faith that eventually I’ll find the light switch. That has to be enough for the moment.
Photo: Elaine Sheng
QUOTED: "remarkable debut."
Rebellion
Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist.
113.21 (July 1, 2017): p23.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Rebellion.
By Molly Patterson.
Aug. 2017. 560p. Harper, $26.99 (9780062574046).
Pattersons remarkable debut follows four women from three generations and in two different parts of the
world. Sisters Addie and Louisa grow up on a farm in Illinois. Louisa stays, but Addie marries and leaves
with her husband to take up missionary work in China. Later she disappears, perhaps a victim of the antiChristian
uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion. Decades later, Hazel, one of Louisa's daughters, is left
with two young children and a farm to manage when her husband dies, and she finds solace in an affair with
a married neighbor. In 1998, in fast-changing China, Juanlan has completed her university studies and
returns home to the isolated town of Heng'an, where her family owns a small hotel. There seem to be
several different novels here; Juanlans story, in particular, is tied to the others by very slender threads. The
title might lead the reader to expect large events, but, though some history lurks in the background, this is a
book about the quiet unfolding of lives and the kind of rebellion that comes from following one's heart.--
Mary Ellen Quinn
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Quinn, Mary Ellen. "Rebellion." Booklist, 1 July 2017, p. 23. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499862703/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f5089d92.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499862703
QUOTED: "Three strong women and their acts of rebellion in disparate circumstances are intriguingly connected in this vividly rendered, impressive debut."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521929213197 2/3
Rebellion
Publishers Weekly.
264.25 (June 19, 2017): p86.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Rebellion
Molly Patterson. Harper, $26.99 (560p) ISBN 978-0-06-257404-6
Three strong women and their acts of rebellion in disparate circumstances are intriguingly connected in this
vividly rendered, impressive debut. Addie, an American missionary in China in the latter part of the 19th
century, leaves her husband and children and the confines of a restrictive enclave to venture into the more
remote parts of the country with a widowed missionary with whom she has become enamored. Addie's
niece, Hazel, whom we first meet as a feisty senior in 1999, driving the car that her adult children took the
keys from, has had a tough life since she became the widowed mother of two children in the 1950s. She
asserts her independence by maintaining ownership of her farm and unexpectedly develops an illicit
relationship with her neighbor's husband, while maintaining a connection to the man's wife. Juanlan, a 1998
college graduate with no job prospects, returns to the small Chinese town where she was born to help with
the family-owned hotel. She ends up having an affair with a married, politically connected older man.
whom her brother introduces her to with the hope that he will give their parents official permission to open
up their hotel to foreigners. We see each woman interacting with family and friends, navigating the diverse
challenges she faces, achieving a hard-won sense of self worth. Most remarkable is the subtle way Patterson
ties all three lives together. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Rebellion." Publishers Weekly, 19 June 2017, p. 86. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496643845/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bc9926b0.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496643845
QUOTED: "Patterson manages to travel broad swaths of history and geography while creating intimate moments with a refreshing lack of sentimentality; and the novel's sense of adventure makes it addictive reading."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521929213197 3/3
Patterson, Molly: REBELLION
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Patterson, Molly REBELLION Harper/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $26.99 8, 8 ISBN: 978-0-06-257404-6
Patterson's debut novel sprawls across decades and continents, from the American heartland to the far
reaches of China, to follow the lives of four women--some related more closely than others--who remake
themselves as circumstances allow or require.When 84-year-old Hazel goes into a nursing home in 1999,
her children arrive to close up her farmhouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, and find relics of a past they can't
fully understand. Abruptly the story shifts to Illinois in the 1890s, as Hazel's mother, Louisa, who has
moved from Ohio to farm with her husband, receives letters from her sister Addie, who's living what seems
to Louisa an exotic life in China with her missionary husband, Owen, and two sons. Another abrupt shift
takes readers to 1998 China as recent college graduate Juanlan reluctantly returns to her provincial
hometown to help her parents run their small hotel. While Louisa settles into a mostly contented life, the
stories of Hazel, her aunt Addie, and Juanlan, whose physical connection to the others is slim at best, follow
a similar thematic arc. Each recognizes that she may have more than one identity, each shrugs off passivity
to take control of her life, and each is influenced by a deep relationship with another woman as she falls into
an unexpected love affair. Respected widow Hazel carries on a long, secret love affair with her best friend's
husband; dutiful daughter Juanlan forges a bond with her rebellious, pregnant sister-in-law while finding
herself attracted to several different men; and most dramatically, Addie abandons her family to travel across
China beside a woman missionary with whom she's fallen in love. Despite minor quibbles--at times
Patterson gets stuck in the weeds of daily minutiae, and outlier Louisa, satisfied in her quiet life, remains
undeveloped--Hazel's, Juanlan's, and Addie's stories could each stand alone as an involving novel. A talent
to watch, Patterson manages to travel broad swaths of history and geography while creating intimate
moments with a refreshing lack of sentimentality; and the novel's sense of adventure makes it addictive
reading.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Patterson, Molly: REBELLION." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A493329272/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=35db05c5.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A493329272