Book Summary and Reviews of Ellen Foster (Oprah's Book Club) by Kaye Gibbons

Ellen Foster (Oprah's Book Club) by Kaye Gibbons

Ellen Foster (Oprah's Book Club)

by Kaye Gibbons

  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Jan 1987, 168 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

An eleven-year-old girl must rely on wit and courage to survive in this award-winning debut novel, an Oprah Book Club selection.

"When I was little, I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. This powerful novel, first published in 1987, has become an American classic.

Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters's Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Citation for Fiction.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A moving and ultimately uplifting story." —New York Newsday

"Endearing...with carefully sustained narrative and knowing humor." —Philadelphia Inquirer

This information about Ellen Foster (Oprah's Book Club) was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Kaye Gibbons

Kaye Gibbons is an American novelist. Her first novel, Ellen Foster (1987), received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Prize in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gibbons is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and two of her books, Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman, were selected for Oprah's Book Club in 1998.

Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina, and went to Rocky Mount Senior High School. She attended North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying American and English literature. She has three daughters.

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