"Laddie A True Blue Story" An Interesting Product of Its Time

 

    Normally, I wouldn't read a book from 1913, and frankly after finishing this book, I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a book that really blew me away. Now, I don't know how much of this is fabricated, and how much of it is truly based off of Gene Stratton-Porter's life, but what I do know is that there is quite literally over a century of time that separates her childhood from mine. If you want a basic summary of this book, it's pretty much a slice of live novel told from the perspective of an 8-year old girl.

    I mean, it's not awful, but what this book is is awfully long, like really, really long. Like 600 pages of this slice of life story kind of long. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't discriminate books based off of length, I absolutely adore the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin, because of it's sheer complexity and length, but this book is very much not a fantasy novel. And frankly, I'm not sure how many random musings regarding nature in rural Indiana are needed. As Car Seat Headrest puts it in Sober to Death, "good lives make bad stories" and while this book isn't necessarily bad, it can be hard to stay invested.

    It is because of that reason that I had been nursing this book for nearly a month during my lunch breaks at work. I mean even when I did manage to binge this book near the end I had to remind myself to take a break in-between each chapter because otherwise I don't think I'd be able to manage. Look, I understand this novel comes from a narrator that largely views life as idyllic, especially because they are an 8 year old child, but truly, there is very little conflict to be found. Even when conflict is present, like the odd half rushed final chapter when everything magically comes together, you just end up seeing this odd scenario where a character suffers a stroke after finding out that his nephew actually sabotaged his prospects, and oh this person who was engaged to a daughter of the family is actually his son so now there's a double wedding and bye. 

    While I do enjoy the snapshot of the times that this book represents to me, at the same time, it's age really shows at some parts. Also, you can really tell this was written by a white person, especially the weird references to slaves and slavery, like this novel is surprisingly not that racist, but every once in a while the sort of prejudice that would shock a modern person shows up. Like it hardly focuses on the fact that the father helped in the underground railroad, the child doesn't even thinks it's cool she's just like oh black people came here and were given money. Moreover, at random points of the book Mr. Pryor will casually just be like "slaves are easier than daughters" or Mrs. Stanton will say "even the darkest savages of Africa.

Final Score: 50/100

    I'm almost certain that the only reason I enjoyed this book at all was because I managed to pace it out very slowly. While I certainly don't think it's captivating, I don't think it's garbage, it's just really uninteresting. No offense to Gene Stratton-Porter, I'm sure life in rural Indiana must have been a very fond time for you, but frankly I couldn't remember many of the characters and oftentimes names were just thrown out willy nilly. Now, I think the classism that is somewhat discussed actually piqued my interest, but you're very lucky that I'm Roman Catholic, because otherwise the amount of religion shoved within this book might be more offensive to anyone else.