Review Summaries

• Readers often praise the careful portrayal of family relations and social change, while also seeing it as a restrained, quietly unfolding novel.

• Early criticism treated it as a family novel that vividly captured contemporary New York, while later reassessments place it as a quieter Pulitzer winner with social-historical weight but little formal daring.

Reviews

• Very moving tale about a father who learns to accept and love his children. Seems like it could have been written fifty years earlier. This book would never win the Pulitzer Prize now as it is the opposite of post modern but it deserved it in my opinion.

• I have set myself a little project of reading all the Pulitzer prize winners and read this as the first. When they heard what I planned, several people said I would find some books have not 'stood the test of time'. This is not one of them. As a consideration of a society in change, it seemed to resonate completely with me. Yes, it's a hundred years old but still relevant and I found it hugely enjoyable. It is well-written, of course, and thought-provoking.

• Before she died, Roger Gales's wife, Judith, made him promise, "You will live on in our children's lives." For years, he failed to keep that promise. Aching from grief, he sank inside himself, losing his faith and ignoring his three daughters. He awakened when they reached adulthood, and he attempted to reconnect with them. It is not easy. Roger's children are fiercely independent and very different from one another. Each faces her own challenges. - Edith is devoted to her five children, and sometimes hurts others to protect them. - Laura embraces a liberated lifestyle to the extent that she hurts her husband. - Deborah is committed to her career helping and teaching the poor immigrants of New York City, but neglects her personal relationships. Conflicts arise due to the conflicting values and the changing society in early twentieth-century New York City. Each daughter has a very different view of the role of women in their world. The sudden death of a family member and two dangerous childbirths add to the stress, as does the economic strain that World War I places on Roger's business and the family's finances. Ernest Poole's 1917 novel "His Family" won the very first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which was awarded in 1918. Although some have speculated that the committee used this prize to honor an earlier work of Poole's, this novel holds up well a century after its publication. The characters are strong, the conflicts are real, and the struggles of families, finances, and immigrants persist today.

• Very interesting look at old NYC.

• This book was written in 1917, and yes, it shows its age in some respects, but also surprisingly progressive. The story of a widower and his relationship with his three daughters. They are each wildly different individuals, and as he tries to nurture them and make them see that marriage and children are they key to all happiness, they end up teaching him that life has so much more to offer. In the end, it's a simple story about a family living in NYC, with all the angst and the joy it brings.

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