Tennyson by Lesley M. M. Blume

I haven't written here for a long time, but I am feeling discouraged about my participation in the online book groups I belong to, so I am writing now for my own purposes: to keep track of what I read and to help myself figure out the books I have read and what I like/dislike about them.

I just finished Tennyson by Blume and really enjoyed it.  It is a quiet, non-flashy read and historical at that, so I doubt if it will get much of a following.  That is too bad, because it is worth the time.  But I guess I am not sure if it is written for children or for people like me: adults who read children's books.  

The basic plot - two young girls, 11 and 8, are taken by their father to the family's ancestral home, to live with their aunt.  He leaves them there to search for their mother (his wife), who has left the family.  Tennyson, the older, introspective one begins having dreams that involve the history of the old house and the family that lived there.  The dreams help Tennyson understand what her father meant about the family's "blood money" - and throws light on some of the complex problems of the old South, slavery, and the Civil War.  It is not a didactic exposure of these ideas, but rather more like a memoir, seen through the eyes of an innocent, but sensitive observer.

I am not terribly fond of the dream tactic as used by many authors, and here, again, I find it just a tad awkward, but I can forgive the author the use of this device, because it seems to work for me this time.  I am not sure why.  There was some indication that the events in real life were enough to suggest the dreams.  But there was too much detail in the dreams for them to appear to be real dreams.  So, yes, they have to be, in a sense, magical.  But, they seemed like plausible magic, if that makes any sense.

There is one thing I am puzzling about though.  Tennyson starts writing the story of the family to submit it to the literary magazine that her mother reads and tries to get published in.  She is hoping that her mother will see her published work and come back.  What confuses me is what she expects the mother to think.  Her mother has tried for years to get published in that magazine.  True, Tennyson knows that it is a way to communicate with her mother, but what does she think the mother will think?  Here is her daughter, only 11 years old, getting published with her first effort, on equal footing with adults.  Doesn't she have any idea how that will further devastate the mother's sense of efficacy?  She failed as a mother, she failed as a wife, and now she has been shown that she has failed as a writer.  Yes, Tennyson and Hattie and their father still need her, but what does she have to offer?  Do they love her for what she is NOT?  She is not of the formerly wealthy aristocracy.  What can they expect from her - she who is compared to a wild dog with manners?  

This one may need a second read - except I have so many others I should be reading right now, so that I can return them to the library on time.