Sue Monk Kidd

"The story follows Hetty 'Handful' Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. "The Invention of Wings" follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined"--Provided by publisher.

The invention of wings

Traces more than three decades in the lives of a wealthy Charleston debutante who longs to break free from the strictures of her household and pursue a meaningful life; and the urban slave, Handful, who is placed in her charge as a child before finding courage and a sense of self. By the best-selling author of The Secret Life of Bees.

The Invention of Wings

Micaela Rangel

Amazing.
Brutal.
Coming of age.
Slavery, femininism, power abuse.
This is the best read I've had in a while and it'll surely be on my top by the end of the year.

Elizabeth Wood

This is the kind of historical fiction that many historical fiction books try to be like. 

Wonderfully researched, and fantastic characterization throughout the book. I learned a lot about a pair of sisters who should have been mentioned in history books.

Trish

Roots meets Uncle Tom’s Cabin meets Gone with the Wind meets feminist movement - all packaged neatly into a totally discussable book club read. 

Not bad... but not that great either. 

I understand that it’s an inspired novel, historical fiction at its finest. But I just could not care less about any of these “characters”. The only part that really made my heart hurt was when Handful went to the Work House. Guys I’m not inhuman, this book is truly moving at certain parts. But overall it’s just an okay read for me. Roots (Alex Haley) was far more jarring and memorable of a slave story and Uncle Tom’s Cabin is iconic for obvious reasons. I’m not sure this story is up there with the greats of literature but it’s definitely the most readable and accessible of the three.

Janice Hopper

3.5 stars, I think. Will write more when I've had time to digest it a little.

Okay. When I started this book, I didn't know that it was based on a real pair of sisters who were active in the abolition movement before the Civil War. I think that would account for the very slightly stilted vibe I got from the book while I was reading it.

The author blends historical facts for the women with fictional material, notably in the character of the slave woman Hetty, aka "Handful," an expert seamstress for the plantation. Hetty was given to Sarah, the POV daughter, on her 11th birthday. Sarah, already understanding what a pernicious institution slavery is, wanted no part of Hetty's ownership. Sarah gets in trouble when her parents find out she's tried to teach Hetty to read. It was actually illegal to do that.

Sarah and her sister Angelina grow up to be powerful speakers for the abolitionists. They suffered a bit for that. Sarah became a Quaker also.

So go in knowing this is sorta kinda narrative non-fiction, a mostly true story with fictional elements. It's a powerful tale, with a bit of the White Savior Complex thrown in for good measure.

Skye Sherman

I don't know, I just couldn't get into this book. I loved "The Secret Life of Bees" so I was hoping to love this novel too, but I thought it was super slow and the story was just sorta...flat. 

I also kept having to remind myself that this book was set in the 1800s. The way the story was told made it seem much further into the future. It was like the setting of the story's events didn't match up with the way the story was told, how Sarah talked/acted/though, etc. Maybe this was just me? It just felt very much like it was penned later than it was supposed to have been set.

By the end, I was like, "Okay, what even really happened in this story?" I mean, there were elements of the story that were good...and it dealt with some important issues...but I don't know, something was missing for me. I really didn't like Sarah much and I thought the book just sort of trudged on. Oh well.

Sarah Ryan

A powerful book following the lives of two women in the American south - one a white, upperclass woman and the other a black slave woman. The story shows the differences between them and their lives, their unusual friendship, the atrocities visited upon slaves, the fight for abolition and at the same time it highlights how ‘free’ white women were not free either.

Shay Cote

This book made me fall in love with reading and continues to be my favorite book of all time!

Amanda Valentin

I picked up this book mainly because it was about Sarah Grimke. In college I took a women's history class and of course the Grimke sisters were an important part of the course! As do most books about slavery it had its cringe moments...where you wondered how on earth anyone could be treated so inhumanely in our history, as the slaves were. This was a really great historical fiction book!

Melody Izard

For May.

Sue Monk Kidd does not gloss over slavery. She brings each shadowy sort of sketch of an assumption about who a slave might have been right next door and breathes them full of life. She gives them names and nick names and dreams and pain and resentment. The story is easy and simple. I might have said too simple - but then I listened to the author's note. I was so impressed by the amount and the depth of her research into the Charleston slave-holding days and the strong people who dared to cry out against it that I move it from simply a good read to one I would recommend.

Paulina 

Spodziewalam sie czegos wiecej. a to takie smiganie po powierzchni, bez zanurzenia glebiej.

From the celebrated author of the international bestseller The Secret Life of Bees comes an extraordinary novel about two exceptional women. Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ... A powerful, sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the nineteenth century, THE INVENTION OF WINGS evokes a world of shocking contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, of righteous people living daily with cruelty they fail to recognise; and celebrates the power of friendship and sisterhood against all the odds.

Laura Mitchell Hutchinson

I loved this book and regularly recommend it to friends as a fresh take on historical fiction (which I am normally not interested in). The story is set in 1800s deep south USA and the narrator alternates between two girls of the same age as they grow up - one a Caucasian girl in a large, wealthy family who is denied an education because of her gender; and the other girl is her personal salve, an African American girl who knows nothing but hardship here and folklore of her homeland. It's about the point where the abolition movement and feminist movement collide, based on a true story and is SO moving. I loved it.

Nicole 

This one was recommended to me by my American Lit teacher and i really did enjoy it! Learnt about one of the main characters in my history class so i was super keen on this. Took me awhile because of how dense the book was so it wasn’t exactly the easiest for me to digest, plus i like to take my time with a book to really get into it. Overall pretty damn amazing, i love historical fiction. If you are into books like The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson, you'd probably enjoy this too :)

Nona G

A solid 3.5*. As with The Secret Life of Bees, I loved the writing of this novel. It has an otherworldly delicacy which is hard to come by these days and something you wouldn't expect when hard themes such as slavery are tackled. The book is, at the same time, beautifully written and light enough that you can finish it in two days, and devastating through the subject it approaches.

It's a story about women. Kidd started from wanting to write about sisters and evolved into a novel where all important characters are women, men being relegated to supporting (or, as it happens, un-supporting) roles. I was happy to find out that Sarah and Angelina Grimke were real people and, even more than that, the most famous and infamous women of their time, by being actively involved in the abolitionist movement and maybe the first to speak out in public about equality between sexes. It's even more impressive since they themselves were born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and came from a wealthy family who owned plantations and slaves, their father being a judge and congressman who helped write some of the laws on slavery.

The book follows mainly Sarah Grimke and, while her life was fictionalized, especially regarding her childhood, I was glad to find out that Kidd actually did a lot of research and used Sarah's work on abolition and gender equality (pamphlets, articles) as well as her journals and testimonies from her contemporaries when recounting her adult life. Angelina (Nina), Sarah's sister and goddaughter, is more present towards the end, as she was yet unborn when the book starts. Still, both their childhoods and formative years are in focus - Sarah as a child prodigy, with a mind more astute that even her brothers', but unable to follow a career in law because she is a girl; Nina as the runt of the family, the goddaughter on whom Sarah pours her most intimate desires and whom she moulds into a younger, more courageous version of herself.

The book is built from two perspectives. One is Sarah's, whom we follow as she grows up in a plantation family, unable to study like her brothers, but having a keen spirit and closely observing and wanting to change the lives of the family slaves, even from a young age. The other one is Hetty/ Handful's, a young slave girl just abut Sarah's age, who is given to Sarah as a present to be her personal maid. Kidd did something smart here, by alternating the points of view of the white, rich girl and the slave and bringing different perspectives on the same topic. Handful lives the horrors that Sarah witnesses from outside, but they become sort of friends and maintain an unlikely relationship that brings both of them comfort and pain.

These relationships - between Sarah and Handful, between Sarah and Nina, between Handful and her mother and even the ones inside the Grimke family - are the most striking and well-constructed aspect of this novel. While the characters seem at times bland (and it was hard for me to connect to them at a deeper level), the relationships are painfully alive and are the ones that drive the plot. So, even though I was not excited about the character building (and was annoyed here and there by the decisions they made), the time taken to build up the relationships and make them the main focus of the story makes this novel totally worth reading.

Jacklyn O’Brien 

This was beautifully written. It was a longer book, but didn't feel like it because I was so immersed in the characters lives. I have nothing bad to say about this book.

Rachel

Kind of disappointed by this book. It started off with so much promise and I kept expecting it to get better, but it never really did. I felt like not enough time was spent showing the interactions between Handful and Sarah during their childhood. All of a sudden they are friends, but it seems like Handful didn't get the notice and only tolerates Sarah. The book gets two stars because I liked the ending.

The invention of wings

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