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Lovegood Girls (2020)
by Gail Godwin
If
a friend told you how much she values you and then doesn’t contact you
for many years, you might doubt her sincerity. But that’s the pattern in
the friendship of Merry Jellicoe and Feron Hood, and Gail Godwin intends
for readers to see it as an intense, close, and lasting connection.
Merry
and Feron meet as first-semester roommates at Lovegood College. They are
opposites. Merry is sunny, cheerful, and outgoing; the worst that ever
happened to her is losing her dog. Feron is withdrawn, socially awkward,
and distrusting. Her alcoholic mother has died, and she’s run away from
her abusive stepfather.
But
inexplicably, they click. Then tragedy strikes Merry’s life during
semester break, and she can’t return to school. Merry and Feron don’t
see one another for many years — a pattern that will continue the rest
of their lifelong friendship — yet their bond holds. When they do get
together, they pick up where they left off and exchange testimonials to
the other’s importance.
Much
of the story involves their separate lives, Merry’s running her family’s
tobacco farm in North Carolina, and Feron as a writer living in New York
City. They each marry older men who die, Feron’s in a tragic accident.
(The novel has an improbable number of unexpected fatalities.)
Readers
will get a clear sense of each character but may remain unable to
explain their tight connection. Maybe that was one of Godwin’s themes —
that friendship is mysterious.
.
.
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