as a Book Sense Pick for Spring 2008!
Top Picks for Reading Groups 2008
Publishers Weekly (*starred review*):
Blume's lush novel ... offers its own hypnotic montage of poetic images, turning stereotypes into archetypes.
Chicago Tribune:
Brilliant, unusual writing.
The New York Times Book Review:
Aigredoux itself, with its towering columns and ‘Spanish moss…looking like ghost clothes that had been flung up there to dry,’ comes to life beautifully.
Good Morning America's Robin Roberts:
As a Southerner reading [Tennyson], it took me back to another time. A lovely and deep story of a little girl's discovery of the past, due to her own personal loss.
Booklist:
The precocious and sensitive Tennyson begins dreaming of her Civil War ancestors and is swept into their dark history of greed, betrayal, and pride. The Fontaine history is complex, evoking horror and sympathy … many readers will respond to this novel’s Southern gothic sensibility, especially Blume’s beautiful, poetic writing about how the past resonates through the generations.
Kirkus:
Blume builds her cast with characters kind and cruel, threading in the themes of the cyclical nature of family history, the War's enduring inner wounds, the complex relations between races, to name but a few … A wry, sensitively written meditation on escaping the grip of the past without losing touch with it.
The Times-Picayune:
Blume's writing has a dreamy, poetic quality ... altogether charming ... drenched in the Southern Gothic tradition.
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books:
With characters and settings that evoke the faded grandeur of a people who feel cheated rather than defeated, and who are indignant over the theft of a lifestyle they never regretted no matter how bloodstained or exploitive, Blume creates Southern Gothic that would make Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor proud.
Horn Book Magazine:
A hardscrabble dreamer who elicits ready sympathy, Tennyson is a strong protagonist, and her interactions with Henrietta and Zulma dramatize the cultural and generational clashes of the period. But Aigredoux itself is the real star: imbued with a distinct, capricious personality, alternately aiding and tormenting its inhabitants, it stands a mournful, decrepit witness to the glories and cruelties of days gone.
Powell's Books
This book is so haunting, so carefully detailed, and so wonderfully written, we dare you not to recommend it to everyone you know.
Kidsread.com:
Lesley M. M. Blume successfully displays her immense writing talents once again. She reawakens the past with vivid descriptions and careful research, taking readers on a personal tour of the Deep South and the stains humanity has left on her soil. The colorful characters leave a lasting impression, bringing the story to life with their funny quirks, deep-rooted lifestyles and distinctive individualities. And then the author weaves the entire tale together with her incredibly poetic, heartfelt and sincere writing style ... TENNYSON is a wonderful book.
Magic Tree:
Otherworldly dreams infuse this story with a mythic quality similar to that found in Jerry Spinelli’s writing, and Blume’s use of imagery render the tale visually stunning.
Miss Erin:
Tennyson is a remarkable book. Remarkable in the sense that I don't think I've read any other book like it. The best way I can describe it is by giving you three keywords: Gothic + Southern + Writing. The writing is very stark and vivid and dark; the characters odd but lovable. Parts of it made me laugh, parts made my heart ache.