Home »
At Home in Mitford a delightful, quiet read
Book Review
By Derryll White
Jan Karon (1994). At Home In Mitford
“What shall I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; ; if I were a mere man, I would do my part; yet what can I give him … give my heart!”- Christina Rossetti
The above is just one of the many quotes that are in this book, worked into the story line. This is not a volume I would normally have found my way to. I was talking with a customer in Lotus Books where I work, and she said “Give the Mitford series a try. It might quiet your sorrow.” Then sometime later I was sitting at Hot Shots in Cranbrook, reading quietly on the sun-drenched patio, and another woman whom I did not know stopped, and said “Kenneth Harvey’s ‘Blackstrap Hawko’ hmmm. That’s a great book but from the look of you Jan Karon might be someone you want to try.”
“What the hell,” I thought, “the look of you! What’s wrong with me?” So I Googled Karon, found again the Mitford series, and put it on my list of things to find. I mean how many times is one to ignore intelligent, perceptive women? At one’s peril!
Jan Karon developed her skills writing advertising for thirty years. Leaving that she moved to the small town (pop. 1,800) of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and created Mitford.
‘At Home In Mitford’ is the first volume in Karon’s Mitford series. From the very beginning this is a comfortable read. People are nice to each other, neighbourly. Jan Karon pays attention to detail, developing the character of the town of Mitford alongside that of the main players – an Anglican priest, a large Bouvier dog, a young boy, and a woman. Have to have the woman, actually several women.
Everyone in town knows everyone else’s business, not in a particularly snoopy or mean way but in a small town way, a ‘we are all here together and look out for each other’ kind of way. The residents like Mitford and the ways of the town as they are. “We want people to come and visit,” says Mayor Esther Cunningham, “but we’re not really interested in having them stick around. The college town of Wesley, just fifteen miles away, is perfect for that.”
One thing that is noticeable in this volume is a love of literature. Wordsworth is quoted, as is the Bible, and mention is made of works as varied as Voltaire, Dick Francis and Maeterlinck. I love the richness, the value characters place on reading aloud, the sense that literature has importance in one’s life.
It’s a quiet book, with many opportunities for self-reflection. Simple things such as a stray dog, a wayward boy, and more complex things such as the death of a wife, offer focus for personal assessment. Karon doesn’t push a reader to think, to analyze, the way a writer such as Harvey or Cormac McCarthy does. She does, however, quietly lead you to things you may not have visited within yourself for a long time – change, openness to others, personal growth. The book can be classified as mystery fiction, but van just as easily be shelved in self-help or grieving or Western religion. It’s a delightful, quiet read that takes one through the seasons of the year and the seasons of one’s life.
I am really thankful for those perceptive women who stopped to touch me so very briefly, and yet so deeply.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
