Book Review: I Am Lidian

Book Review: I Am Lidian

Author: Naomi Lane Babson

Date: 1941

Publisher: Harcourt Brace & World

ISBN: none

Length: 245 pages

Quote: “Ninety years old...As if it were by her own choice that she had lived so long.”

Lidian is, according to the author, a composite of several people who lived between 1838 and 1928. By 1941 none of those people was left to tell us how accurately Lidian is represented in this book.

She remembers everything. She’s not overly patient with those who don’t. “That girl from the newspaper thought she was asleep. Let her think it, then. When you are ninety it’s your privilege to go to sleep in company if you choose. She wasr tired of answering questions anyhow.”

This novel begins with the rather familiar device of assuring us that Lidian will survive her adventures by introducing her at age ninety, then presenting the rest of the story as the reverie into which she nods off while the reporter goes back to write a piece of “fiddle-faddle.” Lidian remembers being a child who was mute for a few years after putting lye in her mouth. She married the man one of her friends wanted; she lived to regret it,. She travelled from Massachusetts to Montana. She had children, and lost some. She became a widow and remarried. And did she kill a man, along the way, or merely contribute to his accidental death? She became, in any case, the sort of old lady who thinks and talks about her family relationships more than the “trash” of news and fashion.

If you have known, loved, and perhaps missed someone like that, you might enjoy Lidian’s company. Her story is not political but it qualifies as feminist literature; it celebrates a woman who was strong but not selfconsciously heroic, sexy but not foolishly romantic, loyal but not sentimental, polite but not affected, a whole person but not a saint.

If you need a reminder to listen to your mother’s or grandmother’s stories while you can, I Am Lidian is one.