Synopses & Reviews
Evalina Toussaint, the orphaned child of an exotic dancer in New Orleans, is just thirteen when she is admitted to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. The year is 1936, and the mental hospital is under the direction of the celebrated psychiatrist Robert S. Carroll. His innovative program of treatment for mental and nervous disorders and addictions is based on exercise, diet, art, and occupational therapies--and experimental shock therapy.
Evalina finds herself in the company of some notable fellow patients, including Zelda Fitzgerald, estranged wife of F. Scott, who takes the young piano prodigy under her wing. Evalina becomes the accompanist for the musical programs at the hospital. This provides privileged insight into the events that transpire over the next twelve years, culminating in a tragic fire--its mystery unsolved to this day--that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. At all costs, Evalina listens, observes, remembers--and tells us everything.
Guests on Earth is a mesmerizing novel about a time and a place where creativity and passion, theory and medicine, fact and fiction, are luminously intertwined by a writer at the height of her craft.
Review
"In Guests on Earth Lee Smith gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work. Her characters are realized with singular intensity, the most vivid interior life, and flawless dialogue. Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction." Robert Stone, author of "Death of the Black-Haired Girl" and "Dog Soldiers"
Review
"Perennially best-selling Smith presents an impeccably researched historical novel that reveals the early twentieth century's antediluvian attitudes toward mental health and women's independence." --
Booklist "Engaging . . . touching." --
Publishers Weekly
"The American South has produced some of the greatest writers in history. Seated at the head of that table is Lee Smith, who writes with ferocity and detail, tenderness and specificity, about life in the mountains of southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee. In Guests on Earth, something altogether new and different, Smith . . . solves the mystery of the death of Zelda Fitzgerald through the prism of a beguiling narrator, Evalina, who bore witness to the tragedy and lived to tell her version of the events. This is Lee Smith at her powerful best." --Adriana Trigiani, author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker's Daughter
"In Guests on Earth Lee Smith gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work. Her characters are realized with singular intensity, the most vivid interior life, and flawless dialogue. Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction." --Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl and Dog Soldiers Review quotes
Review
"Perennially best-selling Smith presents an impeccably researched historical novel that reveals the early twentieth century's antediluvian attitudes toward mental health and women's independence." --Booklist
"Engaging . . . touching." --Publishers Weekly Review quote
Review
"[An] elegant historical novel . . . Lee Smith is an assured and accomplished writer, and her use of Zelda as a subject in Guests on Earth is brilliant . . . This is a carefully researched, utterly charming novel. By the time you finish it, you fall in love with these fascinating lives, too." --The Washington Post
"Guests on Earth is a mesmerizing novel about a time and place where creativity and passion, theory and medicine, fact and fiction, are luminously intertwined." --BookPage
"Indeed, most of the high spirited, rebellious, outspoken women who populate Guests on Earth would not now be considered insane at all. Smith's imaginative, layered story illuminates the complexity of their collective plight--to be put in towers until they had no choice but to behave--and rescues them one by one." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"[An] engaging and engrossing novel . . . Smith's well-developed characters, rich historical detail and easy prose create a novel that some may call her best yet, and which it just may be." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Those who enjoyed Smith's previous work (e.g., Fair and Tender Ladies; The Last Girls) will certainly appreciate this absorbing book, as will those interested in the history of treating mental illness in the United States and fans of Southern or Appalachian fiction." --Library Journal
"With Guests on Earth, Lee Smith shines new light on a shadowy, complex subject . . . She offers a broader historical perspective--and with it, a captivating, inimitable voice." --The Raleigh News and Observer
"Treading the fine line between sanity and insanity, this historical novel imagines the 12 years proceeding the 1948 fire that engulfed a North Carolina mental hospital and killed F. Scott Fitzgerald's estranged wife, Zelda." --Ms. Magazine
"Engaging . . . Touching." --Publishers Weekly
"This is Lee Smith at her powerful best, writing the South she knows through the eyes of a woman who lived it." --Adriana Trigiani, author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker's Wife
"In Guests on Earth Lee Smith gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work. Her characters are realized with singular intensity, the most vivid interior life, and flawless dialogue. Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction." --Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl and Dog Soldiers
Review quotes
Synopsis
Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work. Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl
It s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses cascading events that lead up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. Author Lee Smith has created, through a seamless blending of fiction and fact, a mesmerizing novel about a world apart--in which art and madness are luminously intertwined.
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Synopsis
"The insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read." --F. Scott Fitzgerald
Evalina Toussaint, orphaned child of an exotic dancer in New Orleans, is just thirteen when she is admitted to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. The year is 1936, and the mental hospital is under the direction of the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Robert S. Carroll, whose innovative treatment for nervous disorders and addictions is based upon fresh air, diet, exercise, gardening, art, dance, music, theater, and therapies of the day such as rest cures, freeze wraps, and insulin shock. Talented Evalina is soon taken under the wing of the doctor's wife, a famous concert pianist, and eventually becomes the accompanist for all musical programs at the hospital, including the many dances and theatricals choreographed by longtime patient Zelda Fitzgerald.
Synopsis
"Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the
Synopsis
"Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the
About the Author
Lee Smith is the author of sixteen previous books of fiction, including the bestselling novels Fair and Tender Ladies and The Last Girls, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Also the recipient of the 1999 Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.&