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    The Ponder Heart
    The Ponder Heart
    The Ponder Heart
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Ponder Heart

    Written by Eudora Welty

    Narrated by Sally Darling

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Originally published in The New Yorker in 1954, The Ponder Heart is easily Eudora Welty's most comic novel, a lighthearted burlesque that rivals Caldwell's Tobacco Road for capturing rural idioms, and the novels of Mark Twain for high farce. Edna Earle, a person of large distinction in Clay County, and the talkative owner of the Beulah Hotel, tells the story of her Uncle Daniel Ponder, a local hero whose over-affection for society compels him to give everything he owns away. The disappearance of Uncle Daniel's second wife, the waifish and willowy Bonnie Dee Peacock, leads to his arrest for murder. The trial, which comprises the second half of the novel, is a masterpiece of courtroom anarchy. A cast of Dickensian characters coupled with Edna's hysterically accurate observations of small-town life, transport the reader, like a raucous family drive, to a truly original conclusion.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 23, 2011
    ISBN9781456125073
    Author

    Eudora Welty

    EUDORA WELTY (1909–2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University (where she studied advertising). In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

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    Reviews for The Ponder Heart

    3.5/5

    104 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is the first book I've listened to by this author. I enjoy the richness of the story. The descriptions were amazing. I had a hard time at first with the narrator, but she grew on me. I'd like to listen to more of her.
    • 4/5
      Yet another beautiful story by Welty -- full of almost unbelievable eccentricity and Southern charm. How many Uncle Davids are out there giving away their money and lost in a world that is truly outside of themselves.
    • 4/5
      This humorous story of Uncle Daniel Ponder is told through the eyes of his niece, Edna Earle. Much of the action centers on his marriage, his wife's death, and his subsequent trial. An early humorous moment includes when he is committed to the asylum but turns the table on the relative who had him committed. A later humorous scene begins at the moment Uncle Daniel takes the stand in the trial. It is a good example of Southern literature from the period in which it was written. While some may call it racist today, I don't really think that was the author's intent. She was simply using common verbiage that both blacks and whites used at that time period. While this book will never be a favorite with me, it does a good job of evoking a by-gone era.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the funniest novels you'll ever read. Read it slowly and try to imagine the dialects and relaxed culture of the old American South. How anyone could read these words from the trial of Uncle Daniel Ponder and not come near to falling over laughing is beyond me! Uncle Daniel has stopped his murder trial cold by standing up, throwing open his coat and grabbing fistfulls of money and tossing it to the courtroom spectators. "Next, Mr. Bank Sistrunk stands up and roars out, "Daniel Ponder! Where did you get that money?" It was too late then. "Well," says Miss Missionary Sistrunk - the oldest one, returned from wildest Africa just twenty-four hours before - "the Ponders as I've always been told did not burn their cotton when Sherman came, and maybe this is their judgment." "Take that back, Miss Florette," I says over people's heads. " The Ponders did not make their money that way. You got yours suing," I says. "What if that train hadn't hit Professor Magee, where'd any Sistrunks be today? Ours was pine trees and 'way after Sherman, and you know it." Another touching quote about Uncle Daniel spoken by his niece, the narrator of the tale. "I don't know if you can measure love at all. But Lord knows there's a lot of it, and seems to me from all the studying I've done over Uncle Daniel - and he loves more people than you and I put together ever will - that if the main one you've set your heart on isn't speaking for your love, or is out of your reach some way, married or dead, or plain nitwitted, you've still got that love banked up somewhere. What Uncle Daniel did was just bestow his all around quick - men, women, and children. Love! There's always somebody wants it. Uncle Daniel knew that. He's smart in a way you aren't, child." Tell me that's not great writing! Anyone? Anyone? Get this book. Read this book. You'll LOVE THIS BOOK!
    • 4/5
      I've enjoyed savoring Welty's novels slowly over the past few summers (since her output is pretty low, I've limited myself to one a summer). However, I found The Ponder Heart somewhat disappointing. Like all her stories, she captures small-town Mississippi life in the early-mid 20th century quite brilliantly, but this tale told by Edna Earle, proprietress of the town's hotel, about the misadventures of her feckless Uncle Daniel Ponder just didn't carry the impact or insight of Delta Wedding or Losing Battles. One of her lesser works, imo.
    • 4/5
      This novella (157 pages in the edition I read) was recommended to me as an enjoyable example of Southern literature. As such, it is mostly a portrait of a small-town community in Mississippi in the 1940’s. Talky Edna Earle narrates the story of how her generous-to-a-fault (literally) Uncle Daniel came to be falsely accused of murdering his wife, and what happened after that. The pleasures of this novella are not in the plot, but mostly in the language and the comic depictions of the characters.
    • 3/5
      An enjoyable read. Told thru the first-person narration of Edna Earle, the story of small town life in the deep South resonated with an abiding love of family and community. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a drama or comedy as I was reading it, but have decided that it was quite humorous.
    • 2/5
      I have to admit I got a bit bored with this. It was a simple easy read, but it seemed as if it should have been one of Welty's short stories (for the story and characters that were given) instead of a novella as is. The characters and situations are, simply, Welty, and none of it will seem new if you've read her stories. At the same time, I was never really able to engage in the book. Put simply, I just didn't care--about any aspect of it--and found it rather slow and predictable.