How is his family

This book led me by the hand through a tour of early 's New York, introduced me to the people of the times, ripped me up inside, put me back together, and gave me a kiss on the forehead. View 2 comments. This book won the first Pulitzer prize and was a great read. Roger Gale is the ageing father of three very different women: the motherly Emily, the independent Deborah, and the freewheeling Laura. He is a widower and in the autumn of his life becomes more involved in the lives and tragedies of his progeny in a New York where he would ride his horse in the streets!

It is a moving tale with lots of fascinating insights into the pre-WWI, pre-skyscraper Manhattan with suffrage, racism, and pover This book won the first Pulitzer prize and was a great read. It is a moving tale with lots of fascinating insights into the pre-WWI, pre-skyscraper Manhattan with suffrage, racism, and poverty all weaved into the tale. I really enjoyed Roger's character and his capability to adapt and change as his society was evolving around him.

View 1 comment. May 24, Loretta rated it liked it Shelves: classic , myreading-challenge , pulitzer-prize-winners. I'm really baffled as to why and how this book won a Pulitzer Prize.

I'd love to know what others books were up for nomination at the time! It was a nice story about a seemingly nice family. The description of old New York in its hey day was was quite enjoyable and certainly my cup of tea but I was truly bored and not really interested in any of the characters and I really wasn't entertained, at all. View all 3 comments. May 19, Petra rated it liked it. This story quietly shows the excitement and change as New York grapples with the issues of a large swell of immigration, of progress in business, of architectural change, of changes in attitude and then the war starts.

It's an exciting and vibrant time in the city's history. All this happens in the background, yet the reader is fully aware of it all. Roger contemplates immortality, both of a personal sort and of the soul. He wants to know his three daughters more fully and learn their needs and wants. He wants to ensure that they are happy and secure with their futures. He's a kind and generous man who loves his family above all else in life. His family Suffragettes were about, public schools were being discussed, immigration services were not available, women's roles in the home were changing, the city is vibrant with energy and fun.

All fo this and more is reflected in Roger's family. As he considers immortality, he sees his family on three very distinct paths as each daughter forges forward with different priorities.

He sees pros and cons in each path. View all 7 comments. Our local librarian rescued me from having to continue reading this book on kindle. She located an original hardcover published May, I love the feel of the thick cream colour paper pages.

His Family is a classic novel by Ernest Poole published in about the life of a New York widower and his three daughters in the s. In it was the first book to receive the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. His Family tells the story of a middle class family in New York City in the s. The famil Our local librarian rescued me from having to continue reading this book on kindle. The family's patriarch, widower Roger Gale, struggles to deal with the way his daughters and grandchildren respond to the change in society.

Each of his daughters responds in a distinctively different way to the circumstances of their lives. Intergenerational conflict, racism, immigration, poverty, and immortality are some of the themes covered in this book. Over one hundred years later these themes are still pertinent to contemporary times. A few quotes that I want to share:- "[Roger] he could almost see her [his mother] sitting here.

For you were once a part of me. I moulded you, my little son. And as I have been to you, so you will be to your children. In their lives, too, we shall be there - silent and invisible, the dim strong figures of the past. For this is the power of families, this is the mystery of birth.

View all 6 comments. Mar 06, Sara rated it liked it Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winners , american , gutenberg-download. For everyone who thinks that women had no choices in , here is a novel that begs to differ.

He finds himself widowed and trying to understand and really get to know his three grown daughters. During the course of the novel, he does forge an understanding of his family, and also a knowledge that their lives are their own and not his to manage anymore. One of the major themes addressed is whether we live on after death in another realm, or whether our living on is something we do through our children and their children.

To live on solely through our progeny is a bit of a depressing idea for me. In truth, our memory only survives, on average, two generations. There is not a single person on the face of this earth who ever knew my great-grandmother, and while she lives on in me genetically, I do not find that that is enough.

And what of those who die young or have no children? While this book is a bit dated, it does open a door into the attitudes and thoughts of the middle class of the early s. I found myself confronting a few stereotypes and misconceptions I have had about how men might have viewed their daughters in this time period. I felt there was a bit of unnecessary repetition toward the end and that the novel could, in fact, have been wound up sooner than it was.

However, that did not detract appreciably from the experience of reading it and I exited with something significant gained from the read. In my quest to read all the Pulitzer prize winners, I have discovered that this first winner was far from the least worthy.

View all 8 comments. Thoughts soon. Nov 21, Melody rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Most folks. Shelves: pulitzer. Gem of a book that covers topics that are timely today.

This story revolves around a man with 3 daughters: the homemaker, the career woman, and the party girl. He attempts to come to terms with who they are and the changes they represent in families, morality, teh workplace, and culture. One theme that runs through this is immigration: the career woman is a school administrator in tenement neighborhoods of New York City before and during WWI.

The discussion of immigration nearly years ago mirr Gem of a book that covers topics that are timely today. The discussion of immigration nearly years ago mirrors cites themes we hear in discussions of immigration today.

We also hear today's burning issues echoed in the discussion of daughters: For the career woman, think Hillary Clinton and the flak she attracts by not being a stay-at-home mom. For the party girl, think Paris Hilton. And for the homemaker, think of the traditionalists and their criticism of the Clintons and Hiltons of the world.

Some of the writing is dated, but the story is insightful. Read it His Family is a novel set in the years just prior to and at the beginning of World War I. It tells the story of Roger Gale, a widower with three adult daughters who lives in New York City and runs a successful newspaper clipping service business. Roger has devoted his life to his business, but as he grows older, his work no longer seems as interesting or creative as it once had.

People no longer seem to subscribe to the values and behaviors that Roger grew up with as a boy in New England.

They had already spoiled his neighborhood, they had flowed up like an ocean tide. Will he live on only as a more or less fondly remembered anachronism? He wants more.

Edith, the eldest, is the most traditional, a wife with young children. Deborah, the middle daughter, and Laura, the youngest, are both unconventional, but in opposite ways.

She has a beau but keeps putting off the idea of marriage. Laura is a free-spirited wild child who loves clothes, jewelry, parties, fast cars, and men. In each of the young women, Roger sees things to admire and things to regret.

Throughout the book, his affections for each of them wax and wane in their turn. Through the story of Roger Gale and his family, Poole makes perceptive observations about the changes in the world as the Edwardian era ends and World War I approaches. As Roger discovers, the changes affect everyone. The book holds up well more than a hundred years after its publication.

But the essential aspects of the family relationships that Poole describes are not so different. I enjoyed the book much more than I expected to, and I recommend it for its well-drawn characters, its interesting story, and its portrayal of the world at an inflection point in history.

This a story of a year-old widower and his 3 daughters in Manhattan as the Great War is beginning. The father is the center of the story, which consists of interactions with his daughters, who all live with him at some point in the story. The book was interesting enough that I always found myself reading more than I planned to read. While it did get a bit sentimental at times, especially toward the end when it also bogged down a bit, that was not the general tone of the novel. The fact that Poole was a journalist and social activist likely kept it from being overly sentimental.

Overall, it was a fairly objective and interesting portrayal of the events in an upper middle-class family of the time. This book is the winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised that I found this book so engaging. The writing was clear, the characterization well-done and the themes and portrayed events were interesting. I thought it a solid 4 star read. View all 4 comments. Mar 01, Richard rated it liked it Shelves: pulitzer-fiction. Given the history and prestige of the Pulitzer Prize, it bears remembering that the award for fiction got off to a somewhat shaky start.

Just whose family are we talking about here? That would be one Roger Gale, an early 20th century resident of NYC and a relatively well-to-do widower and father of three grown daughters. His Family follows the last few years of Roger's life and the changes that take place within "his family" as well as changes in the world at large that touch the lives of Roger and his daughters. At the outset, Poole makes little effort to develop the daughters beyond flat, almost-cliched character types.

The oldest daughter, Edith, is the traditional mother raising 5 kids. The middle daughter Deborah is the do-gooder who is too busy saving the world or in this case NYC's early 20th century immigrant caste to be bothered with the mundane affairs of marriage or family. Laura, Roger's youngest daughter, is the self-absorbed social climber who increasingly flaunts her liberal for her day ideas. Roger, the dependable hub of the family wheel, watches with dismay as his daughters are flung further and further apart from him and from each other, tossed about by the inexorable and disquieting changes of the age.

As crises of varying degrees present themselves, Roger attempts to reassure himself with the mantra of his late wife, "you will live on in the lives of your children".

On the contrary, Roger gradually realizes although he has probably suspected all along that in the big picture, he exerts about as much influence over the affairs of his daughters as he does over the turbulent world outside the four walls of his home.

He comes to terms with this at about the same time he learns that his physical life is surely ebbing away. Ironically, as his life draws to an end, he wields the most influence over his family when he happily relinquishes responsibility for their well-being. At the risk of reading something into the work that might not be there, I wonder if Poole unintentionally sheds light on an aspect of the sexism of that time, through one of the minor characters.

If Roger finds any solace in the midst of the turmoil in his home, he finds it in a young man who is not part of "his family", the cripple Johnny Geer. In spite of his physical limitations, Johnny is everything that Roger's daughters are not: content with his life, devoid of drama, and just plain helpful to Roger.

Johnny was like the son that Roger never had, and in the writing of his character, I thought Poole was making this subtle point: daughters and their affairs will drain you in a way that sons won't. This message is also reinforced, to a lesser degree, through Roger's interactions with his grandson George. Again, I may be unfairly assigning this particular intent to Poole's writing, but I find it curious that Roger's family is made up entirely of three very different daughters, each of whom manage to consume their father with more than their fair share of angst.

From the perspective of nearly years later, it's easy to dismiss the first Pulitzer fiction winner as mostly forgettable.

Enduring or not, the selection of any title for the Pulitzer is a history lesson in itself and therefore valuable beyond simply being an entry in the Pulitzer ledger. I suspect that the selection of Poole's book was a reflection of some of the anxieties of the age, if not Poole's own.

Women's Suffrage would finally be realized in a few years, and women were no longer resigned to merely fill Edith's role, as noble and important as it was. Men, especially fathers, weren't quite so sure what to make of it all, and we've been losing sleep over our daughters ever since. Jan 21, Irene rated it liked it.

In the early 20th century, US society was undergoing great change. For some, the possibilities were freeing, for others the shifting ground was terrifying. In this family drama of a middle aged widowe In the early 20th century, US society was undergoing great change. In this family drama of a middle aged widower and his 3 adult daughters, the family dynamics mirror the larger society.

When I read award winning books penned a century or more ago, I am confronted by the change in literary taste. Like many novels of this era, I found it to be wordy and the philosophizing rather heavy handed. But I appreciated how Poole captured the dreams and fears of each character and found both value and caution in the preserving of what one knows and embrace of what the future could be.

Feb 02, Kim rated it really liked it Shelves: four-star-novels , r-r , classics , read-again , e-book-online. His Family is a novel by Ernest Poole published in It received the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in I wonder how many places and how many times now that I've read that His Family won the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in I knew that much longer than I knew what the book was about, other than it was about a man and his family.

Ernest Cook Poole, the author of our book was older than my dad because he was born long before he wrote this book, in January of He was an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. I read this about him: Poole is best remembered for his sympathetic first-hand reportage of revolutionary Russia during and immediately after the Revolution of and Revolution of and as a popular writer of proletarian-tinged fiction during the era of World War I and the s.

If he's best remembered for his sympathetic reporting of the Russian revolution, it's not me remembering him for it, I had no idea he was there for it all. As for him being a proletarian-tinged writer, I had to look that one up. Looking up the word proletarian and getting "a member of the proletariat" as a definition is annoying and I refuse to look any further, I'm annoyed.

Published in , Poole's The Harbor was well received by critics and the reading public. I didn't find that one yet. He followed the book up with His Family. When it received it's Pulitzer Prize, some thought it was really awarded to Poole for his previous effort, The Harbor , which is why I have to read that book now.

But on to the book I did read, His Family. I was right, it was about a man and his family. His three daughters, and their children, and a few husbands thrown in there too. There really aren't very many people in the book who I didn't just mention.

If you aren't related to one of these people you probably didn't make it into the story. Our man, the family's patriarch, is widower Roger Gale: Roger Gale was a rugged heavy man not quite sixty years of age. His broad, massive features were already deeply furrowed, and there were two big flecks of white in his close-curling, grayish hair.

He lived in a narrow red brick house down on the lower west side of the town, in a neighborhood swiftly changing. His wife was dead. He had no sons, but three grown daughters, of whom the oldest, Edith, had been married many years.

Laura and Deborah lived at home, but they were both out this evening. Roger is a New York businessman owner of a media monitoring service, which made almost no sense to me what they were doing. As far as I could tell he had a whole bunch of people looking through every single newspaper they can get and cutting stories out of them that someone may want to buy and they do. I don't get it, but I didn't have to, he's not at the office all that often anyway.

He had ventured into the business world, clerking now at this, now at that, and always looking about him for some big opportunity. It had come and he had seized it, despite the warnings of his friends. What a wild adventure it had been a bureau of news clippings, a business new and unheard of but he had been sure that here was growth, he had worked at it day and night, and the business widening fast had revealed long ramifications which went winding and stretching away into every phase of American life.

And this life was like a forest, boundless and impenetrable, up-springing, intertwining. How much could he ever know of it all?

When his wife was dying he promised to stay close to their three daughters, and keep them close to each other, which would have made life much more peaceful if he hadn't agreed to it.

There are very few people more different and less likely to want to be anywhere near each other than his daughters. We have Edith: Edith had four children, and was soon to have another. A small demure woman of thirty-five, with light soft hair and clear blue eyes and limbs softly rounded, the contour of her features was full with approaching maternity, but there was a decided firmness in the lines about her little mouth.

Edith thinks a lot about her home, her husband, and especially her children. In fact that is the only thing she ever thinks about, everything she says or does has something to do with them. Then there is Deborah, she is the middle daughter who is nothing like the oldest daughter. She doesn't talk about her husband and children because she has neither. She works, and works, and works. She works at a school, and the children at her school are poor children, so she works constantly agitating for reforms and financial support to help the families living in the tenements.

Hungry, oh, for everything—life, its beauty, all it means. And I was thinking this is youth—no matter how old they happen to be—and that to feed it we have schools. I was thinking how little we've done as yet, and of all that we're so sure to do in the many, many years ahead. Do you see what I mean? She doesn't understand why her sister is only interested in her own family and not all the suffering there is all around them. Edith doesn't understand why Deborah doesn't want her own family to take care of, and later, when Edith is struggling to take care of her family, she doesn't understand why Deborah wouldn't give money to her nieces and nephews instead of people she doesn't even know.

And neither one of them can understand the youngest daughter, Laura. Laura doesn't want children, Laura doesn't want to save the poor families around her, but still Laura wants money just as much as the rest of them, only in her case she wants it for Laura.

Laura surprises the family by marrying Hal Sloan, a young successful businessman. They can afford a honeymoon trip to Europe, they can afford limousines, and furs and so many dresses Laura could change three times a day, and rings and, you get the idea. And Deborah, well finally she is going to get married, then she isn't, then she is, then Then the war comes and no one has money anymore, well no one but Laura and even she may find that money may not be everything, then again she may not.

So does Roger manage to do what he promised his wife? Does he manage to hold this group of people together? Read the book, I liked it a lot. I'm not sure if it was good enough to win a prize, but it was good. Happy reading. Jun 24, Carmel Hanes rated it liked it. A book I'd not have known about had it not been chosen as a buddy read.

Published in the early 's, it was the first book chosen for a Pulitzer Prize, which was an intriguing prospect. I did wonder what appealed to readers far before my time, and this offered an interesting glimpse at least in a survey of one--no idea if it is typical for the era. The story centers on an aging widower with three daughters, each of whom represents a component of the society: the oldest, who has spent her adu A book I'd not have known about had it not been chosen as a buddy read.

The story centers on an aging widower with three daughters, each of whom represents a component of the society: the oldest, who has spent her adult life somewhat myopically being mother to several children; the youngest who is portrayed as self-indulgent, carefree and somewhat frivolous; and the middle daughter who throws herself into teaching, social causes and working with the poor and unfortunate.

This trio of diverse souls occasionally clash and clang as they carve out their roles in the family and larger world. Pinging between them is the father, feeling his age and assessing his life, worth, example, and contributions to his daughters and that same larger world. He wonders what many of us wonder For a novel years old, it was surprisingly similar to today's culture and families.

We still have socioeconomic divisions that impact quality of life, we still have those who help others and those who are oblivious or view them as "less than", we still have that universal tendency to assess our lives as we feel them reaching thin air, and we still struggle to navigate family relationships when our values and desires diverge or crisis occurs.

What I appreciated most about the story was the evolution the father experienced through the influence of the middle daughter, proving that change can happen when eyes and hearts are exposed to new things. I had a hard time enjoying the prose employed by this author, which is so different from what I am used to, but the content of the story kept me interested to see where things would go.

May 10, Elizabeth A. The book is beautifully written with good characterization. I found myself drawn into and caring about how their lives will turn out. A well-deserved Pulitzer for a novel that has sadly been over looked. Jul 21, Molly rated it it was amazing Shelves: read-plus-audio , pulitzers. This is a gentle tale. Not a page turner, no major excitement. Just a beautifully written story of a loving family during the early years of the 20th century in New York City.

The story is told through the eyes of 60 year old widow Roger Gale, of his three grown daughters — their joys and tribulations. Part of the charm of this book is that it was written in , and you get a feel of that time in the ever growing city. Many of the themes though are timeless and are as current as today. I belie This is a gentle tale. I believe it was fully worthy of having won the first Pulitzer Prize award. For loving fathers everywhere, cheers to His Family.

Oct 06, Erika rated it it was ok Shelves: my-reading-the-pulitzers-project , books-read-in I found this book to be both really interesting and really problematic. On the minus side, it has some major structural problems and I agree with other reviewers who said the themes are h I found this book to be both really interesting and really problematic.

On the minus side, it has some major structural problems and I agree with other reviewers who said the themes are hammered on again and again. I learned a lot and was never bored. Oct 28, robin friedman rated it really liked it. The First Pulitzer The prolific writer, journalist and social reformer Ernest Poole — deserves to be remembered as the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. The book tells the story of an aging businessman, Roger Gale, as he struggles to come to terms with changes in American culture that are mirrored in his own family.

The book has something of the feel of a coming of age novel. Poole suggests that most adults remain virtual children throughout their lives and find wisdom, if at all, only with age, as undoubtedly was the case with the life of his protagonist. His wife Judith had died at 39 sixteen years before the story begins, leaving Gale to raise his daughters alone through their adolescent years. He throws himself into his business which, with some rough moments, becomes a success.

Gale lives in a large old house which he inherited from his wife and which was the home of his daughters. The house is fast becoming an anachronism in an increasingly cluttered New York City.

Gale broods a great deal. He feels guilty that he does not know his daughters well and was not sufficiently involved in their upbringing.

Deborah lives with her father in the old family home. Deborah has risen to become a principal and a supervisor of many schools and has become famous in the city for her devotion to bettering the condition of poor struggling immigrants, adults as well as children.

Deborah is also a suffragette and becomes increasingly active in social movements as the economy enters a downturn after the beginning of WW I. To get closer to Deborah, Gale accompanies her through her daily rounds and becomes increasingly attuned to the lives of the downtrodden, the poor, and the ill. Fearing Deborah will become old and alone and miss her chance for intimacy and happiness, Gale wants her to marry the longsuffering Baird.

She is devoted to her children and his little use for Deborah, her career, and her feminism. Edith spends lavishly on her children until Bruce dies in a freak auto accident. She and her children move in with Gale and Deborah, and family tensions abound.

The youngest daughter Laura exemplifies the changing culture of the age in a way different from Deborah. Laura is free-spirited and sexually liberated. She impulsively marries a successful if rakish young man and travels with him to Europe at the outset of the War. The marriage soon flounders as both Laura and her husband have affairs. Ask the Editor. How IS your family? Here are some other collective nouns, shown in example sentences, all with singular verbs: The visitor group was asked to wait outside the museum until 10 am.

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