No Plot Spoilers Below.
Title: The Able McLaughlins
Author: Margaret Wilson
Number of Pages: 223
Original Published Date: 1923
Pulitzer Prize Winner (Novel): 1924
Favorite Sentence(s): “In her dreams, to be great was to be one of three things, a Burns, a Lincoln, or a Florence Nightingale. And now one dream, her first and longest, was permanently over.”
Introduction
The Able McLaughlins is another novel I’d never heard of before seeing it listed as the next read for the Pulitzer Prize winners. It is an easy read, enjoyable, and rather sweet (perhaps a bit melodramatic at times) and to this reader, not quite worthy of the Pulitzer Prize when compared to some of the other winners.
Summary of Novel (No Plot Spoilers)
The Able McLaughlins is a story about a Scottish immigrant community in the prairies of Iowa set in the 1860s and centers around Wully McLaughlin, the eldest son, and his new wife, Christie McNair. Wully has recently returned from the Civil War and intends to quicky marry Christie but she rejects him and tells him to stay away from her.
After finally understanding the reason for Christie’s sudden change, Wully believes he has remedied the problem and him and Christie marry. Although there is scandal surrounding the young couple, they begin a happy life and all is well until the past reappears on their doorstop.
It’s impossible not to fall in love with some of the characters living in the small Scottish-American town as they are likeable, opinionated, and take care of one another. They have high morals (quite high when compared to modern standards), but the author always demonstrates that even when some may fall short of that standard, family and community stay together.
Wilson wrote a sequel entitled The Law and the McLaughlins more than a decade after The Able McLaughlins was published which focuses on the younger sister of Wully. I can understand why Wilson wrote a sequel to The Able McLaughlins since it would be enjoyable to return to their lives, but the sequel wasn’t as well-received. The sequel is not currently on my To-Read list, but I wouldn’t rule out adding it at some future date.
Final Thoughts
This is a truncated review when compared to the previous essays I’ve written, but as I said in the Introduction, although this could be an enjoyable read for many, I don’t believe it’s at the same level as other PP winners. I didn’t find much below the surface of this story or character development that convinces me this novel belongs in the same group as most other classic literary novels.
I tried to find out which other novels were nominated that year against The Able McLaughlins to compare if any of those titles stood ‘the test of time’, but that information is only available in the PP archives unfortunately. However, I did find a list of other published American novels from 1923 and none of those titles were familiar to me either. I’m curious if time, or myself, had misjudged this novel or if nothing published in that year has remained an essential read for literary lovers throughout these past one hundred years.
My final closing for this essay is less about The Able McLaughlins and more about the style of writing and dialogue of the novels written in the past compared to modern ones. Thus far, all of the PP novel winners have been written in third person with scant dialogue between characters. The writer tells the reader what the characters are thinking to explain their actions, whereas many modern novels use the characters actions to explain their thinking. Third person is still the most popular way to write novels, but my supposition is there is more dialogue in modern storytelling and more ‘show not tell’.
I’m not judging which is better, but my preference is usually the latter. Perhaps it’s because that’s the style of books that I’m most familiar with (prior to this PP and classic novel reading endeavor), but I find it easier to grow attached to characters when they have more external dialogue with other characters (not just the dialogue in their mind) and when their actions also tell a story.
First person narration has been around since novels first became popular, but they’re still the minority when compared to third person. I tend to prefer first-person novels since I find it to be the most intimate way to know and understand a character. None of the seven PP winners I’ve read so far have been written in first-person, but my assumption is that it will eventually show up. I’ll just have to wait to be surprised at that time. Without peeking ahead, my theory is it won’t happen until the 1960s. I have no evidence to back that up, but I’m going with it since the 1960s was an influential turning point for change in American society and I’m sure that influence is reflected in the published writings.
Leave a Reply