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Through memorable stories, Elizabeth Hodges examines the importance of place in who we become and the importance of naming one's world in order to live well in it. She relates memories, trying to make sense of them in ways that will provide some truth in the present day, admitting the lengths that children go to make sense of adult worlds and situations, and to negotiate change and tragedy. The river, a symbol of so much in this book, is almost as much a character as the people who populate the stories. The river is an omnipresent part of Hodges's written geography-whether she is fishing with her grandfather; or remembering the drowning of her three-year-old neighbor, Billy; or relishing the joy of summer swims in the river, the feel of "cool water on sun-blushed skin." What the River Means will be enjoyed by all of us who have a love of and interest in family, in relationships between generations, and an appreciation of life on the river.

Reviews

"Its literary headwaters are surely Rousseau and Proust, with their careful, contemplative sounding of the first depths of childhood memory. Says Hodges, "My need has been to recover what I can of my past and bring forward in time what I need of it now. And that brings me to the question of the river and what the river means" (244). In this kind of first-person imperative, the river Severn recedes into Heraclitian symbolism. Despite her palpable love for the clear, living river she knew in the early 1960's, her writerly interest is in the human watershed: dynamics of family, testing of gender, and loss of aquaintances, relatives, part of the self. Hodges writes with lyricism and humor, with allegiance to both story and image...There's an admirable range within What the River Means, bound together with a strong sense of voice, as if Hodges were in the room with you, reading."

—ELIZABETH DODD, Kansas State University

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What the River Means

by Elizabeth Hodges

Book Information

Author Information

ELIZABETH HODGES is associate director of the Composition and Rhetoric Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her varied works have been published in both composition studies journals and in literary magazines.

Reviews

What the River Means

by Elizabeth Hodges

Book Information

Author Information ELIZABETH HODGES is associate director of the Composition and Rhetoric Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her varied works have been published in both composition studies journals and in literary magazines.

Reviews

Author Information

ELIZABETH HODGES is associate director of the Composition and Rhetoric Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her varied works have been published in both composition studies journals and in literary magazines.