Review
Title: Virginia Sorensen: Pioneering Mormon Author
Author: Stephen Carter
Publisher: Signature Press
Genre: Biography, literary criticism
Year Published: 2023
Paperback: $14.95 | Ebook: $9.99
Number of Pages: 136
ISBN: 9781560854586
Reviewed by Andrew Hall
A great biography and literary analysis of the life and novels of Virginia Sorensen, a leading writer of the “golden age” or “lost generation” of Mormonism in the 1940s-1960s. Carter brilliantly makes the argument that these novels can speak empathetically and with meaning to Mormons and post-Mormons today, helping both groups to understand the other.
The biographical parts are based largely on Sorensen’s extensive collection of letters. She seems like the Lost Generation novelist I would most enjoy spending time with (compared to difficult personalities like Vardis Fisher and Maurine Whipple).
But most of all, Carter has gotten me excited about finding and reading more of her novels. I have read and love two of the three novels that Signature reprinted in the 90s (A Little Lower than the Angels and Where Nothing is Long Ago, both of which Signature has recently made available as ebooks), but I assumed her other novels were lesser works, that I didn’t need to worry about. Now I am most excited to read The Evening and the Morning, Many Heavens, and On This Star, all novels about Utah Mormons on the margins of the culture, who have gone East to the “cultural capitals of the world”, and are now returning and seeing their home culture with new eyes.
Some Carter quotes:
“I am convinced that her novels are more relevant to contemporary Mormons and post-Mormons than anything being written today. Open one of her LDS novels, and no matter where you are on the belief spectrum, you’ll gasp with recognition. In her gentle, lyrical insightful prose, your own experience will take on a poetry, a nostalgia, a widening that will follow you for the rest of your life.”
“The hallmark of Sorensen’s writing is her ability to empathize with every one of her characters. Though they may wander, they are deeply understood and loved, both by the author and, soon enough, by the reader. Most of the other writers in the lost generation did not have Sorensen’s powers of empathy and connection. But they were on the same journey: trying to bring Mormonism into conversation with the rest of America. They all did it their own way. Sorensen took a path of atonement and ushered in the most Christlike novels the Mormon tradition has produced.”
Sorensen is also the author of a number of children’s novels. The two that are best known, and still in print, are Plain Girl (1955, about an Amish girl) and Miracles on Maple Hill, which won the Newbery Medal in 1957. I was also very impressed by Carter’s chapter on the children’s literature, in which he shows how his child characters are great examples of children’s “lantern consciousness”, rather than adult “spotlight consciousness,” and how her youth books are so different from more popular “hero’s journey” tales. Carter does a great job at explaining how narrative works.
(Check out Barbara Jones Brown’s interview with Carter about his book. Also, I have a Dialogue interview with Carter and Michael Austin, talking about Sorensen and Vardis Fisher, coming out soon.)