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A Lesson Before Dying (Oprah's Book Club)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375702709
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0375702709
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 1997-09
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: September 28, 1997
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, September 1997: In a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place, there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty.
"I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be..." So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J. Gaines's powerful exploration of race, injustice, and resistance, A Lesson Before Dying. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the law to an iron-barred cell, Grant Wiggins is no less a prisoner of social convention. University educated, Grant has returned to the tiny plantation town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the small plantation church school. More than 75 years after the close of the Civil War, antebellum attitudes still prevail: African Americans go to the kitchen door when visiting whites and the two races are rigidly separated by custom and by law. Grant, trapped in a career he doesn't enjoy, eaten up by resentment at his station in life, and angered by the injustice he sees all around him, dreams of taking his girlfriend Vivian and leaving Louisiana forever. But when Jefferson is convicted and sentenced to die, his grandmother, Miss Emma, begs Grant for one last favor: to teach her grandson to die like a man.
As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to Jefferson before he must face his death, he learns an important lesson as well: heroism is not always expressed through action--sometimes the simple act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Populated by strong, unforgettable characters, Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying offers a lesson for a lifetime.
From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Lesson Before Dying is a lesson for us all.
This story is set in 1940s Louisiana. A young black man is with friends who plan and execute a robbery--which goes bad quickly. The young man, Jefferson, is quickly arrested and tried for murder--even though he had no weapon and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Enter Grant Wiggins, a young black teacher who is chafing at the racial inequality of the times. He'd like nothing more than to leave this racial backwater bayou and head north for a city with more equality. But Jefferson's grandma ... Read More
Rating:  - Not a "must read" book but not terrible
The thought process and inspiration behind A Lesson Before Dying were brilliant; however, the story just fell flat. I felt that the characters were one-dimensional and disengaged one from the story; Grant was a bore, for example, he repeated the same lines and the same ideas, most of the time in the same words. I kept waiting for spectacular and inspiring events to occur and to make me feel proud of Grant's work to reach Jefferson, but I was severely disappointed. This story moved water-drop slow, trickling ... Read More
Rating:  - A Lesson Indeed
This book seems to have been created for the express purpose of selling a film option and padding the Oprah Winfrey Book Club list. Trite, sentimental, peopled with unmemorable characters, and written in a flat and artless style, 'A Lesson Before Dying' is a lesson to avoid. Skip class at the Ernest J. Gaines school of writing, go down the road and jump the fence at Harold Bloom's orchard to pick something from Western Canon instead.
Rating: - Tried, But Failed to Understand The Hype
I picked up this book with great anticipation, as I knew it was selected for Oprah's Book Club and had won a couple of awards, including the National Book Award. Although I had never read any of the writer's previous works, his name is familiar and so, naturally, I assumed I would be in for a dramatic and stunning emotional rollercoaster. I wasn't.
This book is so poorly written I really hope that my suspicions are true and that all the pages of the original text were replaced by a 15 year old promising ... Read More
Rating: - Mockingbird II
Strong, powerful read...
So strong and so powerful that you may almost put it down in the first chapter, the language used to described a black man, a fellow human, so strong and offensive that you just want to close the book, slam it to the ground, and have nothing to do with it.
BUT, almost immediately it grows into a strong, heartwarming and ultimately inspiring story.
In the end, it touches all avenues of human character and endeavor and moves us to the core of our being.
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