Can't Quit You, Baby (1988) by Ellen Douglas

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Can't Quit You, Baby (1988)

by Ellen Douglas

Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi: 8/18

  Ellen Douglas was a writer of southern domestic fiction (and the pen name for Josephine Haxton).  According to her 2012 New York Time obituary, her wheelhouse was domestic fiction with post-modern influences (she cited Milan Kundera as a primary influence).  In books like Can't Quit You, Baby, much of the action took place inside the home, with the characters telling each other tales from their past.   In this book, domestic servant Tweet and lady-of-the-house Cornelia, spend the entire time prepping a meal in the kitchen.  Within this framework, they both reminisce, with much of the spoke banter between the two revolving around the fact that Cornelia is both literally and figuratively deaf to Tweet's experience. 

  As the book goes on, the reader learns that Cornelia, too, has had her struggles, including escaping her mother's home to marry her Irish American beau during World War II and a son who marries a somewhat questionable mother-of-two against her wishes.  Tweet's struggles are center stage, particularly her experience with her dying guardian-Grandfather and her dissolute father, who returns only to steal her inheritance.