Unravelling (1997) by Elizabeth Graver

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Unravelling (1997)

by Elizabeth Graver

Lowell, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 5/30

    If you've ever wanted to read a book about what it's like to a knocked-up millhand in 1840's Lowell, Massachusetts, Unravelling is the book for you.  Back in 1997 when Unravelling was released it got a decent New York Times review and an excerpt in the paper.   Anyway- it's told from the locked in perspective of  Aimee- an outcast of her New Hampshire farm village at 31, as she reminisces on the sequence of events that led her to her independent-but-shunned status.

  It is a tale as old as the city itself: child lured to the city for work, corrupted by said city and ruined. Those seeking uplift won't find it here- Aimee is forced to give up her twins for adoption and never sees them again, or even has the opportunity to seriously look for them, her being an outcast surviving in a shack in the woods.  Grim stuff.  Very New England.  Thankfully brief.  I loved the depictions of factory life in Lowell- I've been trying to visit the factory museum there for a decade without success.