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Almost Family traces the trajectory of two
women’s lives over the course of 30 years in the small town of Madoc,
Alabama. What makes Hoffman’s novel notable is not just that one woman
is white and the other black, that one is the employer and the other the
domestic, nor even that the story begins in 1946 and ends in 1975,
effectively spanning the course of the civil rights movement. What
distinguishes this novel from other similar treatments of personalized
racial relationships in the Deep South at this time is the author’s
light touch. Hoffman’s characters are flawed individuals, and his
narrator does not wax preachy or sentimental. It is for these reasons
that Hoffman’s novel has been so widely praised, winning him the
Lillian Smith Award. The University of Alabama Press’s 2000 reprint
shows that, 17 years later, Hoffman’s novel remains an interesting
commentary on race, religion, class, and gender in the South.
Hoffman’s two main characters, Vivian Gold and Nebraska Waters,
share the common concerns of family and home despite their many
differences. Vivian is white, Jewish, well-off; Nebraska is black,
Baptist, and Vivian’s maid. During
their 30 years of spending time together and sharing stories, they build
a friendship. What makes this friendship intriguing is its “almost”
status: neither Nebraska nor Vivian feels completely free and so the
intimacy of their relationship ebbs and flows. The outside world
sometimes affects this malleable intimacy, with historical influences
like the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, and the civil rights movement. In
addition, Hoffman uses another maid and employer, Romaine and Margery
Berman, to contrast Vivian’s and Nebraska’s relationship. Like
Nebraska, Romaine has spent an extended time working for Margery. She is
privy to the secrets of the Berman family, just as Nebraska is to the
Golds’. But Margery seems racist, conservative, which are the very
qualities Vivian tries hard to eschew. Despite the mutual contempt with
which Margery and Romaine hold each other, they are so tied to one
another that when Margery moves to Florida, Romaine moves with her. They
do not suffer any of the tenuousness that Vivian and Nebraska feel,
perhaps because they clearly understand their roles. Neither Vivian nor
Nebraska can feel sure of their friendship because they are creating new
roles. But Hoffman’s sympathetic treatment of these two women trying
to reenvision their relationship illustrates that a mutual
understanding, despite racial, economic, and religious differences, can
forge a closeness that is almost--almost--like family. Kate Cochran
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Almost
Family