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Ellen Foster #1

Ellen Foster

kaye gibbons

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"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy." So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kay Gibbons's first novel, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Institute of Arts and Letters. Wise, funny, affectionate, and true, Ellen Foster is, as Walker Percy called it, "The real thing. Which is to say, a lovely, sometimes heartwrenching novel. . . . [Ellen Foster] is as much a part of the backwoods South as a Faulkner character—and a good deal more endearing."

null pages, Paperback

First published January 21,1987
Series
Ellen Foster
Literary awards
sue kaufman prize for first fiction, chicago tribune heartland prize, 
Places
north carolina, 

This edition

Format
null pages, Paperback
Published
January 21, 1987 by MacMillan Publishing Company.
ISBN
9780783801162
ASIN
0783801165
Language
English

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About the author

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kaye gibbons

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Kaye Gibbons is an American novelist. Her first novel, Ellen Foster (1987), received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Prize in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gibbons is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and two of her books, Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman, were selected for Oprah's Book Club in 1998.
Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina, and went to Rocky Mount Senior High School. She attended North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying American and English literature. She has three daughters.
Gibbons has bipolar disorder and notes that she is extremely creative during her manic phases, in which she believes that everything is instrumented by a "real magic". Ellen Foster was written during one such phase.
On November 2, 2008, Gibbons was arrested on prescription drug fraud charges. According to authorities, she was taken into custody while trying to pick up a fraudulent prescription for the painkiller hydrocodone. She was sentenced to a 90-day suspended sentence, 2 years probation, and a $300 fine.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
35(35%)
4 stars
28(28%)
3 stars
37(37%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
HitTheDab69
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book opened the doors to other Kaye Gibbon's books for me and I've yet to be disappointed. There are times in this book that you are confused because the emotional detail outweighs the timeline events. Your heart goes out to Ellen, your become angry at the family and the system.
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Sirgeras
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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If you like The Catcher in the Rye, you will like Ellen Foster. Ellen is a female version of Holden. Brilliant writing.
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Sorasan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Sometimes, too rarely, you find a book that just takes your breath away. One that makes all other books seem as if they aren’t books at all, but practice runs. Ellen Foster was that kind of book for me.

Ellen Foster is about a young girl in an abusive home. Her mother overdoses, her alcoholic father alternately takes advantage of her or neglects her completely and she soon becomes a throw-away, wandering from one uncaring relative to another.

This story is one that hit me like a load of concrete. Told in the young main character’s point of view, it was startlingly realistic and painful and haunting. There was something so uncomfortable about reading the story that I often had to put the book aside to wipe my tears away. Watching Ellen’s life unfold is like watching a gruesome car accident—you can’t look away no matter how bad it is. You can’t stop reading although you know the next paragraph will bring you certain heartbreak. And yet, for all that, it is still a story of hope.

This is a book you don’t read so much as experience. In my opinion, Gibbons is one of the top 3 female writers alive today (the others being Jan Karon and Melinda Haynes). All of her books have moved me so deeply but this one was my favorite, if such a word can be applied to this experience. Her prose is so beautiful that it is almost poetic. She takes words and makes them do things I’ve never seen from other authors. This story is told from the point of view of the young Ellen so it is hard to follow and read but that makes the story so much more powerful and painful.

If you’ve never read Kaye Gibbons before, treat yourself to a concert performed by a maestro.
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Quiche123
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I hated it. It made no sense. Waste of six hours of my life that I will never get back. Summer reading.
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EvaFan95
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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So many people love this book, but I just don't get it. This book left me completely unsatisfied. I got to the last page and thought, "Ok, where is the rest of the book?". There are parts of this book that I like, but overall I really just hated it. Don't get me wrong: I am not a reader that needs a "happily ever after" to be satisfied (in fact, I dislike happily ever after books), but this one simply left me feeling cold, flat, and emotionally unattached from the characters that I think I was supposed to love and/or hate.
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Fall
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Ellen Foster is like Scout Finch without the support system of Atticus, Jem, and Calpurnia. She's funny, courageous, level-headed, fair-minded and intelligent. With very little help from anyone, she gets herself out of a very bad situation and into a good one and teaches herself some valuable lessons along the way. I love Ellen Foster.
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Ayakocutie
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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i like the narration at times but the way this book writes and talks about Black people is so ridiculous. at the end it tries to have Ellen have some major realization of her racial prejudices but the entirety of the book starletta (her Black best friend) remains reduced to an ignorant, silent, and unkempt caricature that feels minstrel-y at worst. i think Ellen even refers to starletta as being hers at one point and that made me feel a bit queasy lol

also, i could not tell when this was set or even that the main character was white for awhile which is wild to me and an issue
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