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    The Last Noel
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    The Last Noel
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    The Last Noel
    Ebook344 pages5 hours

    The Last Noel

    By Michael Malone

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Award-winning author Michael Malone's The Last Noel is a beautiful gift to American fiction.

    In a deeply touching tale, The Last Noel captures the exuberance and poignance of a lasting friendship between a man and a woman from very different backgrounds. Noni Tilden and Kaye King grow up and grow close as their lives come dramatically together through four decades of tumultuous change in a small southern town.

    The story begins in 1963 when Kaye first meets Noni on the eve of their seventh birthdays. On that Christmas Eve, Kaye climbs through her bedroom window to invite her to come sledding with him in a rare southern snowfall. Over the next thirty years on twelve days of Christmas, they meet to share the passion, the sacrifice and the romance of a lifetime. At once exquisitely written and tearfully joyful, The Last Noel is one of the great love stories of our time.

    Praise for The Last Noel:

    "Malone's latest novel reaffirms his brilliance in crafting carefully plotted fiction with a literary burnish, most often through Southern manners and intrigue."—Denver Post

    "A warm, engaging love story."—Booklist

    "Malone writes with such quiet authority and clear understanding of the world his characters inhabit that the story strikes deep emotional chords."—Washington Post Book World

    A Book Sense 76 Top 10 Selection

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateOct 1, 2003
    ISBN9781402225635
    Author

    Michael Malone

    Michael Malone is the author of ten novels, a collection of short stories and two works of nonfiction. Educated at Carolina and at Harvard, he is now a professor in Theater Studies at Duke University. Among his prizes are the Edgar, the O. Henry, the Writers Guild Award, and the Emmy. He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife.

    Read more from Michael Malone

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    Reviews for The Last Noel

    3.5/5

    49 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The very touching story between a boy and a girl that span's about 35 years. They meet when the grandson of the maid of the girl's family climbs up to the bedroom window of the girl and gets the girl to come outside to play because it is snowing outside.
    • 4/5
      This is a terrific book. The characters are real people. With the story spanning such a long period of time, you really get to know them. The story is very well written. Its not overly dramatic or sappy. You just want to keep reading.

      Being about the same age as the main characters, I really enjoyed the references to social changes going on around them.
    • 5/5
      What a wonderful story of the infinite love in true friendships that last a lifetime. Incredibly well written with extremely good character development. This is a book well worth reading. Pick it up, you will not put it down. amazing read!
    • 4/5
      I am not one to make a point of reading seasonal books. However, this book was offered for free at the beginning of December. Reading all these Christmas remembrances really helped get me in the Christmas spirit. As I've commented on other books set in the South, I particularly enjoyed the glimpse into this culture, which was so different from my own even though the book covered the same years as my growing up and youth.
    • 4/5
      A lovely love story between two people who never knew they belonged together.
    • 5/5
      I finished "The Last Noel" three days ago and it's still on my mind. Why? Because I cared about the main characters. Having grown up in the South I have some understanding of the white/black servant mentality. When I was small, my Aunt Gin had a black maid named Easter (guess her birthday - she probably didnt know the exact date). I loved her to death. She cooked, cleaned and smiled. I Gin & I taking Easter home from work one day. She wouldn't sit in the front and my little mind wondered "why"? Her house literally looked one step above a shack. But I was small and "that's the way it was." As an adult, I've wanted to explore the minds of Southerners in that era. They dearly loved the people that worked for them but didn't question how they lived. Easter probably received a pittance from my Aunt Gin, who probably thought she was being very generous. * * * Thankfully, things have changed. Noel and Kaye's story helps us understand that. I get teary-eyed thinking of the ending of the book. Thank you Michael Malone for making these people and their story so real to me. I suggest your reading Clarence Thomas's story, "Having Our Say" by the Delaney sisters, and "The Color of Water." They, too, will give you a greater understanding of the black/white experience.
    • 2/5
      This book is about a rich white girl and the poor black boy whose family are her family's servants. The beginning time period is the '60s, so you assume it is going to be a book about race. Not really. It is a very light read with a very unrealistic story.
    • 4/5
      While reading this book, I kept thinking: this is a plot worthy of a movie of the week. But it was so well done, so beautifully written, that I loved it anyway. Grab a box of tissues and a blanket and cuddle up with this book for a while. A good cry can be therapeutic.