May 20, 2012 11:16 pm
2006, 414 p.
I’ve seen this book in bookshops for several years now, but I must admit that I wasn’t particularly tempted to read it. Perhaps it was the pink back cover, the book-group questions at the back, or perhaps it was the shelf-company it kept… oh, alright, call me a literary snob. I do read and like Anne Tyler and Sue Miller who write American family-based fiction similar to this one, but you’re probably better off classing this with Jodi Picoult. It was selected for my face-to-face bookgroup (so its marketing strategy of the bookgroup questions at the back was probably spot-on), and I probably wouldn’t have read it left to my own devices, but I have to admit to being thoroughly drawn in right from the opening pages.
It probably speaks volumes about the plot-driven nature of this book to say that it’s impossible to review it without spoilers. So I won’t, other than to say that structurally, it makes decade-wide leaps as it traces through a decision made in the in 1960s as it unravels through the lives of two different families. It is a fairly long book at over 400 pages, and particularly near the end I felt it dragged a bit with just a few too many plot-lines introduced and a heavy reliance on reminiscence to develop her characters. I realized in reading this book how rarely I read a book that relies so heavily on plot (I’m not, for example, much into crime books or murder-mysteries) and I found myself raising questions like “But what about…?” and “I don’t believe that….”
Still, I must admit rather grudgingly that it generated a good book-group discussion (as no doubt it was intended to), and whatever frustrations I may have felt about length or plausibility did not stop me from reading it to the very end. But I still kept wondering, rather guiltily, (and as I often had cause to say to my children when I perceived that they were wasting their time) “Is this the best use of my time?” Probably not, but I enjoyed it anyway.
Posted by residentjudge
Categories: Book reviews, The ladies who say ooooh
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I know exactly what you mean. I read it, mainly to see how she extricated herself from her own plot, but it wasn’t satisfying reading, and I had a lot of ‘but what about…?’ moments too.
I was over your way yesterday en route to have dinner with Offspring in Mernda, it reminded me that we should have lunch in the June holidays?
By Lisa Hill on May 21, 2012 at 11:15 am
Yes!
By residentjudge on May 22, 2012 at 12:09 am