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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
A sad look at how to keep living when someone you love is in jail. I liked it and kept wondering how it would turn out, but I was disappointed by the ending.
Someone at one of my favorite independent book stores in NYC recommended this book to me. The whole time I was reading it, I wondered why. I didn't find the main character believable nor the premise interesting.
Man, what a lot of life gets packed successfully into this small book. This story is about a pregnant woman whose husband manages to get drunk one night, end up robbing a house and killing the owner, and land himself in prison for the next twenty-odd years. Amazingly, with help from her family, she remains in love with the spouse, raises a son, and manages to end up on a career path before he is finally released from prison. It's the story of her growth and steadfastness, and a thousand divergent paths are left behind as you read the book. Those potential story lines (you never know exactly what happened during the botched burglary, no other characters take part in telling the story, characters fall out of the story and are never heard from/about again) ate at me as I was reading along, but the ending very appropriately made them all insignificant. I did not put this one down for long as it was a very compelling read. I see why it gets the hype.
Somewhat interesting examination of a woman who 'stands by her man' while he is in prison but it lacks something to make the story compelling.
This author was recommended to me and "The Good Wife" was the first book I saw written by Stewart O'Nan. I like his style of writing -- very direct, no extra prose to describe the people and events (very much the opposite of "The Goldfinch" which I just finished).
Patty is the main character. Her husband goes to prison for murder while she is pregnant with their son. This story is about Patty, her husband, their son and being the good wife. O'Nan certainly touched all my emotions with Patty. I became angry at her for being so weak, yet cheered for her as she struggled through life. I ached for her loneliness, and laughed at her attempts to bring normalcy to their lives. In the end, I admired her for her strength, devotion, and endurance.
Patty is the main character. Her husband goes to prison for murder while she is pregnant with their son. This story is about Patty, her husband, their son and being the good wife. O'Nan certainly touched all my emotions with Patty. I became angry at her for being so weak, yet cheered for her as she struggled through life. I ached for her loneliness, and laughed at her attempts to bring normalcy to their lives. In the end, I admired her for her strength, devotion, and endurance.
This protagonist is the flip side of The Speed Queen. This one Pollyanna, that one The Bad Seed. Maybe my next read by this author will be the cream in the middle. An extra star here for the documentary on one possible path for a family dealing with a lengthy incarceration.
I felt an emotional connection to the characters, but the story was kind of boring. I hated how the point of it seemed to be that Party was a saint, and the sex was really weird. I like this author but I had issues with this one.
The story of a woman and her life while her husband is in prison for 20+ years. I like O’Nan’s rather sparse, yet powerful writing. I could relate to Patty, the title character. The cover flap calls the book “…a love story and a portrait of a woman discovering her own strength.” I think that is an apt description of a book that I didn’t want to end, while wanting to read on and on.
Stewart O’Nan is so so so good. We get a look inside the life of a woman whose husband is serving 25+ years in jail. It’s the trial, then day to day life raising her son alone, and visiting the jail, dealing with complications and annoyances in the legal system. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but I couldn’t put this down.
The sadness of this book, the long life story of a woman whose husband goes to jail for murder while she is pregnant with his child, reminded me of the big open lost sadness of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, even though the story is far less sensational. This is America not as a place of cruelty and menace, as in Cormac McCarthy, or a place of unrealized dreams, or a place of great injustice - it is less definite than that. It is a place of disconnection, of small lives, modest hopes. Lives hemmed in by circumstance, by fate, by mere accident. Although O'Nan writes of working class people, it really is everyone's sadnes, deep down. That said, this is an extraordinarily sad story - a sadness without the comfort of sorrow or drama.