Scan barcode
okiecozyreader's review against another edition
3.0
My favorite lines were at the end
“There is Privacy and privacy, he is beginning to think, just as there is Trespassing and trespassing, the land you walk because it was there before its owners and will, with any luck, stay on after them, because you care about it, and because it’s filled with green and growing, dead and brittle, expected and unexpected things.”
It was ok. I never got really into it but it was a fine weekend read.
“There is Privacy and privacy, he is beginning to think, just as there is Trespassing and trespassing, the land you walk because it was there before its owners and will, with any luck, stay on after them, because you care about it, and because it’s filled with green and growing, dead and brittle, expected and unexpected things.”
It was ok. I never got really into it but it was a fine weekend read.
farkle's review against another edition
3.0
This book started off well. Compelling writing. Variety of interesting characters in a family saga. Beach setting. But I found myself wishing the author had made different choices. The way the threads of the story were pieced together did not work for me; I don't understand the connections between characters that she chose to highlight. Maybe that isn't needed for other readers but I needed something more holding it together.
This could have ended up on my "ugh" shelf but the strength of the writing gives it a little bump. The beach was the best character and it came across very well.
This could have ended up on my "ugh" shelf but the strength of the writing gives it a little bump. The beach was the best character and it came across very well.
smd's review against another edition
2.0
I think this started off strong, then meandered off into a million directions with no central grounding force. I finished wondering what it was all really about.
bwolfe718's review against another edition
4.0
My lengthy review can be found on my blog. http://readherlikeanopenbook.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/book-review-the-end-of-the-point/
eileen9311's review against another edition
5.0
The End of the Point revolves around the rambling Buzzards Bay summer home of the wealthy Porter family.
‘Aug 1. Everyone is arriving today with cars and help, and it feels like an actual change of season. I had the strange idea as the cars came down the road that the children and I were the native animals, and now the actual humans will arrive and spoil our peace’.
Spanning sixty years, the story is related in several segments - part diary, part narration. Overall, I was beguiled, and hated to reach the end, my sole reservation being that Charlie’s saga of his dark years became slightly wearing. That said, I loved so many things about this story, and it brought to mind an all-time favorite, Coming Home, by Rosamunde Pilcher. Elizabeth Graver skillfully renders the strength and heartbreak of family - the bonds, the shared history, and the inevitable gene pool at work! Relationships are a key element. A sense of place is also vital to the story, and the reader is transported to a world of incredible beauty.
‘Last night I wished we had not come, for it was bleak, but the morning changed everything. Such a wind, and such clearness and colors, I have never seen before, everything scrubbed clean. The yellow and red chrysanthemums are in full bloom now, and the dahlias. The roses have turned to red berries and the huckleberry bushes and bay bushes to purple russet’. One could almost smell the bracing sea air!
And also ‘I should be glad we are not on Ashaunt, but I hate to miss a hurricane, to feel its power and walk out to the end where the wind might flatten you and the gray waves crest high, then curl and finally teeter and fall. There is almost nothing so beautiful and, at the same time, so frightening, as that curved lip.’
Possibly I’m including too many quotes. However, when a finished book holds lots of saved pages, that’s indicative! How well she writes! A new favorite author!
‘Aug 1. Everyone is arriving today with cars and help, and it feels like an actual change of season. I had the strange idea as the cars came down the road that the children and I were the native animals, and now the actual humans will arrive and spoil our peace’.
Spanning sixty years, the story is related in several segments - part diary, part narration. Overall, I was beguiled, and hated to reach the end, my sole reservation being that Charlie’s saga of his dark years became slightly wearing. That said, I loved so many things about this story, and it brought to mind an all-time favorite, Coming Home, by Rosamunde Pilcher. Elizabeth Graver skillfully renders the strength and heartbreak of family - the bonds, the shared history, and the inevitable gene pool at work! Relationships are a key element. A sense of place is also vital to the story, and the reader is transported to a world of incredible beauty.
‘Last night I wished we had not come, for it was bleak, but the morning changed everything. Such a wind, and such clearness and colors, I have never seen before, everything scrubbed clean. The yellow and red chrysanthemums are in full bloom now, and the dahlias. The roses have turned to red berries and the huckleberry bushes and bay bushes to purple russet’. One could almost smell the bracing sea air!
And also ‘I should be glad we are not on Ashaunt, but I hate to miss a hurricane, to feel its power and walk out to the end where the wind might flatten you and the gray waves crest high, then curl and finally teeter and fall. There is almost nothing so beautiful and, at the same time, so frightening, as that curved lip.’
Possibly I’m including too many quotes. However, when a finished book holds lots of saved pages, that’s indicative! How well she writes! A new favorite author!
librarydosebykristy's review against another edition
4.0
There were times where I felt this book was dragging. I thought about abandoning it a few times. But I couldn't! The characters hooked me and I wanted to know what would happen with them.
It was beautifully written with characterizations and descriptions of relationships that were almost painfully accurate. In particular the mother and son relationship at the center of the story was beautiful and fraught and I cringed a lot at the behavior and opinions of the mother, fearful of turning out like her!
Still, when she passes away at the end of the book, I wept, to my complete surprise.
Overall, it's a beautiful moving portrait of family life over the past 80 years or so and an important literary achievement.
It was beautifully written with characterizations and descriptions of relationships that were almost painfully accurate. In particular the mother and son relationship at the center of the story was beautiful and fraught and I cringed a lot at the behavior and opinions of the mother, fearful of turning out like her!
Still, when she passes away at the end of the book, I wept, to my complete surprise.
Overall, it's a beautiful moving portrait of family life over the past 80 years or so and an important literary achievement.
jbones's review against another edition
2.0
I found this book to be boring to read. I never got invested with the characters; they were all pretty one dimensional. There was a lot of "foreshadowing" that seemed unnecessary. I got tired of hearing about what was going to happen in the future and then waiting to catch up to it. Glad to be done with this one!
nmcannon's review against another edition
3.0
Okay, okay, so, as a piece of art, this book deserves 5 stars every day and all the time, but as far as me LIKING this art piece, I found it draining. Perhaps if I hadn't read it during such a stressful time of my life, I would have enjoyed it more.
THE END OF THE POINT is a dense read. It's like if Virginia Woolf walked out of the river, revised/expanded TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and then proceeded to calmly walk into a New England's ocean. Alternatively, it's like Joseph Conrad and Woolf had a literary baby. The sense of nature and place is fantastic, brilliant, iridescent; the back and forth of time as easy and comforting as slipping in a warm bath; the emotional journey of generations lovingly and sadly penned: it's all here. Plus, I was lucky enough to meet the author in person and fangirl over her diligent research and methods of said research. Like, goddamn, I want to have her budget, as she traveled to literally all the locations mentioned in the book.
The book is partially an ode to her partner's family and family history, which is lovely and a bit mind-boggling at times, as they happen to be the ultimate upper crust WASPs. As I am counting pennies and worrying about student loans, they're casually building entire cabins for their children and traipsing about the most expensive hotels in Europe. Talk about culture shock. Then again, me complaining about this is a bit like going into shark-infested waters to complain about sharks. Dunno what I was expecting.
So yes, this is an amazing read, but have care for when you decide to read it. You've got to dedicate yourself and be willing to lose yourself a little. You've got to want to flit with the beach swallows and catch stardust with your bare fingers. No other way to do it.
THE END OF THE POINT is a dense read. It's like if Virginia Woolf walked out of the river, revised/expanded TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and then proceeded to calmly walk into a New England's ocean. Alternatively, it's like Joseph Conrad and Woolf had a literary baby. The sense of nature and place is fantastic, brilliant, iridescent; the back and forth of time as easy and comforting as slipping in a warm bath; the emotional journey of generations lovingly and sadly penned: it's all here. Plus, I was lucky enough to meet the author in person and fangirl over her diligent research and methods of said research. Like, goddamn, I want to have her budget, as she traveled to literally all the locations mentioned in the book.
The book is partially an ode to her partner's family and family history, which is lovely and a bit mind-boggling at times, as they happen to be the ultimate upper crust WASPs. As I am counting pennies and worrying about student loans, they're casually building entire cabins for their children and traipsing about the most expensive hotels in Europe. Talk about culture shock. Then again, me complaining about this is a bit like going into shark-infested waters to complain about sharks. Dunno what I was expecting.
So yes, this is an amazing read, but have care for when you decide to read it. You've got to dedicate yourself and be willing to lose yourself a little. You've got to want to flit with the beach swallows and catch stardust with your bare fingers. No other way to do it.
flogigyahoo's review against another edition
2.0
I really wanted to like The End of The Point by Elizabeth Graver. She writes very well and the idea of telling the story of a vacation home and how its tenants react to the setting up of an army camp during Word War I I was intriguing to me. But the story goes on and on, telling about more than one generation of the Porter family, wealthy, a little snobbish, mother, father,their 2 Scot nannies, the 4 children growing up, their children growing up...coming to stay each summer at Ashaunt Point while wars come and go, WWII, Korea, Vietnam. Maybe a little too much. I could not find enough to interest me after the first generation. Still, I would definitely try her previous novels; her writing is so good.