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bonecarvdweaver's review against another edition
5.0
Trompe L'Oeil is a book I picked up at a random book sale taking place in a library in South Carolina almost two years ago. The cover looked intriguing, the synopsis on the inside beckoning, so I picked it up and brought it home. For a book that only cost me around two dollars, it felt worth millions more. Trompe L'Oeil follows a family before they lose their little girl in an accident and after, and how their relationships bend and sometimes snap, through a couple decades of their lives.
Nancy has a way with words, her writing flowery and a consistent beautiful flow. The plot itself moves slow at times but picks up in the right places. I adore the way she includes brilliantly done imagery with inserts before an important scene change where the narrator describes a historical painting in history which then co-aligns with the next part. She had a few narrative repeats such as describing the color of water, and sometimes near the end her paragraphs ran on with no end or point, but that only happened in the last ten pages.
I fell for these characters, hated them, but found them so realistic and close to my heart and history. They were dramatic but real, they grew from children to adults to parents and each one was done so well, in that you got nearly every perspective and didn't feel as if you wanted to say, "say less". This was a book that took me by surprise and enraptured me to the point of finishing it in eight hours. This is a long and wordy book but I believe it's incredibly worth the read and the wait.
This novel not only reminded me to write what I know or what I see, but that I have come to love and consume adult fiction. This writer is one I read from and said aloud to my gorgeous boyfriend, "I want to read the rest of her works".
I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to read a family drama, a tale of all the good and bad and heavy memories and emotions, in the form of an artistic writing style. Absolutely stunning from first page to last.
Nancy has a way with words, her writing flowery and a consistent beautiful flow. The plot itself moves slow at times but picks up in the right places. I adore the way she includes brilliantly done imagery with inserts before an important scene change where the narrator describes a historical painting in history which then co-aligns with the next part. She had a few narrative repeats such as describing the color of water, and sometimes near the end her paragraphs ran on with no end or point, but that only happened in the last ten pages.
I fell for these characters, hated them, but found them so realistic and close to my heart and history. They were dramatic but real, they grew from children to adults to parents and each one was done so well, in that you got nearly every perspective and didn't feel as if you wanted to say, "say less". This was a book that took me by surprise and enraptured me to the point of finishing it in eight hours. This is a long and wordy book but I believe it's incredibly worth the read and the wait.
This novel not only reminded me to write what I know or what I see, but that I have come to love and consume adult fiction. This writer is one I read from and said aloud to my gorgeous boyfriend, "I want to read the rest of her works".
I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to read a family drama, a tale of all the good and bad and heavy memories and emotions, in the form of an artistic writing style. Absolutely stunning from first page to last.
kellyofcali's review
5.0
I know I connect with a book when my thoughts start to mirror the narrative style - and that is just what happened here. An incredibly sad, but beautifully told story simply of a family in the wake of tragedy and beyond, there is not much dramatic beyond that initial tragedy that happens, yet I could not put it down as I fell in love with Nora and in and out of love with the various other flawed but human characters. The end came on a bit quickly, time seeming to speed up, but I suppose such is real life, right?
giovannnaz's review against another edition
4.0
Odd, aloof book--story told by observations that seem often to come from across the street or outside the house. Lots of looking in, for the reader and the characters.
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