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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
This book is really well-written, and I really liked the unique format of how each chapter advanced the story from a different person's point of view. Sometimes Oprah's book club selections can be rather depressing, and this book got that way sometimes, but the terrific writing kept me interested. I was afraid the ending was going to be really depressing, but it wasn't...thank goodness! (I was ready to rate it only 3 stars, until I read the last 5 pages.)
Well written but no momentum. Characters are developed mostly in the space of one chapter each. No thread between chapters.
Though the subject matter was interesting and the writing itself was not bad, the style in which the novel is presented made it very difficult for me to engage with the book. The "twelve tribes" are Hattie, her husband, and their children , and each chapter is about (and mostly from the perspective of) one or two of the children. While this is (in theory) an unconventional and memorable way to present the character of Hattie, letting us learn about her from the perspectives and experiences of the people who know her best, in practice it caused the book to read like a series of too-short novellas with only a few repeated characters from story to story, and in each by the time I became engrossed in the new plot line the story was over and we were on to the next. The last paragraph of the last chapter came close to tying it all back together, but it didn't make the slog to get there any less disjointed in the reading.
You might like it; it has promise, on the whole it is well-written, and it's about important subject matter (especially in this day and age). I think if it had been marketed as the anthology of character pieces that it is I may have liked it better, but at the end of the day it wasn't what I was expecting and I was left with a disappointment of a plot that kept stalling and struggling to start again and the overwhelming feeling that this book should have been better.
Spoiler
and one grandchildYou might like it; it has promise, on the whole it is well-written, and it's about important subject matter (especially in this day and age). I think if it had been marketed as the anthology of character pieces that it is I may have liked it better, but at the end of the day it wasn't what I was expecting and I was left with a disappointment of a plot that kept stalling and struggling to start again and the overwhelming feeling that this book should have been better.
I would have given this book 2 1/2 stars. At fifteen, Hattie gets married, leaves Georgia for Philadelphia, gives birth to twins, who die shortly after birth. This starts the stories of Hattie's subsequent children through the years. Hattie is a hard woman, determined to give her children the strength and backbone to survive the hardships of life. Each child has his own set of struggles and obstacles. The book tells the story of each child, without really linking him/her to the siblings. The stories could have been read as stand alone short stories. I would have preferred the stories to be more intermingled and to have told more history and background of the family. The writing was strong, but the story telling was weak.
I loved the story, and it was incredibly powerful, but I thought that the way it was written wasn't quite as good for the character development as it could have been; nobody got a whole lot of time in the limelight -- although in the ending chapters this actually was pretty effective. I thought that the characters were so fascinating and should've gotten more time to be developed each on their own in a novel. To me it read more like a collection of short stories tied together by a single connecting thread than a novel. Still good though.
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked, but did not love this book. The individual parts were greater than the sum. Some outstanding writing and 10 of the twelve storieswere well done but two suffered from a bit too much melodrama. On the whole a good read. 3.1 Martinie glasses
I don’t typically like books that jump narration and setting so much but I found I actually liked the way this was a succession of short stories featuring each of Hattie’s children. Overall I enjoyed it but not so much as to recommend it to others. I was sort of left thinking “ok, so what?” — I wanted the author to tie things together a bit more but the vignettes were interesting to read.
Oprah has great taste in books. I absolutely loved this one, following a family from the Great Migration on into the 1980s. It's totally enrapturing and beautifully written.