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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Excellent, excellent, excellent. Heartbreaking and stunning. I closed the book and wanted to start all over again at the beginning. With echoes of Toni Morrison and "The Poisonwood Bible" but so entirely unique. Can't bear to put this one on the donation pile. Highly recommended.
It was a good book. Not what I expected after seeing the Oprah interview but it held my interest.
Very good storyline; however, the ending fell flat for me.
Brings to mind Gloria Naylors evocative tales. Amazing first novel centered around a Southern woman who moves to Philly in 1923 with her family. Each chapter is set in a different time focused on one of her children all the way up to 1980. Stunned by the unexpected ending.
The book tells the story of different people, over different years and all of them connected to one woman, Hattie. The story starts with Hattie herself as a sixteen year old, married and the mother of twins. The tragedy in this first chapter will lay out the way the lives of all the other children she is to have in the years to come. A story about hate, love, betrayal and family so beautifully written.
I was not sure what to expect with this story. The summary did not give much away and honestly I was just excited about it because Oprah picked it. The first chapter left me sad and I was eager to know what happened next but of course I was taken some twenty years into the future to another character. I know a lot of people did not think much of how the chapters were presented, but I personally did not mind. Each chapter was so heavy and final that there was no other way to go but forward.
I did not get the ending as much as I wanted to and I might re-read it, I might not. But it did show a little of what Hattie is all about even if it is not what I wanted her to be. But then again people will not always be what we want them to be, we have to accept them as they are.
Finally I think it was a good read, beautifully written, very sad and yes I did shed a few tears.
I was not sure what to expect with this story. The summary did not give much away and honestly I was just excited about it because Oprah picked it. The first chapter left me sad and I was eager to know what happened next but of course I was taken some twenty years into the future to another character. I know a lot of people did not think much of how the chapters were presented, but I personally did not mind. Each chapter was so heavy and final that there was no other way to go but forward.
I did not get the ending as much as I wanted to and I might re-read it, I might not. But it did show a little of what Hattie is all about even if it is not what I wanted her to be. But then again people will not always be what we want them to be, we have to accept them as they are.
Finally I think it was a good read, beautifully written, very sad and yes I did shed a few tears.
As many reviewers have noted, this book is not novel-like; the chapters are related, in that each one is about Hattie and/or her child(ren), but they do not really tell a story of the family. It is much more like related short stories, and the characters and their relationships are never really developed.
The novel follows Hattie from Georgia to New Jersey over 50 years. After the first two chapters, she is seen through the eyes of her children, or grandchildren. While this is a good book, I think that Mathis could have followed through with the characters more. I have too many questions about the stories of the children that are never answered as the book progresses.
The story of an African American family held together with a mother's grit and monumental courage.
There are moments in Ayana Mathis's multigenerational saga where I was blown away by her insight, her compassion and her tremendous skill as a writer. These are little moments interspersed throughout the novel and which, sadly, do not add up to enough to make me remember the book as the great work of fiction it is setting out to be. The structure of the book is too disjointed, the characters too hard and unlikeable. As a reader I sympathized with nearly everyone, but I didn't root for any of them and by the end of the fifth character's story, I was ready to be done with the entire family. I sense that what Mathis is trying to achieve might be more immediately apparent to me if I were African-American, from a large family, or from a different time period, but I think her Twelve Tribes of Hattie ultimately lacks the kind of universality that would allow all readers to come into her world.
There are moments in Ayana Mathis's multigenerational saga where I was blown away by her insight, her compassion and her tremendous skill as a writer. These are little moments interspersed throughout the novel and which, sadly, do not add up to enough to make me remember the book as the great work of fiction it is setting out to be. The structure of the book is too disjointed, the characters too hard and unlikeable. As a reader I sympathized with nearly everyone, but I didn't root for any of them and by the end of the fifth character's story, I was ready to be done with the entire family. I sense that what Mathis is trying to achieve might be more immediately apparent to me if I were African-American, from a large family, or from a different time period, but I think her Twelve Tribes of Hattie ultimately lacks the kind of universality that would allow all readers to come into her world.
Loved the story, but I didn't like the way it ended. It was very abrupt.