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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Something I love about book club -- books that I would have NEVER picked up on my own but I read anyway.
Mr. Splitfoot is our February selection and it was definitely an interesting read. The reader follows two parallel stories, one in the past and one in the present. The "past" follows orphans Ruth and Nat as they leave their foster home in the presence of Mr. Bell. The "present" follows newly pregnant Cora and Aunt Ruth as they make their way walking away from life as Cora knows it.
A definite character study in what makes people tick and why we do what we do. I saw the surprise ending from the middle of the book, but still enjoyed the ride. The ending came up really fast and was a little confusing. I have read too many other books with a past/present duality like this one has that were much more engaging. I felt the dive into "etherism" and the mix of Mormonism and Carl Sagan a little far fetched.
All in all, an interesting read but not one I would read again or recommend.
Mr. Splitfoot is our February selection and it was definitely an interesting read. The reader follows two parallel stories, one in the past and one in the present. The "past" follows orphans Ruth and Nat as they leave their foster home in the presence of Mr. Bell. The "present" follows newly pregnant Cora and Aunt Ruth as they make their way walking away from life as Cora knows it.
A definite character study in what makes people tick and why we do what we do. I saw the surprise ending from the middle of the book, but still enjoyed the ride. The ending came up really fast and was a little confusing. I have read too many other books with a past/present duality like this one has that were much more engaging. I felt the dive into "etherism" and the mix of Mormonism and Carl Sagan a little far fetched.
All in all, an interesting read but not one I would read again or recommend.
This was a page-turner of a book, magical realism like David Mitchell or Neil Gaiman, but by a woman and set in New York state.
p.170 " 'You know Linda Thompson?' she asked me. 'Of course,' I said, because I know everything now, that's my job, to know one drop of shallow information about ever single thing."
"Ruth slipped each child eighty dollars like a visiting grandma paying them off, expunging her guilt only slightly, the oldest girl walking away from the littler ones, as if being born a girl makes her responsible for everyone alive."
p.275 "Ruth keeps walking. She's leaving me here. I'll be dead, but at least I won't have to get up. I look up through the branches. I am more lost from the world than anyone has ever been. More lost than people who lived here before here had a name. Those people understood stars. They still felt north in their bodies. I don't have any idea what happened to north. My life so far has made me stupid, helpless, dependent. I am not like the people who came before. They knew how to feed themselves, how to give birth by squatting in the roots of a tree. They were lost, but lost didn't matter back then, since there was no found. They could wander these woods before tribes, before people even. Following deer or bears or who knows what. The sort of lost that doesn't exist anymore anywhere."
p.170 " 'You know Linda Thompson?' she asked me. 'Of course,' I said, because I know everything now, that's my job, to know one drop of shallow information about ever single thing."
"Ruth slipped each child eighty dollars like a visiting grandma paying them off, expunging her guilt only slightly, the oldest girl walking away from the littler ones, as if being born a girl makes her responsible for everyone alive."
p.275 "Ruth keeps walking. She's leaving me here. I'll be dead, but at least I won't have to get up. I look up through the branches. I am more lost from the world than anyone has ever been. More lost than people who lived here before here had a name. Those people understood stars. They still felt north in their bodies. I don't have any idea what happened to north. My life so far has made me stupid, helpless, dependent. I am not like the people who came before. They knew how to feed themselves, how to give birth by squatting in the roots of a tree. They were lost, but lost didn't matter back then, since there was no found. They could wander these woods before tribes, before people even. Following deer or bears or who knows what. The sort of lost that doesn't exist anymore anywhere."
"We make our way down to the shoreline. The hoodie Ruth borrowed from me so long ago, a world away, is on the sand of the bank, half buried, half in the water, because every story is a ghost story, even mine."
I am torn between 3 and 4 stars. It's a compelling but confusing gothic novel.
This was one of those books that's more engaging in how it's told than in the exact story of it. The author tells two stories, alternating between a story that happened perhaps eight or ten years in the past and one that is happening now in the present. The two stories ultimately converge, as one might expect, and the tension of that convergence provides much of the impetus to keep reading. The heroine of one story, Ruth, is the aunt of the heroine, Cora, of the other. Ruth's story is told in the third person, while Cora's is told in the first person. Oddly, I still had trouble keeping the central characters of the two narratives separate, which suggests some kind of limitation in the author's vision of them or skill in setting them down on the page. All in all, it was an engrossing story, but at the end, it didn't leave me with all that much. I can't imagine that I'll be chewing the story over in days to come. I would guess that in several months, I'd have to skim the first few pages to remember what it was about.
I enjoyed reading every second of this wonderful book. It is one of the most unique and surprising ghost stories I've ever read. It was also great to read nuanced fictional cult leaders; so many are just desert Mason-esque hippies and that gets so boring after a while. And the writing is just so good. There comes a point when the twist became expected, which I love because the story is built up in such a way that if the twist didn't happen, I would have been PISSED. Just such a strange and bizarre, yet somehow gentle tale.
Even though I had read & loved "The Seas", this book still took me by surprise.