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4.09 AVERAGE
4.09 AVERAGE
Despite the popularity of this book it struck me as nothing more than a maudlin soap opera. I couldn't push my way through to the end.
emotional
reflective
sad
adventurous
dark
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i think this book will always be one of my favorites. taught me the importance and power of description. so beautiful.
Because I needed to love my mother and father in all their flawed, outrageous humanity, I could not afford to address them directly about the felonies committed against all of us. I could not hold them accountable or indict them for crimes they could not help. They, too, had a history—one that I remembered with both tenderness and pain, one that made me forgive their transgressions against their own children. In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.
If I could hurt the body, I would not notice the coming apart of the soul.
There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.
To love one’s children is to love oneself, and this was a state of supererogatory grace denied my parents by birth and circumstance. I needed to reconnect to something I had lost. Somewhere I had lost touch with the kind of man I had the potential of being. I needed to effect a reconciliation with that unborn man and try to coax him gently toward his maturity.
Because I’m an American, I let her die by degrees, isolated and abandoned by her family.
If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float.
she always claimed, smiling, that she and her brothers had been fathered by a blitzkrieg.
I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and with a tongue fluent only in praise.
The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our home by the river.
Violence sends deep roots into the heart; it has no seasons; it is always ripe, evergreen.
If I could hurt the body, I would not notice the coming apart of the soul.
There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.
To love one’s children is to love oneself, and this was a state of supererogatory grace denied my parents by birth and circumstance. I needed to reconnect to something I had lost. Somewhere I had lost touch with the kind of man I had the potential of being. I needed to effect a reconciliation with that unborn man and try to coax him gently toward his maturity.
Because I’m an American, I let her die by degrees, isolated and abandoned by her family.
If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float.
she always claimed, smiling, that she and her brothers had been fathered by a blitzkrieg.
I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and with a tongue fluent only in praise.
The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our home by the river.
Violence sends deep roots into the heart; it has no seasons; it is always ripe, evergreen.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
One of the best books I have read in a long time. I couldn’t put it down. Delving into the underlying traumas and dysfunctions of a family, how it shaped each of the characters differently and how they discovered more about themselves in the process was very moving.
I gave up on this one. I was originally drawn to it because 1) Pat Conroy wrote the intro to the edition of Gone With the Wind that I read and loved 2) I’ve been on an American South kick 3) the book was supposedly good enough to make into a movie.
But I just couldn’t do it, and abandoned it about halfway through. While the author’s reverence and love for the South is beautiful, it’s the only shining spot. The main character is uninteresting, the dialogue is maddening, and there’s this weird incesty vibe that’s icky.
Back to the Little Free Library where I found it.
But I just couldn’t do it, and abandoned it about halfway through. While the author’s reverence and love for the South is beautiful, it’s the only shining spot. The main character is uninteresting, the dialogue is maddening, and there’s this weird incesty vibe that’s icky.
Back to the Little Free Library where I found it.
Extreme — and I mean highly detailed and constant — details of the tormented lives of three southern siblings and their abusive parents. Brutal, although the ending made me cry. No one quips this quickly and constantly, Tom!
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes