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jmcook's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
eveningreader's review against another edition
5.0
I originally read this book about 20 years ago, and when I joined Goodreads I added to my Read list and gave it four stars. After re-reading it, I'm bumping it up to five stars. Machine Dreams is the story of the Hampson family, running between the years of WWII and Vietnam, and their quiet life in a small West Virginia town. The story is told from the perspective of each family member, mostly in third person but sometimes in first person or through letters. Phillips writes with enormous depth, and her sentences are finely crafted. Highly, highly recommended.
smalefowles's review against another edition
5.0
Kind of a perfect novel. Writing war well is an exceptional skill, I think, and Phillips traces the wide reverberations of a culture's involvement with war.
janetgraberdc's review against another edition
5.0
Perhaps one of my favorite books. Have read it several times.
jlyroberts's review against another edition
3.0
interesting way of telling a story. a family's whole life told in bits and pieces but you really get a sense of the characters
the_graylien's review against another edition
4.0
At the outset of this book, I thought it was maybe a BIT disjointed or that maybe I wasn't getting it.
Then I began to see what Phillips was going for: moving us through the lives and locales of her characters, letting us experience monumental eras and events in history THROUGH her characters, and it all began to come together.
The book started to remind me of reading Salinger's chronicles of the Glass family (spread all throughout HIS works) and that's definitely a GOOD thing, as Salinger is one of my favorite authors.
My final verdict? The book did take me a bit to become taken by it, but once it did, I was irrevokably enthralled. A couple of the characters towards the end were tugging at my heartstrings without letting up and allowed me to become totally absorbed in the story.
As soon as I was done reading, I wanted to start the book over to examine it more, feeling that there's more that this book can give us than what we can absorb over one reading.
Maybe someday.
Then I began to see what Phillips was going for: moving us through the lives and locales of her characters, letting us experience monumental eras and events in history THROUGH her characters, and it all began to come together.
The book started to remind me of reading Salinger's chronicles of the Glass family (spread all throughout HIS works) and that's definitely a GOOD thing, as Salinger is one of my favorite authors.
My final verdict? The book did take me a bit to become taken by it, but once it did, I was irrevokably enthralled. A couple of the characters towards the end were tugging at my heartstrings without letting up and allowed me to become totally absorbed in the story.
As soon as I was done reading, I wanted to start the book over to examine it more, feeling that there's more that this book can give us than what we can absorb over one reading.
Maybe someday.
awashinfeeling's review against another edition
5.0
There still isn't much Vietnam War literature around which made Machine Dreams so much more interesting to me.
Raises important questions about who the Vietnam War "belongs" to. Does it merely belong to the soldiers who were at the front lines? Or does it also belong to the ones left to witness the horrors from the outside and suffering the consequences?
Raises important questions about who the Vietnam War "belongs" to. Does it merely belong to the soldiers who were at the front lines? Or does it also belong to the ones left to witness the horrors from the outside and suffering the consequences?
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