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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I enjoyed the book. It was powerful and deep and sweet, but I have a couple of criticisms. I like bouncing from story to story, from person to person, but the time jump threw me sometimes. We hung out with Floyd for a while when he was away from home then we jump to another child and see that Floyd is in the house. We go with Bell to the hospital and hear Hattie offer Bell a place in her home, then we jump to Cassie and Sala, who are living in Hattie and August's home and where is Bell? Also, there were a lot of sexual relationships, which made some of the stories feel a bit repetitive. I kept looking for other kinds of relationships and didn't get them until the very, very end with Cassie and Sala.
I do appreciate all that's left unsaid, all of the blanks we have to fill in for ourselves (except when they're contradictory - who lived in the extra bedroom at Hattie and August's? Bell or Cassie and Sala?), and the snapshots of a life.
I do appreciate all that's left unsaid, all of the blanks we have to fill in for ourselves (except when they're contradictory - who lived in the extra bedroom at Hattie and August's? Bell or Cassie and Sala?), and the snapshots of a life.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-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
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-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
The ending of a book can be so deciding. This time it upgraded my rating from 3 to 4 in a blimp.
I honestly don't know how to rate this book.
There are parts of the book that are very powerful and moving, it is well written and addresses some issues in an honest way. But it feels unfinished. The book follows Hattie and has chapters from the perspective of each of her 9 children. At the end of the book there is no closure on any of the children's stories. It ends so abruptly that there are about 1,000 questions I could ask. It feels unfinished and it didn't really have a story line. Sure it followed Hatties life but even then it jumped around a lot.
It felt like a collection of short stories that didn't go together. None of the characters were well developed because it is a short book and the author tries to cover the perspective of 12 or more characters. Hattie was a hard character to like as she was cold and distant for what seemed to be little reason.
There are parts of the book that are very powerful and moving, it is well written and addresses some issues in an honest way. But it feels unfinished. The book follows Hattie and has chapters from the perspective of each of her 9 children. At the end of the book there is no closure on any of the children's stories. It ends so abruptly that there are about 1,000 questions I could ask. It feels unfinished and it didn't really have a story line. Sure it followed Hatties life but even then it jumped around a lot.
It felt like a collection of short stories that didn't go together. None of the characters were well developed because it is a short book and the author tries to cover the perspective of 12 or more characters. Hattie was a hard character to like as she was cold and distant for what seemed to be little reason.
This was a typical Oprah pick in that it was an very sad story. The main character which this story centers around is Hattie, a mother raising her famiy in the most extreme poverty and the life changing event that affects the way she interacts with her children. Told in the perspective of each of her children gives this book make for a very interesting read.
The Philadelphia of today is not the Philadelphia of the 20's or 50's or even 80's, but if you live in Philadelphia or have been anywhere outside of Center City or the Main Line, Northern Liberties, Old City or Manayunk (aka outside of any predominately wealthy or gentrified neighborhood), you know that it can be a nasty city. Philadelphia in poverty is a place of true grit.
I live in a Northeast neighborhood that is considered safe and "good," just low income. My apartment has leaky ceilings, mold, and roaches. I pick my lawn free of trash on almost a daily basis. I make a decent salary, abide by the law, and have the privilege of not facing institutionalized racism or discrimination and yet, even for my many advantages, I manage to feel the broken spirit that comes from living in a dirty city left to ambivalence and blight at times. It is work to get comfortable here, to become accustomed to poverty and suffering and disorder.
All of this is to say that I think this book, though it tabulates all the necessary ailments for highly Literary selections in its narratives -- abuse, addiction, infidelity, abandonment, death -- is missing a real rawness. A rawness that should be inherent in the particular part of the North that Ayana Mathis chose as the site of Hattie's migration. I don't know if it's because Hattie and so many of her children spend their lives trying to maintain the facade of their dreams, and the book is over-polished as a reflection of the false fronts in the stories it tells, or what.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is broken down into ten narratives dedicated to each of Hattie's eleven children and to one of her grandchildren. Most sections of the book peel back a little layer of Hattie's own life in an oblique way, her relationship with her drunk, womanizing disappointment of a husband and her struggle to raise eleven kids with only herself to really count on. I love the idea of telling a mother's story with the lives of her progeny, and when I really stop to think about this book I guess you can't tell about Hattie's struggle without that cycle of abuse, addiction, infidelity, abandonment, death. After all, if her kids were well-adjusted it would mean that Hattie's story had, in part, arrived at some fulfillment of her dream after leaving the South.
As I think back on the mechanics of the book now, and Mathis' intention in structuring it the way she did, I want to give it three stars. But I can't shake the feeling that there is still some iciness in the writing itself. Some remove from the itemization of traumas, not enough reflection of Hattie herself nor of this city that failed to meet her expectations and the expectations of so many others. Too many narratives in the story to have much of a cohesive emotional impact on me.
I'm not gonna knock it for being an Oprah book, though. A lot of people are going to get something from this book (and from Oprah) that I don't. But, it's a Philadelphia book and it doesn't feel like it's truly of this city, even though the professed spirit is the same.
I live in a Northeast neighborhood that is considered safe and "good," just low income. My apartment has leaky ceilings, mold, and roaches. I pick my lawn free of trash on almost a daily basis. I make a decent salary, abide by the law, and have the privilege of not facing institutionalized racism or discrimination and yet, even for my many advantages, I manage to feel the broken spirit that comes from living in a dirty city left to ambivalence and blight at times. It is work to get comfortable here, to become accustomed to poverty and suffering and disorder.
All of this is to say that I think this book, though it tabulates all the necessary ailments for highly Literary selections in its narratives -- abuse, addiction, infidelity, abandonment, death -- is missing a real rawness. A rawness that should be inherent in the particular part of the North that Ayana Mathis chose as the site of Hattie's migration. I don't know if it's because Hattie and so many of her children spend their lives trying to maintain the facade of their dreams, and the book is over-polished as a reflection of the false fronts in the stories it tells, or what.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is broken down into ten narratives dedicated to each of Hattie's eleven children and to one of her grandchildren. Most sections of the book peel back a little layer of Hattie's own life in an oblique way, her relationship with her drunk, womanizing disappointment of a husband and her struggle to raise eleven kids with only herself to really count on. I love the idea of telling a mother's story with the lives of her progeny, and when I really stop to think about this book I guess you can't tell about Hattie's struggle without that cycle of abuse, addiction, infidelity, abandonment, death. After all, if her kids were well-adjusted it would mean that Hattie's story had, in part, arrived at some fulfillment of her dream after leaving the South.
As I think back on the mechanics of the book now, and Mathis' intention in structuring it the way she did, I want to give it three stars. But I can't shake the feeling that there is still some iciness in the writing itself. Some remove from the itemization of traumas, not enough reflection of Hattie herself nor of this city that failed to meet her expectations and the expectations of so many others. Too many narratives in the story to have much of a cohesive emotional impact on me.
I'm not gonna knock it for being an Oprah book, though. A lot of people are going to get something from this book (and from Oprah) that I don't. But, it's a Philadelphia book and it doesn't feel like it's truly of this city, even though the professed spirit is the same.
Beautifully written but so depressingly cyclic. Nobody gets better, no lessons are learned. No one escapes the oppression of life. So many of these stories could have been fleshed out and we don't really learn anything of the title character by the end of 243 pages. I have hopes for Mathis' next novel, her writing is so captivating in its language and fluidity that I am sure we can expect a better novel for her second.
Beautifully written and wonderfully descriptive. Highlights the profound effects of a mother on her child's lives.