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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There isn't a lot that happens in this book, but the depth is pretty staggering. I'm a sucker for books about writers, so this was right up my alley. Cole has created such real and fully developed characters, likable and otherwise. It would be easy to fall into rural Kentucky stereotypes. Cole lets his people (and setting) speak for themselves.
funny
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
He is a failure, she is a literary rising star.
He was born in the US, she is an immigrant.
He is considered a ”redneck”, she is a member of the “coastal elite”.
He lives in his granddad’s basement, she lives in a fancy stone guesthouse on the campus.
He was raised by evangelical Christians, she grew up with values of cultural Islam.
His parents are blue collar workers who rarely went out of Kentucky, hers are doctors who immigrated from war-torn Bosnia.
His family votes Trump, hers despises everything he stands for…
Could they be any more different? And yet… They fall in love and try hard to make it together against all odds. They quickly establish a comfortable routine derailed episodically by clashes of their classes.
But it’s a complication that makes life interesting, isn’t it?
“I’d wanted us to have a story, to be like those lovers in novels, who meet in a time of conflict, who fight to be together and are carried away by the sweeps of history. But there was nothing grand about us. We were just two little people who’d tried to love each other in the middle of a mess.”
Groundskeeping id smart, extremely well written story full of gentle humour.
Lee Cole shows the rift between two Americas in the wake of Trumps’s first election victory but proves that nobody is a two-dimensional person and nothing ever is either black or white.
This a thoughtful, satisfying read. It’s not full of action or twists; there is no unexpected ending that will make you think about clues you may have missed. It’s an unpretentious reflection on human relationships and what makes people tick. The descriptions, which at first may seem superfluous, mirror the way the main characters, who are writers, observe and take note of the world around them. The symbolism, beginning with the book’s title, carries through the story and reveals the connections between the characters. If you are a people-watcher by nature, you will appreciate this book.
I had a lot of feelings about this - I’m from Arkansas rather than Kentucky, but a lot of the concepts play the same: feeling disconnected from conservative family; grappling with the “lack” of rural places (and the conflict of feeling called to defend them from people who don’t know them while feeling every bit of the things that make them challenging); the relative privilege of being white, even if you’re poor. The book includes a romance, but that isn’t its heart - it’s about reckoning with your past and your future, how that might fit (or not fit) within the scope of someone else’s life, and understanding how your experiences fit into the larger world. I often judge books based on how much they give me to think about, and this one gave me a lot. I was annoyed, for example, about the Cracker Barrel part and how reductive it was (Go eat there and tell me the biscuits and apple butter aren’t good! Cracker Barrel biscuit slander is not allowed in my home.), but at the same time - I get that it is capitalizing on stereotypes, etc. At the end of the day, if you don’t like the protagonist, I don’t think you’ll be on board with going along on this ride with him. I could identify with him enough that I ultimately enjoyed this novel.
More like 3.5 stars, this book was good but not quite good enough for four stars. It seemed a bit too transparent; I know the author says it was a work of fiction but I just kept picturing him as the main character. And sadly, there are very few characters that are likeable. Nevertheless, I think Cole does a very good job at demonstrating how meaningful something very mundane can be, and he captures place and time very effectively. And for what it’s worth, his characters appear very real, even if not very pleasant.
Not for me. I found it boring, slow and the characters unlikeable, with the exception of Pop.
I enjoyed this book and it was a relatively quick read. I liked the slow, steady progress of the plot over the course of a school year. I didn’t love the main character, Owen, and at times the writing felt a bit forced/self-conscious (but probably spot-on for a wayward 28-year old aspiring novelist). Overall, the themes of the book were interesting and somewhat relatable - would recommend!