Scan barcode
mikolee's review
3.0
Three quarters of the way thru the title if the book pops up in a startling and profound way. A melancholy sweet novel focused on the lives if people in the years following a fatal car crash. Well written with captivating characters that immediately pull you into their lives.
lisagray68's review
4.0
Took me awhile to read this one, but I think it was only busy-ness on my part. After Carmen's wedding, a carload of attendees (including her brother and sister) kill a little girl as they are driving home. This book is about the lives they went on to live and how guilt became woven into the fabric of everything that happened next. Pretty dark (with lots of drugs and lesbian sex), but if you can handle that, you'll like it.
samhouston's review
3.0
Carry the One, the latest offering from Carol Anshaw, is sneaky. The novel begins as a straight-forward description of a hippie-style wedding attended by the bride’s siblings but not her parents. It is here that the reader meets the story’s main characters: siblings Carmen (the bride), Alice, and their doper brother Nick, along with Nick’s stoned girlfriend Olivia, Tom (a folk singer with negligible fame), and Maude (the groom’s sister). Reminiscent of the wedding described by Mario Puzo in The Godfather, a good bit of steamy sex ensues amongst these six during the wedding reception.
All is well as this sleepy, stoned, and mostly sated crew piles into one car to make its way back to the big city and individual lives. Mere minutes later, their world is shattered when Olivia, who is behind the wheel of the car, strikes and kills a little girl trying to cross their remote highway. Anshaw presents even this tragic accident and its immediate aftermath in a straight-forward account. At that point, however, the novel shifts in a more literary direction in which the reader will follow each of these young revelers well into middle-age via a series of jumpy flashbacks.
Numerous lives are damaged by the way that ten-year-old Casey Redman dies. Her parents, of course, suffer most obviously and most immediately, but they are not the only ones to sustain crippling damage to their souls. Carmen, Alice, Nick, Maude, and Tom are perfectly happy to let Olivia take the entire blame for what happened. But for the rest of their lives, they struggle to keep their personal guilt hidden – often even from themselves. Tom, who seems least affected, walks away from the whole thing as quickly and cleanly as possible, only to resurface years later with an idea that will disgust the others. And, although Olivia takes the biggest hit of all, none of them will ever be able to forget what happened that night.
If nothing else, this group of friends is filled with overachievers. One will become a prominent astronomer, one a painter of international repute, one a model/actress, and one a diligent political activist. Each of them is, however, so insecure that they expect to find failure around the next corner. After all, they deserved to be punished, do they not?
Carry the One tells a sad story, one that is much more complex than it initially appears to be. It is about personal guilt, family, love, addiction, and recovery – recovery of several varieties, in fact. Even though only one of the characters expresses her guilt outwardly, the life of each has been forever limited by the painful burden that keeps them tied together
All is well as this sleepy, stoned, and mostly sated crew piles into one car to make its way back to the big city and individual lives. Mere minutes later, their world is shattered when Olivia, who is behind the wheel of the car, strikes and kills a little girl trying to cross their remote highway. Anshaw presents even this tragic accident and its immediate aftermath in a straight-forward account. At that point, however, the novel shifts in a more literary direction in which the reader will follow each of these young revelers well into middle-age via a series of jumpy flashbacks.
Numerous lives are damaged by the way that ten-year-old Casey Redman dies. Her parents, of course, suffer most obviously and most immediately, but they are not the only ones to sustain crippling damage to their souls. Carmen, Alice, Nick, Maude, and Tom are perfectly happy to let Olivia take the entire blame for what happened. But for the rest of their lives, they struggle to keep their personal guilt hidden – often even from themselves. Tom, who seems least affected, walks away from the whole thing as quickly and cleanly as possible, only to resurface years later with an idea that will disgust the others. And, although Olivia takes the biggest hit of all, none of them will ever be able to forget what happened that night.
If nothing else, this group of friends is filled with overachievers. One will become a prominent astronomer, one a painter of international repute, one a model/actress, and one a diligent political activist. Each of them is, however, so insecure that they expect to find failure around the next corner. After all, they deserved to be punished, do they not?
Carry the One tells a sad story, one that is much more complex than it initially appears to be. It is about personal guilt, family, love, addiction, and recovery – recovery of several varieties, in fact. Even though only one of the characters expresses her guilt outwardly, the life of each has been forever limited by the painful burden that keeps them tied together
gossamerchild's review
3.0
This was definitely a 3.5. My initial reaction was not overly positive-I thought the characters lacked something...depth? perspective? emotions?...but the more I read the more I enjoyed this. The writing style really just sucked me in.
bichitofeo's review
3.0
Couldn't help but love the characters in this book. Anshaw does a great job with them.
kerrianne's review
1.0
I read this in a single sitting, which SHOULD mean it was riveting, but really means my body wasn't interested in sleeping for a few hours and it was on one of NPR's "Best of 2012" book lists and thus I persisted, thinking it was going to magically and mightily redeem itself.
Instead Anshaw kept telling me what was happening vs. showing me, and instead of growing, with every chapter the characters grew deeper and deeper into caricatures of themselves, their personalities and interactions with each other more and more one-dimensional and predictable.
[One-point-five stars for...the realization that sometimes "best of" booklists are a load of rubbish? Yes.]
Instead Anshaw kept telling me what was happening vs. showing me, and instead of growing, with every chapter the characters grew deeper and deeper into caricatures of themselves, their personalities and interactions with each other more and more one-dimensional and predictable.
[One-point-five stars for...the realization that sometimes "best of" booklists are a load of rubbish? Yes.]