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ssloeffler's review
4.0
I don't often read books because of reviews I've read -- I'm generally a recommendation person -- however, the Entertainment Weekly review of Carry the One made me want to read it. I'm so glad. It was an incredibly quick read. I've never had a book which is so full of tragedy and dysfunction also be so loving and intriguing. Highly recommend.
sbunyan's review against another edition
2.0
I was very intrigued by the premise of this story - 6 people are in a car that strikes and kills a young girl. This happens early in the book and the rest of the narrative follows the 6 people through many years.
I was extremely depressed after reading this book. I thought about it awhile before giving 2 stars because I wondered if my being depressed was what the author intended. In the end I gave the 2 stars because I didn't find anything to praise about the book other than the setup. I didn't really like any of the characters and though I was able to finish the book, I didn't really enjoy it. I am not trying to be facetious when I say it was like not being able to look away from a car accident. I wanted to stop reading but kept hoping there might eventually be something uplifting. And I never got uplifted. So I thought maybe the point was to cause depression and that just doesn't seem like something valuable to me.
I was extremely depressed after reading this book. I thought about it awhile before giving 2 stars because I wondered if my being depressed was what the author intended. In the end I gave the 2 stars because I didn't find anything to praise about the book other than the setup. I didn't really like any of the characters and though I was able to finish the book, I didn't really enjoy it. I am not trying to be facetious when I say it was like not being able to look away from a car accident. I wanted to stop reading but kept hoping there might eventually be something uplifting. And I never got uplifted. So I thought maybe the point was to cause depression and that just doesn't seem like something valuable to me.
torifreeman17's review against another edition
1.0
3/10
"What kind of humans are we if we forgive ourselves?"
If I had to sum up my distaste for this book in a single quote, it would be that.
However, I so rarely leave one-star reviews that I feel obligated to justify my reasoning. Based on the summary of this book, I expected a novel about the various ways people process and are affected by grief/guilt. That is not what this book was about. The characters are all fiercely determined to hang on to their guilt for their involvement in the accident as a way to atone for their sins, but that's not really what the story examined.
In an interview included in the end of the book, Anshaw says she wanted to examine the role "time plays in love and obsession, in relationships among siblings, in political convictions, and the struggles of an artist...and the way addiction can trump everything else." I think that was part of the problem; this book tried to be about too much, which left it far too expansive and broad to really be about anything.
The constant jumps through time, if done well, could have really added to the story. Unfortunately, they just left me confused more than anything. A lot of times they felt inconsistent with the character or just completely out of the blue. And following three main characters made it difficult to follow where exactly in the timeline we were.
Also, the constant Conservative/Catholic bashing was a huge turnoff. I have ready many a book in which I and the characters share different and even opposing world views and beliefs, and still enjoyed the story and liked the characters. Anshaw took her bitter resentment toward the right to an extreme that was over the top and unnecessary.
The one thing I did think was well written was the way the sisters dealt with their brother's addictions.
Ultimately, this story was painfully boring. Anshaw is a talented writer, but in this case that wasn't enough to make for a good story. The only reason I pushed through to the end is because this was the only book I brought on vacation with me.
"What kind of humans are we if we forgive ourselves?"
If I had to sum up my distaste for this book in a single quote, it would be that.
However, I so rarely leave one-star reviews that I feel obligated to justify my reasoning. Based on the summary of this book, I expected a novel about the various ways people process and are affected by grief/guilt. That is not what this book was about. The characters are all fiercely determined to hang on to their guilt for their involvement in the accident as a way to atone for their sins, but that's not really what the story examined.
In an interview included in the end of the book, Anshaw says she wanted to examine the role "time plays in love and obsession, in relationships among siblings, in political convictions, and the struggles of an artist...and the way addiction can trump everything else." I think that was part of the problem; this book tried to be about too much, which left it far too expansive and broad to really be about anything.
The constant jumps through time, if done well, could have really added to the story. Unfortunately, they just left me confused more than anything. A lot of times they felt inconsistent with the character or just completely out of the blue. And following three main characters made it difficult to follow where exactly in the timeline we were.
Also, the constant Conservative/Catholic bashing was a huge turnoff. I have ready many a book in which I and the characters share different and even opposing world views and beliefs, and still enjoyed the story and liked the characters. Anshaw took her bitter resentment toward the right to an extreme that was over the top and unnecessary.
The one thing I did think was well written was the way the sisters dealt with their brother's addictions.
Ultimately, this story was painfully boring. Anshaw is a talented writer, but in this case that wasn't enough to make for a good story. The only reason I pushed through to the end is because this was the only book I brought on vacation with me.
bethreadsandnaps's review against another edition
2.0
I felt like Anshaw was trying to write the Great American Novel, a la Wally Lamb or Franzen or another author who follows characters through the better part of a lifetime.
The crux of the book is the accidental killing of a young girl affects this group of family and friends for the rest of their lives. The author tries to lead us to think Nick becomes an addict because of the girl's death...but he was already addicted before then. It wasn't like he was on his way to becoming a priest or anything. And Carmen and Matt's marriage...based on how it all came about, we didn't think it was going to last from the beginning, did we?
People who struggle early on tend to live screwed up lives, regardless if there's an accidental killing. Yeah, Nick's addiction issues probably got worse after the girl's death, but how much so is debatable.
This book was kind of depressing, a scant amount of humor but most was oppressively sad. This book should come with some Prozac.
I listened to this as an audiobook. I usually don't have many problems with the performance, but I don't think they picked the best reader for the book. She sounded older (although for most of the book the characters were fairly young), and her voice was rather garbled--like she had rocks in her mouth.
The crux of the book is the accidental killing of a young girl affects this group of family and friends for the rest of their lives. The author tries to lead us to think Nick becomes an addict because of the girl's death...but he was already addicted before then. It wasn't like he was on his way to becoming a priest or anything. And Carmen and Matt's marriage...based on how it all came about, we didn't think it was going to last from the beginning, did we?
People who struggle early on tend to live screwed up lives, regardless if there's an accidental killing. Yeah, Nick's addiction issues probably got worse after the girl's death, but how much so is debatable.
This book was kind of depressing, a scant amount of humor but most was oppressively sad. This book should come with some Prozac.
I listened to this as an audiobook. I usually don't have many problems with the performance, but I don't think they picked the best reader for the book. She sounded older (although for most of the book the characters were fairly young), and her voice was rather garbled--like she had rocks in her mouth.
uhm_kai's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Cancer, Car accident, Grief, Infidelity, Child death, Medical content, Eating disorder, Misogyny, Death, Dementia, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, and Alcoholism
caresays's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this a lot for inexplicable reasons -- it's a slow book, though it jumps large stretches of time. It's at least 2008 by the end of the novel, which starts in 1983. But, I don't know, I was really drawn into the lives of Nick, Carmen, and Alice, and the way major events restructure lives. And certainly Alice being gay was compelling to read about. Her story is given equal weight with that of her siblings', and that was super great.
cpeterson164's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent book. In fact, the best I have read in quite some time. Writing is fluid but feels very real and relevant. The book explores what happens after a car full of partygoers in rural Wisconsin hits and kills a young girl one night and how they cope with this over the next 25 years. Set mostly in Chicago in the era from 1983 to the present, so fun to read about local and timely references.
vellanorah's review
2.0
As you can see this took me forever to finally finish. It wasn’t particularly interesting and yet I finished it anyway.
rebeccafromflorida's review against another edition
3.0
Carry the One by Carol Anshaw was an interesting book that began with one disasterous event. After Carmen's wedding, her sister Alice, her sister-in-law Maude (Alice's new lover), her brother Nick, Nick's high as a kite girlfriend, Olivia, and a straggler named Tom, drive home. . . only to hit and kill a little girl who is walking home from a sleepover at the unlikely time of 2 AM.
This event seems to cause a downward spiral in the lives of those involved. Olivia, the driver, is jailed for the accident. Nick feels terribly guilty, since he was also on a multitude of drugs and had seen the girl before they hit her but didn't speak up because he thought she wasn't real. He tries everything to make it up to Olivia, but can't maintain sobriety, which is what Olivia needs if Nick is going to be in her life.
Carmen's marriage unravels and she tries to co-parent her son the best way she knows how. Alice is an artist, in an out of success, and has an on again, off again relationship with Maude, which is very unhealthy.
Tom seems to be the only one able to deal with the incident effectively, having written a successful song about the crash.
My thoughts? I enjoyed the book but was confused by the ending. As in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, I just didn't understand the ending of Carry the One. What did I miss along the way? Am I supposed to understand the cryptic ending?
Also, the entire group is bonded together by this incident, and while I can see that their lives are spiraling out of control, I'm not sure if this incident is the cause. Carmen married Matt because she was pregnant, so it's not a huge surprise that the relationship isn't lasting. Nick was a huge drug addict before the accident, so being unable to stay sober isn't a surprise either. Alice falls into convenient relationships, and happened to be in this semi-destructive one with Maude, something they managed to start right before the accident took place.
This novel falls right in the middle for me. I enjoyed reading it but I wish the ending was more clear to me!
What are you reading this week?
Thanks for reading,
Rebecca @ Love at First Book
This event seems to cause a downward spiral in the lives of those involved. Olivia, the driver, is jailed for the accident. Nick feels terribly guilty, since he was also on a multitude of drugs and had seen the girl before they hit her but didn't speak up because he thought she wasn't real. He tries everything to make it up to Olivia, but can't maintain sobriety, which is what Olivia needs if Nick is going to be in her life.
Carmen's marriage unravels and she tries to co-parent her son the best way she knows how. Alice is an artist, in an out of success, and has an on again, off again relationship with Maude, which is very unhealthy.
Tom seems to be the only one able to deal with the incident effectively, having written a successful song about the crash.
My thoughts? I enjoyed the book but was confused by the ending. As in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, I just didn't understand the ending of Carry the One. What did I miss along the way? Am I supposed to understand the cryptic ending?
Also, the entire group is bonded together by this incident, and while I can see that their lives are spiraling out of control, I'm not sure if this incident is the cause. Carmen married Matt because she was pregnant, so it's not a huge surprise that the relationship isn't lasting. Nick was a huge drug addict before the accident, so being unable to stay sober isn't a surprise either. Alice falls into convenient relationships, and happened to be in this semi-destructive one with Maude, something they managed to start right before the accident took place.
This novel falls right in the middle for me. I enjoyed reading it but I wish the ending was more clear to me!
What are you reading this week?
Thanks for reading,
Rebecca @ Love at First Book
bex_inada's review
1.0
Yeah, I'm tapping out on this one. I made it 70-something pages in, hoping it would get better. I hate not finishing books, but at a certain point, there are just too many books to waste my time reading bad ones.
Here's the thing: if I had liked even one thing about this, I would have continued, but there was nothing. First of all, the writing style was jerky and abrupt, and really made it hard to get into the flow of the novel. Take the first line: "So Carmen was married, just." The whole book is like that. There's something weirdly conversational and backwards about it. It's obviously a matter of personal taste and I'm sure it wouldn't bother everyone, but it drove me nuts.
Also, the timeline was virtually impossible to follow. Chapters sometimes jumped a few months, sometimes years, with little or no time marker. In some cases, you'd end up reading most of the chapter without any clue that years had been skipped. That is totally jarring and it makes it hard to anchor yourself in the story. I usually have no problem with timeline shifts and I actually generally really like that kind of narrative, but please, for the love of God, MAKE IT CLEAR HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED!
On the same sort of wavelength, the pov changes were sometimes incredibly subtle and hard to follow. I'm fine with pov's changing mid-chapter (as long as there are breaks), but there's a problem when the pov changes more than once in the same segment. There were times when it was legitimately difficult to figure out whose pov it was supposed to be and which character was thinking and which was being thought about. I mean, I don't even know how you get yourself into that mess.
My biggest issue, by far and away, was that I universally hated each and every one of the characters. Literally, none of them were likeable or sympathetic at all. It reminded me a lot of Dinner at the Homesick Restuarant, which I also hated (and was forced to read in school--TWICE!). Every character in that book is basically an awful person, and you follow each of them for years while they do terrible things to each other and otherwise lead totally boring lives, all the way up until the end where they continue to be basically awful people and learn nothing from their experiences. This book was very much like that, though I obviously don't know how this one turns out. Each character was totally fucked up, but not the interesting kind of fucked up. It didn't matter whose pov or what else was going on, i was continuously bored and frustrated by all of them. A weirdly disproportionate time seemed to be spent in Alice's pov, who in some ways was the most boring and annoying of all of them. If any of them had been even slightly more likeable, I might have cared a bit more as they struggled to deal with the fallout from the accident. Which, by the way, was implausible to begin with. A 10 year old girl wandering around outside in the middle of nowhere by herself and walking across back country roads at 3:00 in the morning? Oh ok.
They all seemed like teenagers, to by honest. You'd expect this kind of behavior from them, but not people in their mid-twenties whose lives have all been basically ok and without significant trauma. I mean seriously, grow up. The only character I felt bad for was the kid because he seemed basically ok and didn't deserve to be raised around these crappy people.
Let's recap: awful characters, boring plot, weird and confusing time/pov shifts, and a bizarre and obnoxious writing style. Annnnnd done.
Here's the thing: if I had liked even one thing about this, I would have continued, but there was nothing. First of all, the writing style was jerky and abrupt, and really made it hard to get into the flow of the novel. Take the first line: "So Carmen was married, just." The whole book is like that. There's something weirdly conversational and backwards about it. It's obviously a matter of personal taste and I'm sure it wouldn't bother everyone, but it drove me nuts.
Also, the timeline was virtually impossible to follow. Chapters sometimes jumped a few months, sometimes years, with little or no time marker. In some cases, you'd end up reading most of the chapter without any clue that years had been skipped. That is totally jarring and it makes it hard to anchor yourself in the story. I usually have no problem with timeline shifts and I actually generally really like that kind of narrative, but please, for the love of God, MAKE IT CLEAR HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED!
On the same sort of wavelength, the pov changes were sometimes incredibly subtle and hard to follow. I'm fine with pov's changing mid-chapter (as long as there are breaks), but there's a problem when the pov changes more than once in the same segment. There were times when it was legitimately difficult to figure out whose pov it was supposed to be and which character was thinking and which was being thought about. I mean, I don't even know how you get yourself into that mess.
My biggest issue, by far and away, was that I universally hated each and every one of the characters. Literally, none of them were likeable or sympathetic at all. It reminded me a lot of Dinner at the Homesick Restuarant, which I also hated (and was forced to read in school--TWICE!). Every character in that book is basically an awful person, and you follow each of them for years while they do terrible things to each other and otherwise lead totally boring lives, all the way up until the end where they continue to be basically awful people and learn nothing from their experiences. This book was very much like that, though I obviously don't know how this one turns out. Each character was totally fucked up, but not the interesting kind of fucked up. It didn't matter whose pov or what else was going on, i was continuously bored and frustrated by all of them. A weirdly disproportionate time seemed to be spent in Alice's pov, who in some ways was the most boring and annoying of all of them. If any of them had been even slightly more likeable, I might have cared a bit more as they struggled to deal with the fallout from the accident. Which, by the way, was implausible to begin with. A 10 year old girl wandering around outside in the middle of nowhere by herself and walking across back country roads at 3:00 in the morning? Oh ok.
They all seemed like teenagers, to by honest. You'd expect this kind of behavior from them, but not people in their mid-twenties whose lives have all been basically ok and without significant trauma. I mean seriously, grow up. The only character I felt bad for was the kid because he seemed basically ok and didn't deserve to be raised around these crappy people.
Let's recap: awful characters, boring plot, weird and confusing time/pov shifts, and a bizarre and obnoxious writing style. Annnnnd done.