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3.09 AVERAGE
3.09 AVERAGE
I checked this talking book out after reading a favorable review. I had run out of audio books and this sounded like a good possibility. I wavered through most of the book - do I like this? Should I continue? There would be chapters that I loved and then parts that were difficult listening. I was starting the last CD when a friend asked me if they would like this novel. I had to answer that I was not sure - wait until I reach the end.
When I got to the end and the whole book came together, I knew I had experienced an extraordinary book. Anshaw takes us through decades of family, friends, marriage, children, divorce. All that happens is influenced by one event that happens at the very start of the story. How Anshaw kept the threads running smoothly and kept track of all of them, amazes me. Her language is beautiful and made even better by Renee Raudman's narration.
I am struggling to know how much to tell about this tale in my review. If I give you the bare facts, I won't have done justice to how Anshaw puts everything in context with the accident that starts the tale. Let me just say if you want to know more about this, read it.
I recommend this book to lovers of the movie, The Big Chill, to readers of literary fiction, to listeners who want to live in other peoples' lives for awhile and to my friend who asked if she should read this. No one who lived through the 1970's until now should miss this book.
When I got to the end and the whole book came together, I knew I had experienced an extraordinary book. Anshaw takes us through decades of family, friends, marriage, children, divorce. All that happens is influenced by one event that happens at the very start of the story. How Anshaw kept the threads running smoothly and kept track of all of them, amazes me. Her language is beautiful and made even better by Renee Raudman's narration.
I am struggling to know how much to tell about this tale in my review. If I give you the bare facts, I won't have done justice to how Anshaw puts everything in context with the accident that starts the tale. Let me just say if you want to know more about this, read it.
I recommend this book to lovers of the movie, The Big Chill, to readers of literary fiction, to listeners who want to live in other peoples' lives for awhile and to my friend who asked if she should read this. No one who lived through the 1970's until now should miss this book.
After a wedding, a group of people in a car strike and kill a 10-year-old girl. This book is about grief and guilt and how it affects people in different ways. I enjoyed the writing, the characters, the humor and the way Anshaw brings leftist politics of the time period into the story. It also shows how tragedy can bring people together in a very lasting way, while others are torn apart by it.
I liked several of the characters but there was something do pointless about it. All I really got out of it was flail about places I know in Chicago.
I loved this! This book was so right up my alley. It's the story of a group of people involved (but mostly two sisters and their brother) in a car accident that killed a little girl, and what happens to them in the 20 or so years following the accident. Absolutely perfect. Best book I've read so far this year.
I really wanted to like this but truthfully I had so many bones to pick with this book.
1. there are a LOT of characters introduced right off that bat. it makes it hard to keep track of them and even towards the end, some characters would be mentioned and i couldn’t remember why they were important.
2. the writing style was confusing. every chapter was a new “narrator” AND it jumped an unspecified number of years into the future at the same time. eventually, i got the hang of it but i spent the first half of the book extremely confused.
3. i got so annoyed at the author’s description of places by simply listing what street they were on in Chicago. it added absolutely nothing to the story- in fact, i found is extremely distracting because of how often the author would say things like “Carmen stopped by the Dunkin on Clark Street on her way to the store at Broadway and Halsted.” Unless you live in Chicago, it means absolutely nothing in terms of describing the place. it was completely unnecessary.
4. i didn’t feel like there was much of a plot?? the conflict happened at the beginning of the story and then... their lives go on and vaguely allude to the event but it’s done in very awkward ways that feel like a stretch.
overall, i wouldn’t recommend this book.
1. there are a LOT of characters introduced right off that bat. it makes it hard to keep track of them and even towards the end, some characters would be mentioned and i couldn’t remember why they were important.
2. the writing style was confusing. every chapter was a new “narrator” AND it jumped an unspecified number of years into the future at the same time. eventually, i got the hang of it but i spent the first half of the book extremely confused.
3. i got so annoyed at the author’s description of places by simply listing what street they were on in Chicago. it added absolutely nothing to the story- in fact, i found is extremely distracting because of how often the author would say things like “Carmen stopped by the Dunkin on Clark Street on her way to the store at Broadway and Halsted.” Unless you live in Chicago, it means absolutely nothing in terms of describing the place. it was completely unnecessary.
4. i didn’t feel like there was much of a plot?? the conflict happened at the beginning of the story and then... their lives go on and vaguely allude to the event but it’s done in very awkward ways that feel like a stretch.
overall, i wouldn’t recommend this book.
No, I didn't finish this book. It starts with so much promise; a dead girl and a car full of people, each with their own guilt. The problem is the rest of the story. In the next 100 pages, there are only two characters whose lives were noticeably changed by the accident. For all of the others, their lives probably would have been the same with or without the death. The author spends her time claiming that, yes, the accident caused this person's life to turn out this way, but they are all stretches, to say the least.
Based on my vague recollection of the blurb on the book and the title, I expected this book to be a little bit more like [b:One Day|4137|Me Talk Pretty One Day|David Sedaris|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165389015s/4137.jpg|1030767] in that it revisits the same characters over an extended period of time. Or I thought that each chapter would directly connect that chapter's main character with "the girl" (ie the One of the title), and that it would follow all of the characters who were in the car when the accident occurred. Not quite. Really the book focusses on three siblings and their adulthood/development. Only two of the siblings were in the car, and the other three characters who were in the car are part of the story throughout the novel, but mainly in secondary or tertiary roles.
This unexpected storyline shadowed my perception of the story, but there is no doubt that the author writes well. I never felt dialogue was cheesy or characters were flat or unrealistic. In fact, these characters are some of the most realistic characters I've encountered. That's what the book is really about: realistic characters living through life's screw-ups and trials. More attention was given to Alice and her love life than I would have liked (I felt Carmen's storyline dropped off after it seemed to be going so strongly), but still interesting. And different. Different is always welcome.
This unexpected storyline shadowed my perception of the story, but there is no doubt that the author writes well. I never felt dialogue was cheesy or characters were flat or unrealistic. In fact, these characters are some of the most realistic characters I've encountered. That's what the book is really about: realistic characters living through life's screw-ups and trials. More attention was given to Alice and her love life than I would have liked (I felt Carmen's storyline dropped off after it seemed to be going so strongly), but still interesting. And different. Different is always welcome.
This is a book that snuck up on me. Despite the fabulous reviews, the first hundred pages were a slog-fest, but then I began to appreciate the artistry of Anshaw's writing. The story opens in 1983 at the wedding of Carmen and Matt in rural Wisconsin. A group of wedding party revelers, including Carmen's siblings, Alice, an artist, and Nick, an astronomer, and Matt's sister, Maude, a model and nursing student, pile into a car too tired and stoned for anyone to confidently take the wheel. They strike and kill a 10 year old girl, Casey Redman, who inexplicably appears in the road.
The only character who pays real penance for the event is Nick's girlfriend, Olivia, who was driving. She serves several years in jail, marries Nick, and then disappears, fed up with Nick's addiction. Nick also suffers, obsessively reaching out to the Redman family while sinking deeper and deeper into his addiction. Alice is consummed for years with her love affair with Maude, while enjoying success as an artist. Ironically, the paintings she considers her most successful are portraits of the doomed girl that she keeps private. Carmen looks for some meaning in social activism, but her marriage flounders when Matt takes up with the babysitter. Carmen seems to dismiss the affair as a cliche and, seemingly, the only effect of the collapse of her marriage is her detrioriating homemaker skills. When she marries Rob, she is annoyed by his passivity and his cultural ignorance, despite the fact that Alice observes that he treats Carmen as if he "put her on a float in the parade."
Anshaw's characters are self-obssessed and narcissistic, and I was annoyed that there was so little remorse, much less lives transformed by this tragedy. While the Redman girl intrudes on the characters' thoughts, these intrusions are more an annoyance -- "carry the one" -- than an opportunity for redemption. Yet, the very thing that annoyed me is one of the novel's greatest strengths. It does not pander to our expectations and devolve into a sappy tale about profound lessons learned in the aftermath of a terrible accident.
The only character who pays real penance for the event is Nick's girlfriend, Olivia, who was driving. She serves several years in jail, marries Nick, and then disappears, fed up with Nick's addiction. Nick also suffers, obsessively reaching out to the Redman family while sinking deeper and deeper into his addiction. Alice is consummed for years with her love affair with Maude, while enjoying success as an artist. Ironically, the paintings she considers her most successful are portraits of the doomed girl that she keeps private. Carmen looks for some meaning in social activism, but her marriage flounders when Matt takes up with the babysitter. Carmen seems to dismiss the affair as a cliche and, seemingly, the only effect of the collapse of her marriage is her detrioriating homemaker skills. When she marries Rob, she is annoyed by his passivity and his cultural ignorance, despite the fact that Alice observes that he treats Carmen as if he "put her on a float in the parade."
Anshaw's characters are self-obssessed and narcissistic, and I was annoyed that there was so little remorse, much less lives transformed by this tragedy. While the Redman girl intrudes on the characters' thoughts, these intrusions are more an annoyance -- "carry the one" -- than an opportunity for redemption. Yet, the very thing that annoyed me is one of the novel's greatest strengths. It does not pander to our expectations and devolve into a sappy tale about profound lessons learned in the aftermath of a terrible accident.
Carry the One is the sweeping, heartbreaking tale of a tragic moment and the pall it casts over the lives of those involved. The ensemble cast of characters alternately forge confidently ahead or flounder into their futures, reacting to the accident in their own individual way.
More than being about this pivotal moment, Carry the One can also be read as a story about what happens to us as we age – as we achieve or fail to achieve the lives we hoped to be living. Do we change or does the world change around us? What happens when we get everything we want, and it doesn’t fill the void within us? While Carry the One‘s characters are answering these questions through the lens of the death they inadvertently caused in their twenties, the answers they find can be enlightening to those of us who don’t have such regrettable moments in our past. The lessons they learn about love, loss, and life are valuable to the reader no matter what.
Carry the One absolutely swept me up from the first page, and I finished it in a single sitting. Then I fell asleep and dreamed of the characters in all their fully-faceted beauty. It’s a story that will stay with me for a long time.
More than being about this pivotal moment, Carry the One can also be read as a story about what happens to us as we age – as we achieve or fail to achieve the lives we hoped to be living. Do we change or does the world change around us? What happens when we get everything we want, and it doesn’t fill the void within us? While Carry the One‘s characters are answering these questions through the lens of the death they inadvertently caused in their twenties, the answers they find can be enlightening to those of us who don’t have such regrettable moments in our past. The lessons they learn about love, loss, and life are valuable to the reader no matter what.
Carry the One absolutely swept me up from the first page, and I finished it in a single sitting. Then I fell asleep and dreamed of the characters in all their fully-faceted beauty. It’s a story that will stay with me for a long time.