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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
This book is brilliant. The twists are so good some of them surprised me even though it’s the second time I read this book. Yet they are still set up well enough that they aren’t out of nowhere. There is almost nothing not to love.
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It's not a perfect book but I can't remember ever really getting impatient with it or wanting to put the book down so I don't have a reason not to rate it a 5!
This book is a ghost story when it comes right down to it. Our narrator is named Pearl, and she's the ghost telling the story. Pearl flits around 1940's Chicago but is repeatedly drawn to several places in particular. The lake, a little wooden house with a happy young couple, and an orphanage. Pearl watches.Sometimes she tries to get people to see her, but mostly she's a spectator.
One of the people that Pearl watches most is Frankie, a young girl living in the orphanage along with her little sister Toni and older brother Vito. Frankie's mother is dead, but her father is not. It wasn't all that unusual for parents who could not care for their children to put them into orphanages, and that's what's happened here. In fact, Frankie's dad visits his children every other weekend and brings them extra food and toys.
Frankie is based on the author's mother in law, who was in fact put into an orphanage by her own father. One of the saddest parts of the book is seeing and understanding that so many children were given up by their parents for reasons ranging from destitution to disinterest. How horrible to feel that your own parents don't want you. Frankie has a good sense of herself, but she's essentially institutionalized and doesn't know how to trust or rely on herself because she's never been allowed to develop her independence. An independent child is a lot of trouble for an institution- they don't go along with the procedures that are always followed to make things easier for those in charge.
Frankie finds ways to have joy in her life despite being overseen by those who don't care and those who resent her happiness.
Meanwhile, Pearl is slowly coming to understand more about herself and her own story, finding that the story she's told herself all along may not be everything there is to know.
A lot of the book involves blind spots- places that people can't or don't want to look because of the pain in seeing memories or people as they truly are. It's about girls who are constrained and what happens to them when they struggle in those constraints.
It's also a gorgeous story in itself. I am so over WWII books, but I really enjoyed this one. Perhaps because the war, while always there, is not the focus of the book. The characters really came alive, flawed, frightened, fascinating. I'm very up for another book by this author now- she's really impressed me.
This book is a ghost story when it comes right down to it. Our narrator is named Pearl, and she's the ghost telling the story. Pearl flits around 1940's Chicago but is repeatedly drawn to several places in particular. The lake, a little wooden house with a happy young couple, and an orphanage. Pearl watches.Sometimes she tries to get people to see her, but mostly she's a spectator.
One of the people that Pearl watches most is Frankie, a young girl living in the orphanage along with her little sister Toni and older brother Vito. Frankie's mother is dead, but her father is not. It wasn't all that unusual for parents who could not care for their children to put them into orphanages, and that's what's happened here. In fact, Frankie's dad visits his children every other weekend and brings them extra food and toys.
Frankie is based on the author's mother in law, who was in fact put into an orphanage by her own father. One of the saddest parts of the book is seeing and understanding that so many children were given up by their parents for reasons ranging from destitution to disinterest. How horrible to feel that your own parents don't want you. Frankie has a good sense of herself, but she's essentially institutionalized and doesn't know how to trust or rely on herself because she's never been allowed to develop her independence. An independent child is a lot of trouble for an institution- they don't go along with the procedures that are always followed to make things easier for those in charge.
Frankie finds ways to have joy in her life despite being overseen by those who don't care and those who resent her happiness.
Meanwhile, Pearl is slowly coming to understand more about herself and her own story, finding that the story she's told herself all along may not be everything there is to know.
A lot of the book involves blind spots- places that people can't or don't want to look because of the pain in seeing memories or people as they truly are. It's about girls who are constrained and what happens to them when they struggle in those constraints.
It's also a gorgeous story in itself. I am so over WWII books, but I really enjoyed this one. Perhaps because the war, while always there, is not the focus of the book. The characters really came alive, flawed, frightened, fascinating. I'm very up for another book by this author now- she's really impressed me.
(I think this is the book Nova Ren Suma wanted to write.)
Provocative and lovely and not entirely satisfying but in ways that are, I think, deliberate.
Provocative and lovely and not entirely satisfying but in ways that are, I think, deliberate.
I get what this was supposed to be, and that idea is WAY better than this convoluted thing.
This book was so good! I am sad that I finished it, and I would gladly go back and read it again. The writing was masterful, and I loved the plot. This book was such a spectacular novel!
I found myself getting slightly confused because there was a lot of jumping back and forth between different characters' stories and times. I didn't realize this was really narrated entirely from the view point of a ghost, which made it unique.
This was such a powerful and bittersweet story. Told through the eyes of a ghost who is following the lives of two girls abandoned at an orphanage during WWII rather than dealing with her own trauma, it was a beautifully written book.
I felt the author’s previous book that I’d read (Bone Gap) was a bit too flowery and confusing for me, but this one definitely hit the right spot.
Highly recommend!
Trigger warnings for sexual harassment, abandonment, physical abuse, emotional abuse, attempted rape, suicide, forced adoption or baby stealing and alcohol abuse.
I felt the author’s previous book that I’d read (Bone Gap) was a bit too flowery and confusing for me, but this one definitely hit the right spot.
Highly recommend!
Trigger warnings for sexual harassment, abandonment, physical abuse, emotional abuse, attempted rape, suicide, forced adoption or baby stealing and alcohol abuse.
I absolutely loved this book. It took me a while to see where it was going, but it was written so well, and the characters were so interesting, that I just went along for the ride. The ways that the stories of the ghosts and the living wove together and unfolded was genius. This was a moving and fascinating read, and ultimately something of a thesis on the treatment of women and girls in our culture, and the ways in which women and girls have historically been punished for their wants, needs, and their attempts to satisfy those wants and needs.