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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
Another. Must find my book journal from this time to find out what was going on.
This book had already bored me by page 50 but the fact that part of it was set in my country [Kenya] I made myself finish it just to see how Kenya had been depicted. The way the story is told from current to past was a bit weird but it got mildly interesting towards the end.
Like I've said before, I usually am not a Shreve fan but...this story is told in reverse and the result is an ending I did not see coming. And I'm a sucker for anything having to do with Africa.
Depressing story of two lovers told looking back over their lives spent with other people. Includes stolen moments, hidden affairs, etc. Or so it seems...
I almost gave up and abandoned the characters in Africa but persevered to the end. The book was hard to follow. The descriptions of Africa totally out of my interest.
. Sometimes the writing is really great and captures your attention. Other times, if felt so bland and boring it made you wonder if the same person was writing the story. I thought the same thing on another book I read by her.
Never before has a book went from so low a rating that I considered putting the book away unread to giving it five stars once I have finished it. I didn't enjoy the way the author wrote in the beginning, or the way that the story seemed to start at the end and proceed backwards until the beginning of the two main characters first meeting. In this way it was hard to get to know the characters, and toward the end I wanted to read the beginning again in order to know what parts of the beginning meant.Midway through I had started to understand the characters and had grown to love them. I identified with many of the main ideas of the book in general. Shreve herself describes the book as "about moments of no return. It is about missed or retrieved opportunities, about time and memory." Who hasn't got something in their past that they wish they could do differently, and think of how life could have been different if they had? This was what kept me reading when I normally would have given up.... that and the fact that I suspected that the author had an important reason for turning her story around as she did. I was right. The last page of the book puts it all in perspective, not to mention making me want to throw the book across the room, scream audibly NOOOOOO!!!! all at the same time. Numerours times passages of the book seemed to speak to the voice that lately has been asking some of the same questions of time, memory, and paths chosen. One such passage I wrote down because it was something I wanted to always remember. One character quotes Eugene O'Neil as saying"none of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever." I think that is true, but this book makes me want to put the past behind me and move on lest the mistakes of the past effect the present and future.
Huh. I have no idea where this book came from, it was on my bookshelf and I figured I’d give it a shot. The first 2/3rds were fairly dull, way more character-driven when I prefer plot-driven novels. But then the plot started fleshing itself out in the 3rd section and...huh.
I never made the connection between this book and the other. Possibly, because I had not finished the other one before.
Well done, Anita, again.
I miss you.
Well done, Anita, again.
I miss you.
Not bad, I've read better Anita Shreve, but it wasn't bad. I liked the "Twenty-six" section best, Africa was written well.