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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
Gave up halfway, library borrowing period expired, didn't care enough about the story to try again.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book. It has been hard to read anything else after it because nothing else seems to ever be close to how good this book was!!!!!!!!!!! Beautiful prose. Beautiful imagery. Beautiful plot development. It's funny, it's sad, it's intelligent. Love it.
A fantastically written book. Shockingly raw and believable, this book manages to be so many more things than I expected it to be. As it goes on it opens into more and more layers fleshing out the characters and the complexities of our world. 100% recommend.
Wasn’t for me. The audible version of this is read by the author who sounds like she is bored of her own book. Probably would have enjoyed actually reading it more.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
At first it took me by surprise, because it’s so different to Demon Copperhead (and also Unsheltered). But she is a wonderful writer with incredible range. She pulls off the diff sisters’ pov so well, so believable! She manages to present the naivety of the sisters so well, how they go from suspicion to open-mindedness in that youthful way, how even the most devout begin to doubt their father, and they start to question the ‘rightness’ of the life and country that they left behind. The writing is beautiful and it’s so well-researched. Not 5 stars because the final part dragged a bit, but it did feel worth it by the end.
I usually love historical fiction but after reading other books by this author, I think she’s just not for me. She’s long winded and wordy and it comes off stiff and hard to read. I usually love a rich description but I honestly just got bored with a lot of this book. Had it been 200 pages shorter, I think I would’ve liked it more. The chapters were crazy long and the narrator switched too often. I enjoyed the family drama aspect but I also struggled with the African (Congolese?) words. It made me stop and try to sound out the words properly, figure out the meaning, etc so it was hard to get immersed in the story.
Beautiful, enriching, frustrating, enlightening, challenging. This book is a test of endurance, and with it being so long it’s hard to summarize concisely. But at its essence, we follow the five women in the Price family—the mother and four daughters—as they leave their small Georgia town for the Belgian Congo because their patriarch has decided to set his missionary efforts there.
There were some POVs I loved (the mom, Orleanna, and the disabled daughter, Adah), and some I hated (the eldest daughter, Rachel, and the youngest, Ruth May). You can also tell this was written in the late ‘90s with the language used, but I think the deft hand in cultural and character explorations, never allowed circumstances to feel gimmicky or exploitative. While events that happened in real-life are in the story, the characters themselves felt all too real. The narrative line was blurred and had me wondering if this really was fiction.
Going into Kingsolver’s work for the first time, I knew I’d be experiencing a Masterclass in excellent character work, truly stunning prose, and nuanced layers of systemic global and domestic issues (colonization, racism, ableism, religious bigotry, domestic abuse, misogyny—to name a few), but her craft itself exceeded my expectations and the well-deserved hype that surrounds her work. She will challenge you and your worldview, and authors like that deserve to be transcendent.
I’m looking forward to reading more of her work (it’ll soon be time to relieve Demon Copperhead from my TBR). If you’re looking for a tome to settle into, look no further.
For more reviews, follow along on Instagram: @oliviasbooktalk 📚
There were some POVs I loved (the mom, Orleanna, and the disabled daughter, Adah), and some I hated (the eldest daughter, Rachel, and the youngest, Ruth May). You can also tell this was written in the late ‘90s with the language used, but I think the deft hand in cultural and character explorations, never allowed circumstances to feel gimmicky or exploitative. While events that happened in real-life are in the story, the characters themselves felt all too real. The narrative line was blurred and had me wondering if this really was fiction.
Going into Kingsolver’s work for the first time, I knew I’d be experiencing a Masterclass in excellent character work, truly stunning prose, and nuanced layers of systemic global and domestic issues (colonization, racism, ableism, religious bigotry, domestic abuse, misogyny—to name a few), but her craft itself exceeded my expectations and the well-deserved hype that surrounds her work. She will challenge you and your worldview, and authors like that deserve to be transcendent.
I’m looking forward to reading more of her work (it’ll soon be time to relieve Demon Copperhead from my TBR). If you’re looking for a tome to settle into, look no further.
For more reviews, follow along on Instagram: @oliviasbooktalk 📚