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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Character 5| Setting 3| Plot 3| Writing 4| Enjoyability 4
Overall rating: 3.8
Audio book: 4
I actually really liked The Travelers. I choose this book for a reading challenge, family saga, and was worried I hate it or slog through it. I didn't do either of those things and felt engaged and interested in the story. FYI if your listening to the audiobook theres pictures. I like to listen and read and found out about the pictures in the book and I was astounded. The photographs add a nice touch to Porter's story.
I really think readers would benefit from giving this a reread since this whole family is connected and you see different POV and new chapters reveal new things about previous POVs that you've read.
There's not really an overarching plot. If you are plot driven this book may be hard to get through, but I most definitely recommend it. The characters are excellent and this story fells American to it's roots.
The American family is the core of this book and I feel there are so many families with the same issues going on and maybe why I felt this story was impactful as it was.
The Travelers is a beautiful hard and challenging read. Porter brings the family to life and it was an excellent read.
Overall rating: 3.8
Audio book: 4
I actually really liked The Travelers. I choose this book for a reading challenge, family saga, and was worried I hate it or slog through it. I didn't do either of those things and felt engaged and interested in the story. FYI if your listening to the audiobook theres pictures. I like to listen and read and found out about the pictures in the book and I was astounded. The photographs add a nice touch to Porter's story.
I really think readers would benefit from giving this a reread since this whole family is connected and you see different POV and new chapters reveal new things about previous POVs that you've read.
There's not really an overarching plot. If you are plot driven this book may be hard to get through, but I most definitely recommend it. The characters are excellent and this story fells American to it's roots.
The American family is the core of this book and I feel there are so many families with the same issues going on and maybe why I felt this story was impactful as it was.
The Travelers is a beautiful hard and challenging read. Porter brings the family to life and it was an excellent read.
An enjoyable slow read with a large cast of characters, a range of locations and a modern ill-fated romance at its heart.
It’s been a while since I read a book in one sitting, but this one required it. Regina Porter’s dazzling debut novel is an inter-generational family saga that weaves through the civil rights movement to the Vietnam war, to the suburban 1980s and the AIDS epidemic to Obama’s presidency. Two families are intricately intertwined in subtle yet powerful ways. Almost impossible to give this book justice in such a small description, one that you just need to pick up and dive into.
3.5 Alternating timelines and characters; hard to remain engaged with the story
There’s A LOT going on here.
Intertwined people and families, over multiple generations.
What the author does well is demonstrate the complex reality of relationships and families.
However, it becomes a lot to keep up with.
Waaaaaay too many characters to make it an easy read; remembering the relationships to other characters was a task.
The stories within this book, were generally good. I wasn’t enthralled but I at least wanted to continue reading to the end.
Overall I don’t feel like I wasted time reading this but I also don’t feel like it added much value to me either.
Intertwined people and families, over multiple generations.
What the author does well is demonstrate the complex reality of relationships and families.
However, it becomes a lot to keep up with.
Waaaaaay too many characters to make it an easy read; remembering the relationships to other characters was a task.
The stories within this book, were generally good. I wasn’t enthralled but I at least wanted to continue reading to the end.
Overall I don’t feel like I wasted time reading this but I also don’t feel like it added much value to me either.
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A look in across the decades into the lives of several people. There were A LOT of characters and sometimes it took me a while to put all the people together. I think I most enjoyed Agnes’s story. She was an extremely complex woman who demonstrated that stability can be built even if your innermost self still lives in turmoil. Good for lovers of family sagas and character based books.
Struggling to rate this one. The chapters didn’t flow (each almost felt like a short story — and then some of them would connect again) but it was beautifully written with compelling characters. I just wish it flowed differently.
Lots of intertwined stories that I couldn't keep in order. I would have liked a whole book about Eloise, a Black lesbian pilot, and Agnes, the first love. Maybe I couldn't follow because I listened to the audiobook.
Regina Porter’s The Traveller’s was a bit of a mystery - so much so I could not rate it on goodreads. I’m unsure whether to term it a character driven novel, a series of slightly interconnected intergenerational and multifamilial vignettes crossing the race and class line, or what @bookworm_man tells us is our literary future - an experimental novel through and through. Whatever it is I have a lot to say about this book that tells the lives of various folks from various families who cross paths in ways sometimes big but often small, with absolutely no single unifying plot point. If I had to narrow down what I wanted to say to three words I would say that The Traveller’s was vibrant, frantic, and challenging. And I mean this as a compliment and as a critique. What I loved about this book was its character studies, particularly of folks that could be my folks, and folks that could have preceded me, and lives that felt within my reach, and feelings that I feel. What I didn’t love what how rambling this novel was. The cast of characters were enormous, some were take it or leave it for me, some were forgettable, and sometimes, because there was no plot I was married to, I would forget what had happened to whom or who they were later in life because I’d wandered from the book for extended periods of time. That being said, I was transported enough by the people of the book that I was 80% done before I realized that there was actually no story to speak of. I think that this book should be a physical book held in your hands, there are photos and small tricks that were lost in an ebook format. I would read Porter again with excitement, but think this book could use some refinement to pack the punch that it potentially held. Thank you @netgalley for the arc, opinions are my own.