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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
Boyle is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. His prose is never boring, never stilted; so alive that my eyes can't move fast enough to catch it.
Good story, if not a little too political and racist at times. The end left me hanging, so I was unsatisfied.
This is a tragic story of prejudice and assumption. It makes me want to punch a rich white person in the face.
Honestly so boring. I only read it as part of a book club. Wouldn’t recommend. I feel like this story had the potential to be good but the writer or their writing style was boring and lazy to me.
I've rarely had a less pleasant reading experience than this one. I gave the book two stars because clearly Boyle is someone who can write and I wanted to distinguish him from the real hacks out there.
The author seems to hate all the characters in this book. The white people are relentlessly mocked, in some very uncharitable ways; the Mexican immigrants are sometimes sympathetic but mostly serve as punching bags throughout. It's possible that some of this stuff seems worse now than it would have in the mid-nineties, but just a few of the things that bothered me: the American citizen wife is mocked, but, really, for what? For being beautiful, caring about her family and her work....even worse, the American citizen husband is a subject for derision because...he keeps house for his high-earning wife, preparing gourmet meals and looking after his step-son while he hikes, observes, nature and writes (ludicrously bad) nature columns. The Mexicans are mostly sympathetic but are just repeatedly victimized by fate as well as almost every character they meet. This is a relentlessly sad and awful and negative book with nothing redeeming about it whatsoever.
The author seems to hate all the characters in this book. The white people are relentlessly mocked, in some very uncharitable ways; the Mexican immigrants are sometimes sympathetic but mostly serve as punching bags throughout. It's possible that some of this stuff seems worse now than it would have in the mid-nineties, but just a few of the things that bothered me: the American citizen wife is mocked, but, really, for what? For being beautiful, caring about her family and her work....even worse, the American citizen husband is a subject for derision because...he keeps house for his high-earning wife, preparing gourmet meals and looking after his step-son while he hikes, observes, nature and writes (ludicrously bad) nature columns. The Mexicans are mostly sympathetic but are just repeatedly victimized by fate as well as almost every character they meet. This is a relentlessly sad and awful and negative book with nothing redeeming about it whatsoever.
slow-paced
This one was hard for me to rate. On the one hand, it was very well written and gave me a great sense for the troubles everyone went through. But it was so depressing it was often hard to read. Just not my style of book.
dark
sad
medium-paced
$20.00, really??? No matter how much things change, they remain the same
I wish there was an option for 3.5 stars. I really like this book but did not like the ending at all. I don't necessarily need a happy ending but I just didn't like this one. It seems like after all of the build up there should have been more of a collision of characters at the end and some kind of resolution. The rest of the book I really liked. The characters were well-developed for the most part and the contrast between the different living situations was fascinating, eye-opening, and almost unbelievable although I'm sure it's an accurate portrayal of immigration.
Not sure how I feel about this one... definitely readable, but it pulled me in different directions a lot of the time, maybe that is the purpose. I kind of hated everyone in this book. And I wasn't a fan of the gut-wrenching random ending. But not a horrible book.