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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
This book was really rather depressing, disappointing, and under-developed. I never read this book when reading the series as a kid/teen, and if I ever re-read the entire series again, I won't include this book. It's worth reading once, I think, if you are a fan of the series, but there's some big issues with this one.
First of all, it's not edited or fleshed out like the other books. It's tone is very dark & depressing. There's a lot of horrific things that happen to them in this book, and it should make you feel very sad and depressed, but I didn't really feel anything at all, except for one major disaster/scene. Other than that one scene, you aren't emotionally invested, so you just don't really care when the bad stuff happens.
Second of all, it just drove me CRAZY that Laura calls Almanzo "Manly" throughout the entire book, especially since in a previous book she makes such a big deal about Nellie creating a nickname for Almanzo which he didn't like and she makes some comment about how she'd never do that to him. Maybe she called him that in real life, but it was just very jarring, and made me feel like he was a whole different person then in the rest of the series. Not to mention, the way he was written, he did seem like an entirely different man. He came across as very incompetent in this book, unlike in the rest of the series where he literally saved the town from starving. The Almanzo in this book is not very likeable.
And honestly, neither is Laura. She never came across as spoiled and selfish, but she does in this one. She doesn't even act like she cares about her kid or her husband. Which I realize is pretty typical of the time (I remember my own grandparents treating each other as distantly as Laura & Almanzo does in this book, and that was in the 1980s), but it still drives me crazy. My grandmother might not have acted like she loved my grandfather in public because it wasn't proper to show affection in public, but it was obvious she loved him from the way she looked at him, and the way he looked at her. Even those very small signs of affection were missing from this book. Yes, it was the beginning of the marriage, and maybe they didn't really love each other in the beginning, but by year four there certainly should have been some emotions involved.
Well, I thought I had a third point, but I guess I didn't. My only other issue was this book was just so short, but if Laura had worked on it a bit more, I bet it would have been fleshed out with more balance.
First of all, it's not edited or fleshed out like the other books. It's tone is very dark & depressing. There's a lot of horrific things that happen to them in this book, and it should make you feel very sad and depressed, but I didn't really feel anything at all, except for one major disaster/scene. Other than that one scene, you aren't emotionally invested, so you just don't really care when the bad stuff happens.
Second of all, it just drove me CRAZY that Laura calls Almanzo "Manly" throughout the entire book, especially since in a previous book she makes such a big deal about Nellie creating a nickname for Almanzo which he didn't like and she makes some comment about how she'd never do that to him. Maybe she called him that in real life, but it was just very jarring, and made me feel like he was a whole different person then in the rest of the series. Not to mention, the way he was written, he did seem like an entirely different man. He came across as very incompetent in this book, unlike in the rest of the series where he literally saved the town from starving. The Almanzo in this book is not very likeable.
And honestly, neither is Laura. She never came across as spoiled and selfish, but she does in this one. She doesn't even act like she cares about her kid or her husband. Which I realize is pretty typical of the time (I remember my own grandparents treating each other as distantly as Laura & Almanzo does in this book, and that was in the 1980s), but it still drives me crazy. My grandmother might not have acted like she loved my grandfather in public because it wasn't proper to show affection in public, but it was obvious she loved him from the way she looked at him, and the way he looked at her. Even those very small signs of affection were missing from this book. Yes, it was the beginning of the marriage, and maybe they didn't really love each other in the beginning, but by year four there certainly should have been some emotions involved.
Well, I thought I had a third point, but I guess I didn't. My only other issue was this book was just so short, but if Laura had worked on it a bit more, I bet it would have been fleshed out with more balance.
This is my least favourite Little House Book. Laura Ingalls only wrote part of it, and then she passed away, so it doesn't have the same feeling as the previous books in the series.
Honestly, I liked getting to look at what the initial years of Almanzo and Laura's marriage and home life together were like. It's fascinating to see how similar/different their struggles are from their respective childhoods/teens. But I also like to pretend this book doesn't exist sometimes, because it's so hard to read about their run of bad luck and their not-so-wise choices. It's heartbreaking, really, particularly because I loved them so.
I loved the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was younger. She had such a way of writing that you felt like a part of her community. The hardships that they faced seems so surreal to our way of life now. This is a must read set of books for any youngster.
This final book in the series was published posthumously and was written in an entirely different voice than the first eight books in the series. It was a very matter of fact accounting of the awful series of events that made the first four years of Laura's marriage pretty horrible.
Definitely not as refined and polished as her other stories. You can tell this was still in draft form. But you can still see much of Laura's writing style throughout the short read. Her development of nature as a character, her focus on the human struggles to succeed, strength, independence, determination and continued will that everything will resolve itself in the end. Never give up.
Wow, the series ends with more boringness and - spoiler alert- complete desperation and failure. I know these books are mostly autobiographical but you know what would have been a better story? When the Native American man invited her to come be his “squaw” if she’d said, “Well, nothing could possibly be worse than this!” And taken off with him. Now that would have been an interesting adventure!
At least it was a mercifully short book.
At least it was a mercifully short book.
hopeful
reflective