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A review by lvw22
Our Lady of the Prairie by Thisbe Nissen
3.0
My thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
There is a lot to love about this novel, but, ultimately, I found it frustrating. Nissen does a great job capturing the voice of a middle aged woman who unexpectedly falls in love while she is a visiting professor, throwing her whole life into upheaval. She is a rather unlikable, annoying narrator who is aware of her own selfishness, but she is also quite amusing and admirable at times.
There are several subplots that work--her complicated relationship with her daughter, her unmoored status in a small Amish town, and her struggle to trust in a life with her new lover. There are also several parts that don't work, including a long extended section in which she envisions the life of her mother-in-law as a young woman in Nazi Germany, and a stupid plot line involving a hickey, of all things.
There is a lot to love about this novel, but, ultimately, I found it frustrating. Nissen does a great job capturing the voice of a middle aged woman who unexpectedly falls in love while she is a visiting professor, throwing her whole life into upheaval. She is a rather unlikable, annoying narrator who is aware of her own selfishness, but she is also quite amusing and admirable at times.
There are several subplots that work--her complicated relationship with her daughter, her unmoored status in a small Amish town, and her struggle to trust in a life with her new lover. There are also several parts that don't work, including a long extended section in which she envisions the life of her mother-in-law as a young woman in Nazi Germany, and a stupid plot line involving a hickey, of all things.