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jenthebookfanatic 's review for:
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
by Cherie Jones
3.5 stars rounded up.
Yall!? What did I get myself into with this book? I knew nothing about it before I picked it up. I'll admit this was a total "GMA book club + interesting cover/title made me do it" choice which did not prepare me for the darkness in the book. It is a heavy book and left me with a book hangover. Told from multiple perspectives and from different time frames, it took a minute to get acclimated to the shifting narratives but was easy to follow once you got into the groove.
The title of the book stems from a cautionary tale of two sisters (one good and one bad) told by Lala's grandmother, Wilma, in essence to scare girls into listening to their elders and heeding warnings given, lest you end up like the bad sister who lost an arm. Lala disregards the story by simply saying, well I bet it's not so bad having one arm...you can still do most things that everyone else does.
The three generations of women in Lala's family (her grandmother Wilma, her mother Esme and Lala herself) did not have an easy go of things. The choices made by each of them and the situations that they all found themselves felt very cyclical. I kept wanting them to take better care of one another, give better advice/warnings, be more of a support system to each other....you know the things that are generally helpful in breaking the cycle. Lala's chapter discussing "how do you learn to love a man" and Esme's chapter dealing with the story that she would have told her daughter if given the opportunity.....were so poignant. The ending seemed very abrupt. Overall, the writing was well done, the story whilst sad was compelling....all in all an excellent debut by Cherie Jones.
The book contains difficult subject matter and instances of sexual assault, domestic violence, poverty, murder, miscarriages, and the death of an infant.
Yall!? What did I get myself into with this book? I knew nothing about it before I picked it up. I'll admit this was a total "GMA book club + interesting cover/title made me do it" choice which did not prepare me for the darkness in the book. It is a heavy book and left me with a book hangover. Told from multiple perspectives and from different time frames, it took a minute to get acclimated to the shifting narratives but was easy to follow once you got into the groove.
The title of the book stems from a cautionary tale of two sisters (one good and one bad) told by Lala's grandmother, Wilma, in essence to scare girls into listening to their elders and heeding warnings given, lest you end up like the bad sister who lost an arm. Lala disregards the story by simply saying, well I bet it's not so bad having one arm...you can still do most things that everyone else does.
The three generations of women in Lala's family (her grandmother Wilma, her mother Esme and Lala herself) did not have an easy go of things. The choices made by each of them and the situations that they all found themselves felt very cyclical. I kept wanting them to take better care of one another, give better advice/warnings, be more of a support system to each other....you know the things that are generally helpful in breaking the cycle. Lala's chapter discussing "how do you learn to love a man" and Esme's chapter dealing with the story that she would have told her daughter if given the opportunity.....were so poignant. The ending seemed very abrupt. Overall, the writing was well done, the story whilst sad was compelling....all in all an excellent debut by Cherie Jones.
The book contains difficult subject matter and instances of sexual assault, domestic violence, poverty, murder, miscarriages, and the death of an infant.