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A review by coralinejones
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
3.5
What a great character study. This is my first James McBride novel and I can admit, this man CAN write the hell out of a story and has created some realistic characters to sit and think about. You know when a fiction book is so beautifully written you sit and consider who, in the authors life, may have inspired these people? Almost, in a way, that the fiction transforms into non-fiction and you're reading about the real lives of people that came before us? That happened to be whilst reading.
Beautiful descriptions, interesting scenery; lots of moments that'll make you think, frown, sigh, and even smile despite the darker tones. However, this concept is dragged and doesn't make for an engaging read thus my three star rating. The mystery should be tighter and doesn't round up until the very end of the book. My interest kept failing, but my interest in how this ties up in the end ultimately kept me going.
I'm not a fan of how McBride writes women, too many "she's breasted boobily down the stairs with ample breasts."-like descriptions for my amusement. I'm also not keen on these lengthy descriptions for characters I don't necessarily care for, of which are side characters that don't do much for the main plot of the novel, whatever that plot may be. Despite the praise for this very notion at the beginning of this review, I do think that if this was a homework assignment where an aspiring author needed to create a bunch of characters in one world to tie together a plot, this would get an A+. But as a story, that has a beginning, middle, and end, I think it fails at that task. At a certain point while reading I had little clue as to what's happening and just didn't care until the last few pages.
Beautiful descriptions, interesting scenery; lots of moments that'll make you think, frown, sigh, and even smile despite the darker tones. However, this concept is dragged and doesn't make for an engaging read thus my three star rating. The mystery should be tighter and doesn't round up until the very end of the book. My interest kept failing, but my interest in how this ties up in the end ultimately kept me going.
I'm not a fan of how McBride writes women, too many "she's breasted boobily down the stairs with ample breasts."-like descriptions for my amusement. I'm also not keen on these lengthy descriptions for characters I don't necessarily care for, of which are side characters that don't do much for the main plot of the novel, whatever that plot may be. Despite the praise for this very notion at the beginning of this review, I do think that if this was a homework assignment where an aspiring author needed to create a bunch of characters in one world to tie together a plot, this would get an A+. But as a story, that has a beginning, middle, and end, I think it fails at that task. At a certain point while reading I had little clue as to what's happening and just didn't care until the last few pages.