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librainian_44's reviews
395 reviews
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
3.0
This was Lispector's last book. I don't feel at home in her writing, and yet something is compelling. In this story, Macabea is poor, naive, and undernourished but exists happily in her own mind and self-constructed reality. Lispector's prose is enigmatic and dreamlike.
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
3.0
Strout really "gets" families and communities, and I think that is her strength in all her novels. Although not my favorite of hers, still very good and well-constructed. I would have liked to have had a bit more insight into why the nephew threw the pig's head--is this what a shy boy does without the goading of drunken friends?
Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt
3.0
I listened to the audio. It was hilarious, raunchy, sometimes clever and sometimes silly. It was like he had a checklist of all the Southern stereotypes but he did them well. I have met many of them and in fact some live on my street!
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
2.0
This is my first and only John Grisham book. It's a cute, short novel about an empty nest couple who decides to "skip" Christmas trappings and go on a cruise instead. So far, I'm with them. Then they realize those trappings are not so easy to shed, and their neighbors and friends give them a lot of grief, much of which is funny. It wraps up neatly (no pun intended) with some clever plot twists. But I was rooting for them to get past all the meaningless rituals that they wasted so much energy and money on, and to find something of infinite greater value in celebrating Christ's birth, or at least just go on their damn cruise! Instead the message seemed to be "conform, conform"!
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
4.0
I really liked the whole world Alice McDermott set her story in--early 20th C Brooklyn, and somewhat reminiscent of Call The Midwives. Most of the story revolves around the Little Sisters of the Sick Poor and their work caring for members of the community. Annie, a young widow, works for the sisters in their laundry room, and her little girl Sally grows up among them. All the characters are 3-dimensional, none all good or all mean, which is saying a lot when someone writes about Catholic nuns. McDermott seemed to have no ax to grind with the Church, at least not the nuns. But she had a story to tell, first of Annie's loss of her husband to suicide, the good milkman she becomes friends with, and raising Sally as a single mother. Sally seems destined to take vows herself, but we know through some foreshadowing in the novel that is not meant to be. I thought about the ending for a couple of days before I realized what had happened. This story stays with you.