rating:
i ran across this book on the browsing shelf the same day i checked out brick lane. i liked mrs. kimble, jennifer haigh's first book, but somehow i didn't know that she had a second novel out. this is one of those books that i really liked, but that i can't really explain why. the story centers on one family who lives in bakerton, a mining town in pennsylvania. it starts with the death of the father and follows the rest of the family up through (i think) the early sixties. i had some trouble figuring out when things were happening, because the narrative transitioned from one character to another frequently, and it sometimes seemed like a lot of time had passed. but, regardless of temporal confusion, i really liked it. i got pretty involved with the family, particularly the youngest daughter, lucy.
which is much more than i can say for chloe does yale by an author whose name currently escapes me. natalie something i think. i read an article about it last year, and was intrigued by the origins of the book, a sex column in the yale daily news (obviously, there's a nice gilmore girls connection). so i was excited to see it on the new books shelf at the public library, and i picked it up thinking it would be a nice, fast, fluffy read. BLECH. i hated it from the first page. i stuck with it for two chapters and i just don't think i can go back. and i am not the kind of reader who can stop a book once i've started. so maybe i'll go back to this painful pink book, but i think i might have to stick to my guns this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment