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672 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
4 by TONI MORRISON (Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon)
2 by CHARLES DICKENS (A Tale of the Two Cities and Great Expectations)
2 by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera)
1 each by LEO TOLSTOY (Anna Karenina), ALAN PATTON (Cry, My Beloved Country), JONATHAN FRANZEN (The Corrections), BARBARA KINGSOLVER (The Poisonwood Bible), BERNARD SCHLINK (The Reader), and ANN-MARIE MACDONALD.
1. Brilliant first chapter that begins with “They are all dead now” then you follow the camera that zooms in to the things that the previous occupants of the house possessed and used.
2. Character-driven plot. Mac-Donald’s characters are bigger than the old familiar themes (family love, sisterly love, incest, war, etc) that we have all seen in the movies and read in similar books. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres easily came to my mind. For one, MacDonald was never melodramatic and you don’t close the book feeling emotionally cheated.
3. Having said that, the denouement is well-handled. The use of the family tree not only wraps up the whole story but it provides the symbolism of the book’s main theme: family love, that no matter what we do, at the end of our lives, what matters most is our family. Then when you close the book, you know who the narrator of the first chapter should be. Well thought of novel. Well organized. Well written. For a first time writer, this is just amazing.
But deep down he winced at the thought of showing Materia to anyone. He was grateful they lived in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more, he did. It was just that, recently, it had struck him taht other people might think there was something strange. They might think he’d married a child.
The next day, James outsmarts the demon for the second time. He enlists.…
… Materia arrives at Mount Carmel and hurries over to Mary’s grotto. There she prostrates herself as best she can, what with her unborn cargo, and gives thanks to Our Lady for sending The War.
Tears fill Mercedes’ eyes. It is not fair that Frances should bask in Daddy’s affection and the approval of sundry shopkeepers for something that ought to have her hiding her face in shame. It is not fair that Sister Saint Eustace managed to make Mercedes feel like the bad one—when everyone knows that she’s the good one. It is not fair that Frances will have a baby, while Mercedes was denied a husband. None of it is fair, but that is not why Mercedes is weeping freely against her pillow…. Everyone seems to think that motherhood is the best thing that could possibly happen to [Frances]. Everyone but Mercedes. For she knows that once Frances has a child, Frances will no longer need a mother.