I read this on vacation, very quickly until the end, which I read one paragraph at a time, the last chapter over and over, because I just wasn't sure I read this on vacation, very quickly until the end, which I read one paragraph at a time, the last chapter over and over, because I just wasn't sure I wanted it to end. my wife was like, "what's going on with this book? you've never dragged a book out like this " i wanted it to just keep happening, I didn't want the ending to be cheesy or compromise everything I'd loved abt the book. I just liked it so much. it is creepy and tense. I loved the biologist 's life sciences perspective. I loved the way the characters are all just women for no reason or agenda or in spite of anything. they are just women, nbd. I loved the ending. I already requested the other two in this series from the library & I can't wait....more
if you want to talk about this book, email me or send me a message please. I don't plan on talking about it publicly.if you want to talk about this book, email me or send me a message please. I don't plan on talking about it publicly....more
this book will stay with me. it unsettled me. the narrator's wife's silence/departure didn't really connect to the story of oda sotatsu, but i was intthis book will stay with me. it unsettled me. the narrator's wife's silence/departure didn't really connect to the story of oda sotatsu, but i was interested enough in sotatsu's story to get past that. the chapter of photographs was disjointed. but overall, i enjoyed the experience of reading it. i wish the female characters were more..... everything. ...more
This was a really, really good book but I felt like my anticipation and the hype led to a sort of anticlimatic moment. I wish I hadn't read it becauseThis was a really, really good book but I felt like my anticipation and the hype led to a sort of anticlimatic moment. I wish I hadn't read it because it was on so many "Best of 2014" lists, so I could have just appreciated the awesomeness without expecting so much.
With that said, this is basically everything I want in an End of the World book. There is a sense of the quiet expanse left behind when the electricity fails and 99% of the population dies, which I miss in apocalyptic books with lots of noisy action. I sat in a sort of unsettled, eerie spell for the duration of my reading, which I split between audio and paper. (I liked the paper better, as it let me sit with the images and ideas for longer). The story moves back and forth through time and geography, following a small central core of characters through their last days in civilization and how their lives turned out 15 years after the end. A child actor grows up to be an actress with the Traveling Symphony. A paparazzo-turned-EMT becomes a father. A boy becomes a violent Prophet.
I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who wants to ponder love, life, beauty, art and how they can survive great adversity. ...more
I picked this up for the 2015 Tournament of Books, and I'm so glad I did. This is kind of a slow-burn of a book that circles around the Lee family andI picked this up for the 2015 Tournament of Books, and I'm so glad I did. This is kind of a slow-burn of a book that circles around the Lee family and the tragedy of losing their teenage daughter, Lydia. It doesn't move briskly and there are a lot of moments where you sit with quiet, uncomfortable, awkward, debilitating grief and regret, so I can imagine that it definitely wouldn't appeal to everyone. The narrative moves through the history of the family members, gradually revealing all the small ways that families hide truths, deceive, grow apart and put distance between themselves. At the point when Lydia dies, no one in her family really knows enough about her life to say definitively if she committed suicide, was murdered, or what could have happened. The reeling confusion caused by the wake of her death was quite unsettling to me as a reader.
It also brought up, for me, a lot of feelings about the ways that children fail their mothers' expectations, as both Marilyn and Lydia grapple with that and I, of course, am a huge failure that my mom struggles to forgive. And of course, as a mother, you develop certain hopes and expectations for your own children, and living out that reality is excruciating in a totally different way. (Ask Me About The Pain of Parenting Into Adulthood™)
The book is also an interesting portrayal of a biracial family in the 1970s. The disapproval and challenges that the Lee family faces were not at the forefront of the book, but the quiet pain of it was a defining point for each character, from the way Marilyn is disowned by her mom at her wedding, to the Lee kids alienation as the only asian kids in their entire school. James struggles in a quiet way with racial stereotypes and racism in his career, life, family. He has so much grief and guilt around the way his genes affects his children's alienation at school; he wishes at one point that he wasn't their father so they would just be white, have friends, fit in, be popular. Marilyn, the white mom, seemed to be the only person who was blind to her kids' alienation, which was like, so super progressive of her, to be able to avoid noticing her own children's experiences with racism.
In any case, this isn't the sort of book I can see myself recommending to a lot of people, but I would be delighted to find that a friend had read it and wanted to discuss it....more
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