Member Profile

Name : Maggie S.

My Reviews

The Yellow House: A Novel by Patricia Falvey
 
Interesting, Romantic, Dramatic
The Yellow House

Nice story but fairly predictable and a little too "all-sewn-up." Main characters a little flat and slightly underdeveloped but the author has serious potential in this department and does human interaction well.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
 
Book Club Recommended
Insightful, Inspiring, Interesting
Compelling Read

Will be looking out for her next work!

Little Bee: A Novel by Chris Cleave
 
Book Club Recommended
Dramatic, Insightful, Interesting
Nice Prose

While jarring and sad at times, this book is beautifully written. There is one relationship in the book that seems to weigh the book down and I think it would have faired better without it.

 
Inspiring, Informative, Insightful
Inspiring works, less than inspired writing

Title says it all.

The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax
 
Slow, Informative, Dramatic
Very good...in the end.

It was very difficult to get into this book. Even with a historical frame of reference, speaking Spanish and basic Catalan, and having lived in Barcelona for 18 months and traveled much of the rest of Spain...this book was still difficult to stick with. After about page 300 it gets really interesting and the author does a nice job of telling a good story while maintaining fidelity to the history. Decent historical-fiction.

 
Book Club Recommended
Slow, Boring, Insightful
Dynamic, Real and Thoughtful

I think this book is sure to become a classic piece of literary "Americana". The characters are all tragically flawed -- even to the point of characiture at times -- but richly developed, noble in thier own way and even forgivable. That is much of what I took away from the novel acutally, how flawed we all are (no one is safe from Franzen's critical eye -- neither liberal nor conservative). Yet, also, how we are all human, and even graceful, in our idiosyncrasies and faults, or maybe because of them. To me, this is the feat worth mentioning and it is done alongside the great telling of current, relevant and person parallel stories, woven togehter to read as one. Well done, Mr. Franzen.

 
Fun, Optimistic, Inspiring
Simple, Predictable and Underdeveloped

At first, it seemed like the book had potential -- in the end it didn't live up to it. I think our Book Club best summed it up something like; Really good books that stand on their own have us answer real questions about the substance of life, about things that are important. Books that are only, eh, always leave us talking about how this/that did or didn't make us feel.

 
Book Club Recommended
Interesting, Fun, Informative
Okay First Novel

While the book did leave a lot to be desired -- it was a pretty good first novel. It was packed with information, a nice - fresh - perspective, and turned out to be a great discussion starter. It was a quick, easy and relatively compelling read.

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