DNF Review: The Absence of Evelyn

The Absence of Evelyn

by Jackie Townsend

Why did you choose this book? The synopsis sounded interesting

When did you read this book? November 2017

Who should read this book? Readers who enjoy detailed descriptions and have patience for a slow-moving plot

Source: Library Thing Early Reviewers

My Rating: DNF

Here is a synopsis of The Absence of Evelyn from Goodreads

Newly divorced Rhonda, haunted by her sister Evelyn’s ghost, travels to an old palazzo in Rome to confront Marco, the man who stole her sister’s heart—only to find out he’s vanished in the wake of Evelyn’s death. Meanwhile, Rhonda’s nineteen-year-old daughter Olivia, adopted by Rhonda at birth, travels to the mysterious and lush waters of northern Vietnam, where she’s been summoned by the missing Marco—a man she only knows from her parents’ whispers, a man she has never met or seen.

Soon, truths are exposed and lives unraveled, and the real journey begins. Four lives in all, spanning three continents, are now bound together in an unfathomable way—and they tell a powerful story about love in all its incarnations, filial and amorous, healing and destructive.

My Review

This will be a very short review, as I did not finish the book. The synopsis sounded interesting, and even now, after officially DNF-ing the book, I read the synopsis and it captures my interest.

But though I tried to stick with it, after reading through about one-third of the book, I just couldn’t do it. The scenes set in Italy relatively interesting, but once the setting switched to Vietnam, I really struggled with it.

It took me a long time to give up on the book.I left it on my shelf with the idea that I would pick it up later and continue. The truth is, though, that I just don’t care what happens. I still feel like I’m missing something others were seeing in the book, so the book is still on my shelf waiting to be picked up, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. If it does, I’ll write and post a second review. But for now, the only thing I’m committing to is that the book is off my shelves by the end of this year, whether I’ve finished it or not!

I won a copy of this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

DNF Review: Island Beneath The Sea

Island Beneath The Sea

by Isabel Allende

Why did you choose this book? This was a book club selection

When did you read this book? June 2017

Who should read this book? Readers of historical fiction who have the patience for a slow start

Source: Library book club set

Here is a synopsis of Island Beneath The Sea from Goodreads

My Rating:  DNF

Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité -- known as Tété -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.

When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint-Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenaged slave.

Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of Tété and Valmorain, and of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances.

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.

My Review

My book club was looking for something to read and Isabel Allende came highly recommend. Island Beneath The Sea  was available from our local library as a book club set, which we took as a good sign since at least three book clubs sponsored by the library had to request the book before it could be ordered as a book club set. The cover is beautiful! And the synopsis certainly sounded promising. But in the end, the book just didn’t work for me.

I’m not sure why. The writing was beautiful and detailed, and at first that was a plus to me, as the beautiful island scenery was described. However as the book progressed, the detailed writing became too much for me, especially when the story became dark. I was not able to connect with any of the characters, and the few times when I felt close to connecting, the story suddenly switch gears. I got about a third of the way through the book when I had to admit that I wasn’t enjoying the book at all, and the only reason I was reading at this point was to get through it for our book club discussion. When I realized that there was not enough time left for me to finish the book for our discussion, I decided not to invest any more of my time in the book and I gave up on it.

I wish this hadn’t been my first experience with the author, because I have heard good things about her, but at this point I am reluctant to try her again. However, that is my experience. I should add that the book was not popular with my book club, however Island Beneath The Sea is rated highly on Goodread and many reads love Isabel Allende. You should read other reviews before you decide this book is not for you!

DNF Review: You Were Here

You Were Here

by Gian Sander

Why did you choose this book? The synopsis was interesting

When did you read this book? May 2017

Who should read this book? Readers of suspense and mystery who have the patience for a slow start

Source: Penguin First To Read

Here is a synopsis of You Were Here from Penguin First To Read

My Rating:  DNF

Readers of Kate Atkinson will delight in this suspenseful debut novel about a woman haunted by nightmares and her grandmother's role in a doomed love triangle almost seventy years before.

What if the past is never buried?

Death, accidental and early, has always been Abby Walters's preoccupation. Now thirty-three and eager to settle down with her commitment-shy boyfriend, a recurring dream from her past

returns: a paralyzing nightmare of being buried alive, the taste of dirt in her mouth cloying and real. But this time the dream reveals a name from her family's past. Looking for answers, Abby returns home to small-town Minnesota for the first time in fourteen years, where she reconnects with her high school crush, now a police detective on the trail of a violent criminal. When Abby tries on her grandmother's mesmerizing diamond ring, a ring she always dreamed would be hers, she discovers a cryptic note long hidden beneath the box's velvet lining. What secret was her grandmother hiding? And could this be the key to what's haunting Abby? As she begins to uncover the traces of a love triangle gone shockingly wrong nearly seventy years before, we, too, see that the layers of our lives may echo a past we’ve never known. With mesmerizing twists and a long-buried secret that may finally rise to light, You Were Here weaves together two worlds separated by decades, asking if the mistakes made in past lives can ever be corrected in the future, and if some souls are meant to find one another time and time again.

My Review

I really tried....twice....but I just could not get into this book. It got off to a really slow start, and I was not able to make it past the first 100 pages either time. That's too bad, because the synopsis is pretty interesting. Sadly, I had to DNF it!

If you read through some of the reviews at other sites, you will find my experience was not unique, and that many complained about the slow start to the book. And like me me, many of those readers DNF’d the book. But you will also see that those that pushed through were glad they did, and say that at about the midway point the book transformed from a chore to struggle through to a book they could not put down!

My recommendation: if the synopsis sounds interesting and you have patience, give this one a try. I may just pick this one up again sometime and test that advice!

I received an advanced review copy of this book through the Penguin First To Read program.

DNF Review: The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison

Why did you choose this book? book club selection

When did you read this book? February 2016

Who should read this book? readers who enjoy classics

Source: local library

Here is a synopsis of The Bluest Eye from Goodreads

Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus

My Review

This is not going to be a popular review. I could not finish this book. I read through about 2/3 of the book, and each time I picked it up to continue, I would mutter “I HATE this book!” I only continued as far as I did because it was the selection for my book club. After our meeting, I did go back and skim the final 40 pages, and still got nothing out of the book. I really didn’t sympathize OR empathize with Pecola or any other character in this book. I know the book was supposed to deliver a message, but it went right past me because I just.didn’t.care!!! I’m glad book club is over and I can forget I even attempted this one.

One issue I had from the beginning is that I read the author notes in the back of the book before I started reading. The author relates a story from her childhood when a friend wished for blue eyes and the author was repulsed by the image of a black child with blue eyes. I could only think how ironic this is, since the since I THINK the point of this book is to show us how another person’s idea of ‘beauty’ can damage the self-image of a young child?

Another issue I had is that it read like a classic, and if you have read this blog very long, you know I don’t do well with classics. I also had a problem with the brutality in this book, and the graphic depictions of sex. At a different time this might not have bothered me quite so much, but having just read another book, My Sweet Vidalia, where the main character was brutalized, this was just too much for me.

We chose this book because one of our members had suggested we read some Toni Morrisey. I’m not sure why we settled on this one, but it turned out to be a poor choice. The member who had suggested reading Toni Morrisey was also disappointed with this book. It turns out the one she had a good experience with was Song of Solomon. Another member had a positive experience with Beloved. Unfortunately,though they may be very good, I think it is going to be awhile before I am willing to try another book by this author!

My Rating: DNF

DNF Review: Noah's Wife

Noah’s Wife

by Lindsay Starck

Why did you choose this book? the obvious reference to the Noah Story

When did you read this book? December 2015

Who should read this book? readers willing to stick with a book

Source: Penguin First To Read

Here is a synopsis of Noah’s Wife from Goodreads

Mary McGarry Morris says it best: “Noah’s Wife may be a contemporary allegory, but Lindsay Starck is a classic storyteller…her novel is an engrossing fusion of wisdom and beautiful writing.” Noah’s Wife is a gorgeously written, brilliantly introspective fable-like novel.

Noah’s Wife is a story of a community battered by a relentless downpour from the heavens, a gray and wet little town teeming with eccentric characters who have learned to endure the extraordinary circumstances of the rain with astonishing human fortitude and willfulness.

When Noah’s wife arrives with her minister husband to this small coastal town, she is driven by her desire to help revive the congregation. However, she is thwarted by the resistance of her eccentric new neighbors and her failure to realize that her husband is battling his own internal crisis.

As Noah and his wife strive to bring the townspeople to the church—and keep the strains on their marriage at bay—the rain intensifies, impeding their efforts. Soon the river waters rise, flooding the streets of the town and driving scores of wild animals out of the once-renowned zoo. And so, Noah, his wife, and the townspeople must confront the savage forces of nature and attempt to reinforce the fragile ties that bind them to each other before their world is washed away.

Full of whimsy and gentle ironic humor, Noah’s Wife is a wise and poignant novel that draws upon the motifs of the biblical flood story to explore the true meaning of community, to examine the remarkable strength of the human spirit, and to ask whether hope can exist even where faith has been lost.

My Review

I saw this one offered through Penguin’s First To Read program. I picked it up for a couple of reasons. First, I really like the cover! But I also liked the tie-in to the Noah story from the Bible. Even more interesting was the fact that I started in on it right after Christmas, when our part of the country was being deluged by record-setting rainfall! So the opening resonated with me.

In the beginning it was not raining, but it is raining now — and steadily!

It has been raining for so long that even though it has not always been raining the townspeople begin to feel as though this is the case — as though the weather has always been this way, the sky this gray, the puddles this profound.

However, unfortunately, I was never really able to get into this story. The chapters were very short and felt like a string of character sketches. In this respect it reminded me a little of a book I read in high school, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. It was hard to see how the characters were tied together. While I did start sensing the story was coming together, after about 100 pages, I still wasn’t feeling it. There is a whole stack of books here calling my name, and I gave up on it. That was about ⅓ of the book, so I don’t feel bad giving up, but I don’t feel like I can fairly rate this book.  Other readers have given it great reviews, so I suggest you check some of those out before casting this one aside.

My Rating:  DNF

I received an advanced review copy of this book through the Penguin First To Read program.