This Perfectly Imperfect Life

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom My rating: 2 of 5 stars  I was disappointed with this read, it was not what I expected.  Very disappointed, I wanted to like this novel but just couldn't.  Too melodramatic and at times unrealistic, too contemporary (despite it being historical fiction) 'Gone With The Wind' for my tastes.  Too much in one novel about too many people facing nearly every imaginable awful hardship a human can endure at the time it takes place. Emotions are written about but I often couldn't feel them.  There was a lack of depth at times.  And I felt like so many aspects of the novel were familiar, as if I was seeing things from history, other novels and movies. It was hard at times keeping everything strait. I do not shy away from reads that deal with the issues & horrors of slavery and indentured servants but I didn't care for how this novel told those stories.    View all my reviews I am facilitating the chat on ...

The Sea by John Banville My rating: 2 of 5 stars (My rating is actually 2.5 stars). The Sea is a portrait of what happens to a person who lives in the past and becomes self-pitying. The present becomes full of bittersweet melancholy and unfairness which enables the person to slip backwards instead of forwards. They become dry, rambling, odd. People like this are hard to care for and about in real life, which is why it's hard to care about the main character Max or any of the characters in the novel as they're all seen through his eyes & emotions. I can see how some would take the writing as full of ego, even lofty, which it could be, though I wonder if writing this way was a deliberate act of setting the tone for Max and the novel...? View all my reviews >>

The Quarry by Damon Galgut My rating: 4 of 5 stars From the back cover: "The Quarry is another stark, intense novel in which human nature betrays itself against the desolate backdrop of rural South Africa. It opens with a chance meeting on a lonely stretch of road, when a man picks up a hitchhiker. The driver is a minister on his way to a new congregation in an isolated village and the passenger, a fugitive from justice. When the minister realizes this and confronts his passenger overlooking an empty quarry, the response is deadly. As the fugitive and the local police chief play out a tense game of cat and mouse, Damon Galgut gives us a devastating combat for man's most prized attribute: freedom." This was an interesting, odd and compelling read. I doubt I would have ever read it had it not been this month's book club selection at the library and I'm glad to have had the chance. ***SPOILER Possible-->***The confrontation between the minister and the passen...