Mer A. recommended this book to me as she handed me a nearly hip-high pile of her castoffs. I was not a huge fan, despite Mer's verbal recommendation and Ann Patchett's quotation on the cover.
This story follows a family through four generations of dysfunction and secrets. The book kept my attention, but the writing was nothing special and the story was implausible. This is the first book I've read all year that I did not dog-ear any pages for the purposes of remembering a special line or quotation. I would have forgiven the uninspired writing (or at least questioned if it were just subtle and not uninspired) had the plot been more plausible. However, the story involved so many unlikely romantic trysts, and so many moments where the characters could have saved themselves forty or fifty pages of heartache, that I could not get past that.
The praise on the front and back cover suggest that this book masterfully captures a family through several decades of life. However, by the end of the book I was disgusted by the sexual pairings, bored waiting for the members of each generation to grow up, and tired of the third person omniscient narrator's omniscience.
Given all the praise for this book, coupled with a soft spot I have for first-time novelists, I'd be open to reading the sequel, but it's not high up on my list.
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