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Rating:  - Almost Poetic
Written in stark, almost poetic prose, not a word wasted, not an adjective used if not necessary, not a single flight into fancy, this strange little book mirrors its two main characters, stoic New Englanders who meet, marry, have a great love affair, and go through the decades in different, often shockingly surprising, iterations.
I won't do a spoiler here, although really the book is much less plot-oriented than it is a visual piece, carefully placed before the reader with exquisitely thought-out verbal images. It's hard to describe more accurately than that.
I would hate to put a prosaic theme on it, but the idea that love outlives everything and changes and grows with the people who feel it, while ridiculously cliched when one tries to put it in a review, is exactly what this book is ultimately about.
Not for everyone, but I so admired the exquisite use of the language, I give it a five, and highly recommend it. Just expect an almost excrutiatly slow pace--and enjoy each word.
Rating:  - fine family redemption drama
Just after WW II ends in Provincetown on Cape Cod, wannabe thirtyish poet Toby Maytree and college student Lou Bigelow meet. Though an author, Toby struggles to get his tongue straight as he is unable to put together two coherent thoughts let alone sentences. Still she senses something deep inside his soul; they relish the dunes, fall in love and marry. A few years later they add a son Pete to their perfect family.
However, their idyllic life together ends when a cheating Toby leaves his wife and son to go be with his lover in Maine. Two decades later, a tragedy brings Toby and Lou together for the first time since he left his family behind. They poorly coped with his desertion. Feelings between the pair remains strong, but love proved weak the first time around.
The key to this fine family redemption drama is Annie Dillard avoids values pointing in order to make a "guilty" verdict re her flawed characters; instead she leaves that to readers to decide who failed at relationships and why. No action, this is a purely character driven tale of paradise lost and paradise regained maybe; as a wiser Toby, Lou and Pete finally understand life is a journey to death.
Harriet Klausner
Rating:  - Don't bother
Forgot all about this most forgettable book, until today when Amazon sent me an email suggesting I'd be interested in reading it. What I haven't forgotten: what a dull, boring, overwritten, undermotivated novel it is, an unlovable love story with no love interest. The moral of the story: famous writers/thinkers produce their share of duds and get them published anyway.
Rating: - Disappointing at best
Not much of a story is told in this over-written chore of a novel. Cape Cod vocabulary is so overplayed, it loses any effectiveness. No passion to this so-called love story. Disappointing reading.
Rating:  - I am glad these people are not my friends
The primary characters of the book are a husband who abandons his wife and small child; the heart-broken wife left under the starry skies of Cape Cod to figure out how she and her son will survive; and an urchin who sleeps amidst the sand dunes until she tires of that lifestyle and evolves into a bitch-goddess.
Ultimately, I do not see this story as one either about love or family--certainly not about the enduring nature of love. Rather, it is a story about neediness and exploitation. Deary is not the only one in this tale who exploits others. I propose that each of the primary characters makes a decision to get what s/he wants or needs as the opportunity comes along.
There are some lovely passages in this book. However, it seemed to me that the writer tried too hard to do it just right and unfortunately this self-consciousness got in the way.
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