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Loading... The River Wifeby Jonis Agee
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I like the reviewer below me (Emily) who did her review of this book on a plus and minus system. I have trouble with family history books that span generations--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I am looking deeply into your eyes--because it gets so hard to keep everyone straight, and because, let's be real, you never really care about the later generations. So many pluses for the earlier parts of this story, and for Omah the Pirate definitely, but not so much on the later tales (Dealie, Laura, etc.) because they don't grab nearly as much. Treat it like a Faulkner, lots of individual stories about country(wo)men getting royally f-ed, and you'll be much happier. ( )I will be honest, I bought the book for the cover. Then I started reading and found that I knew of the areas Agee wrote about. That made the book all the more intriguing. The story can be a little disturbing, and it covers several generations of one family living on one plot of land. To me, the hardships made it all the more real. There seem to be surprises around every corner. I wanted to like this book, and I really did like her style of writing. But there were too many stories, too many unanswered questions, too many superfluous characters. The stand-by-your-man parts were irritating, but I've met too many women like that in real life. I don't like it but I know it's out there. I can't say I didn't find it interesting, just frustrating, because I'd be getting interested in a chapter, and then *poof* we were someplace else. Kind of like watching television with a man... The only reason I finished this book was to see if it made any sense at the end- it doesn't. I read this with a group and I think everyone left feeling the same way- disappointed and confused. What drives me crazy is that this had SO much potential, Agee just didn't deliver. The characters are all so promising and well written but the point of the whole story never comes to a head, it just kind of floats along brining up miscombobulated bits of the past that makes you THINK it's all connected when it's really not. I feel unfulfilled after reading this book. These stories of the Ducharme women of Jacques' Landing, MO, begin in the early 1800's and continue until the years of the Great Depression. It was difficult to read about such a harsh existence and even harder to read about such weak women who continually made bad decisions. Unfortunately, Annie, the most interesting character in the story, disappears midway in the book. Just as Annie faded away after the tragedy in her life, the promising beginning fizzled out. This book just did not work for me. The mystical scenes were more muddled than mysterious, and there was way too much drama for my taste. I should have given up after reading the most explicit disturbing scene I have encountered in my reading. Hint and ***Spoiler*** -- it involves a mad dog and a baby. I advise that you pass up on this book if you are squeamish and don't want your sleep disturbed. no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)
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