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Loading... The Dress Lodger (Ballantine Reader's Circle)by Sheri Holman
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. What attracted me to this book was its title. A book about Cheese? i thumbed thru a few paages & found the writing was great. The introduction, where a woman gives birth to 11 babies seemed a bit much, but once the main characters appeared, Margaret, whoe husband has left her but she is still struggling to run their dairy farm the traditional way, Polly, her teen-age daughter who wants to save the farm, but discovers first love with someone completely unsuitable, & August, the only son of a family of preachers who main pleasure in life is to pose as Thomas Jefferson all of whom live in a small town just outside the political whirl of Washington DC. The story is set in the present, as another reviewer pointed out - it could hardly be more present day, and all of our hopes, pleasures & foibles are present with all their consequences, some unintended but all entertaining. ( )This book has lots going for it but the cover isn't one of them. It is ugly. This book is full of details about cows, cheese making, and small towns. It was also very prescient. I read it just when the economy started going south and diary farmers are in trouble in a big way and selling off their herds for pennies on the dollar, the Octamom had just delivered her eight babies, and their was a populist running for President. It is a story about communities and how they function as much as it is about cheese. This is a nice slow easy gentle read. The central story has well developed characters and is somewhat of a domestic drama. However, that story gets lost in lots of other subplots. The separate plot lines come together at the end but not in an obvious way. This book moves too slowly and could have benefited from some better editing to tighten up the story lines and make them more concise. It is one big messy kind of thing - just like life. I was thoroughly entertained by this book, a conglomeration of daily grind, humor, horror - a lot like life. It's a coming-of-age story about eighth grader Polly Marvel in love with her history teacher. It's also a coming-of-age for her mother Margaret, divorced and desperately trying to hold on to her family dairy farm. It is the story of Leland Vaughn, the local Episcopal priest, a most persuasive man who finds himself appalled by the outcomes of his persuasion. Their lives intertwine with others in their small town as everybody in the novel sees what he has given his life to and learns what is ultimately important. strikingly aprapo as election politics permeate small town life fabulous thoughtful delightful charming clever book...packaging and back cover blurb all wrong ...looks like sweet charming countryside tales and its much more than that! no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:23:38 -0500)
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