The story telling was good...the story was not so much. I am a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I can understand why some women "run away from home" but I do not understand Rose's motivations. Just being beautiful and mysterious doesn't work for me. ( )

Makes you think about all the choices you make in your life and their consequences. I couldn't put it down. ( )

What a great story woven through the voices of three very different characters. ( )

I couldn't quite tell what I thought of this as I read it, alternately I was compelled and bored. It kind of felt like a writer grasping for story where there wasn't one quite. And then I got to the end and it completely redeemed itself and now I love it. Maybe because really it is a book about faith and that is what I am obsessed with right now. It still isn't as good as "The Magician's Assistant" or "Bel Canto." But...you can see a mind at work, developing into a good writer which is kind of fun to see. ( )

She's done it again. I wasn't as crazy about the lead character in this novel as I've been in other reads, or as I was in the last book I read from Ann Patchett, but she certainly knows how to turn a phrase and tell a story and catch a detail in words.

First a recap - This was Ann Patchett's first novel, which makes it all the more brilliant. From the jacket: "St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary. Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. And she cannot remain forever untouched by what she has left behind... and who she has become in the leaving."

In further reflection, I'm not sure I'm SUPPOSED to be crazy about Rose. Perhaps if Rose had done things the way I wanted her to do them (it's all about me, after all) all through the book instead of being selfish and doing hurtful things just when I thought she was coming around, perhaps then I'd have found her to be a lovely and redeeming character. But now as I'm writing it out this way, perhaps that is all a part of what makes this story brilliant.

I'm always so pissed by jerkaround formulaic stories (think Sparks) that are all alike and simply trying to rip your emotions from you just for that reaction and you can predict everything that is going to happen. This story? Thi is a simple, honest story of a woman who is the ultimate escapist running from her life and her past and the impact of her actions on the people who love her.

Ann Patchett tells the story in three parts and from three perspectives, from the single mother Rose, from the daughter, and from the second husband. And it is all done seamlessly.

I'm coming around! I think this is an excellent read and I'm bumping my rating up from the original 3 1/2 stars to at least a 4. Fabulous. ( )