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Loading... The Little Giant of Aberdeen Countyby Tiffany Baker
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A unique plot and some interesting characters do not quite save this book from mediocrity. I had to push myself through to the end, and franklky, did a fair amount of skimming. (  ) hemlokgang | Nov 14, 2009 |  Truly Place came into the world as a huge baby and rapidly continued to expand to gigantic proportions. As her mother died in childbirth, Truly's world was tempest tossed. Suffering the cruel taunts of small town tiny minded people, asTruly's bulk grew, her spirit shrank. Adding more burden was the fact that Truly's older sister was everything she was not. Unlike Truly, Serena Jane was loved, beautiful, small, sparkling and vivacious. She was --most of all -- egotistical and self centered. The relationship Truly struggles to achieve with her sister is the springboard of a story of have and have nots, of a town and people enamored with facades. As the story progresses, Truly picks up the pieces her sister has left behind, raising Serena's son when Serena leaves and becoming the brunt of abuse by Serena's physician husband who pokes and prods and stings with words and experiments. In the end, Truly is as loving and wise as her size and is placed in some situations where she forgives those who caused her pain. The book is well written and peppered with wonderful descriptive phrases. It was interesting enough to keep me reading through the 341 pages. While I liked it, there are parts that fell flat. This is the second consecutive book I've read wherein the author, after hundreds of descriptive pages of angst and pain, felt the need to throw in a contrived happy ending. Guardedly recommended. (  ) Whisper1 | Nov 8, 2009 | The Little Giant of Aberdeen County explores the prejudices and discriminatory practices used against a girl born with a hormonal disorder that causes her to become enormous. How she deals with the townspeople makes an intriguing story, but some parts push the suspension of disbelief a little too far. For instance, in one chapter, the main character talks about things that happen before she was born... she could not possibly know these things from personal experience, yet she speaks as if she were watching on the sidelines or directly involved. She does not say "I was told..." or any similar phrase to qualify her narration of these events. Fortunately, the chapters in this book are not extremely long and the author does not obviously continue this disturbing practice in later chapters. In all, the novel is a nicely paced, smoothly narrated page turner that I found well worth reading. Most parts of the story are so realistically told that I had to keep reminding myself "this is fiction." The author does a credible job of making the reader a part of the world of this story, which has an appropriately satisfying ending. Recommended to readers age 14 and up who are looking for something very different to read and who can tolerate the bit of pushing on the suspension of disbelief envelope which happens early in the story. This review was previously published on Dragonviews. (  ) 1dragones | Oct 20, 2009 | really loved this one. (  ) mizcat | Oct 16, 2009 | Truly Plaice, a woman afflicted with an undisclosed growth disorder, grows up in rural New York, scorned by her neighbors, teachers and family. When her beautiful sister Serena Jane runs away from her husband and son, Truly moves in to care for them, despite the husband's continual cruelty and exploitative medical examinations. She eventually finds her strength and her wisdom in an unexpected way. This book is getting mostly excellent reviews, but its charms eluded me. The characters were undeveloped at best and ridiculous stereotypes at worst, and the plot was painfully contrived. Truly is born in 1953, making her basically my age, but the story makes it seem as if this all took place in the deep South in the 19th century. Why is Truly so imprisoned by her condition and by her small-minded environs? She attends high school; she watches television; she has to know there is a bigger world out there. For one thing, as Truly is coming of age, second-wave feminism is flourishing all over the world, but you would never know it from this novel's (and Truly's) pinched view of women's lives. If the book is intended to be read as fable, it is not fabulous enough. If it intended to be read as "women's fiction," whatever that is, it is not credible. Leaving aside the plot for the writing, my big gripe was that the narration was handled all wrong. Truly Plaice is a first-person narrator, but she is unaccountably omniscient. She recounts things that happened to her boyfriend in Vietnam as if she were there. She describes in detail her nephew waking up with an enormous erection - you get the idea. Again, if the intent was to make Truly seem magical and all-knowing, the attempt fell flat. (  )1  CasualFriday | Oct 1, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400)
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