A. Manette Ansay

I live in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, so the title is what originally drew me to this book. It's set not in Brooklyn, but in a conservative, predominantly Catholic area of the Midwest in the 1970s.
If I wanted to be snide, I'd say this is a book about how being forced to move in with your in-laws will destroy your marriage, but that's obviously too glib. There are a few finely drawn characters and a real struggle to keep love alive in an atmosphere that seems show more determined to kill it.
Worth a read, but be warned that I would have much preferred some additional denouement; the suddenness of the ending dampened my enthusiasm for the book, which I had enjoyed up to that point. show less

I don't care what the description says, there is nothing "triumphant" about this.

I felt obligated to try an "Oprah's book club" book. I'm a woman, so these books are supposed to speak to me, right? Books I feel "obligated" to read are funny things. They either turn out to be amazing or dreadful. Guess which one this was.

I'm not sure what kind of audience this book was written for. It it bears any resemblance to your life, it's going to depress you further. If it doesn't, it's just going to show more depress you, end of story.

The one-dimensional characters plodded through their lives, lifting their heads long enough for a crop of flashback sequences that made it clear that their lives had always been full of the kind of bleak everyday horrors that made them the bleak horrible people they became. The story limps on to a conclusion that is no real conclusion at all. It just kind of stops. There is this vague suggestion that things are going to be better now, but it's almost impossible to believe it after the rest of the novel. show less

I've read a lot of memoirs and most of them I really disliked. Often I feel that they are over-the-top stories of abuse or neglect and if they are in fact close to what actually happened then it is just too depressing to want to read about. I always also wonder if the bad things that happen are given so much more importance and play in a memoir that it does a disservice to the memoirists real history.

Limbo is not like this. I really enjoyed Ansay's book in which she weaves together bits of show more her childhood, early adulthood, her father's early adulthood, and her mysterious illness. She uses repetition in a really effective back and forth way that mimics how often issues in life reoccur. And she is neither self-pitying nor self-aggrandizing.

In fact, I enjoyed her writing so much that I've added her novel "Vinegar Hill" to my to-read list. show less

This whole book takes place during one afternoon and evening - the wedding and reception of April and Caleb, a young American couple. There are vignettes of their family - rather disapproving, since the bride and groom have only known each other for three months - and friends, ncluding April's ex-fiancé. Meanwhile, at the connected lodge, a different couple are having a serious argument which has rather drastic results.

Surprisingly, I quite liked this book - there was mild humour and some show more clever observation, and the supposed suspense wasn't really chilling in the slightest. But it was rather an odd sort of book. It was actually billed as a horror story but I didn't find anything horrific in it, and I'm no fan of horror in general. show less