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Loading... A Land More Kind than Home (2012)by Wiley Cash
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Top Five Books of 2013 (589) Top Five Books of 2014 (932) Books Read in 2016 (1,679) » 10 more No current Talk conversations about this book. Meandering book takes an awful long time to tell a pretty simple story. Way too many digressions that have little bearing on the main plot, as if the author is just padding things out because he can't figure out how to make the main plot carry the story. The voice of the son is the best narrator and perhaps the most honest one. The old lady is annoying because she held the key to perhaps preempt some of these events. The sheriff is okay, but the whole book is more than a little bit overdone and doesn't really speak convincingly to the reader. Also, the narrative should end with the son--not the old lady. That would have made for a much more satisfying book. There are just so many opportunities here that are missed, it is sad. The situation is a good one and the characters are good--the author just doesn't know what to do with them. ( ![]() I wanted to try a Wiley Cash book so I tried this one. I ended up not liking it all that much. I found the tone bleak and depressing. It has to do with a young boy who is protective of his younger brother (who cannot talk), the boys mother, a sinister minister who believes in snake handling, a well meaning member of his congregation, and the local sheriff. It did have enough tension that I wanted to keep reading, and the scenes were written well, but it seemed very grim and sinister throughout and not to my personal taste. Three narrators, all convincing. Painful, perhaps especially for those of us who do not believe in "a land more kind than home". A Southern saga based in the mountains of North Carolina, using four voices: a 10-year old boy whose mute brother is killed during a Church "healing" ceremony, the local sheriff, the Sunday school teacher, who disagrees with the preacher's ways, and the father. Betrayal, infidelity, alcohol abuse, etc. Not as good as John Hart. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I tried and tried to get into it, but was instead repeatedly drawn out of it by ridiculous overly developed metaphors (there were sometimes two or three metaphors in a single run-on sentence). I couldn't stand the characters' redneck voices and so I found myself barely paying attention to the story. After giving up and, a few days later, reading the jacket copy again, I realized that "Jess" a main character was a boy when I had thought he was a girl. Realized the "Ms. Lyle" mentioned repeatedly by Jess was the older lady/midwife that narrated the first section . . . . seriously I was so bored my reading comprehension must have been zilch. I am not one to put a book down and have slogged my way through some really horrible tomes, but this one was intolerable. I am seriously shocked by the number of good reviews--the reviewers must have greater fortitude than I.
A church committed to handling poisonous snakes is the catalyst for tragedy in this debut novel. Pastor Carson Chambliss has a small North Carolina congregation in his thrall. He decides that a laying on of hands will cure an autistic boy, but instead his efforts lead to the boy's death. Cash employs three characters as narrators: Jess, the nine-year-old younger brother; Adelaide Lyle, an aged local midwife; and the county sheriff. Jess' narration is limited by his age and innocence. The county sheriff is taciturn, but Adelaide is voluble, a true southern storyteller, and her narration burnishes a compelling sense of rural place.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2010 Booklist
Growing up in a small North Carolina town, Jess Hall is plunged into an adulthood for which he is not prepared when his autistic older brother, Stump, sneaks a look at something he is not supposed to see, which has catastrophic repercussions. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6 — Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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