i really, really love the concept and theoretical framework of this. the essays by each of the writing retreat's participants being the bridge between the chapters is frankly kind of brilliant. but the execution of this mostly didn't work for me. it's not awful or anything, and there are parts that are amusing enough and not written badly. but generally, it's not well written and all of the humor feels sophomoric. there are way too many characters for this to work effectively. there is no reason to have so many of them (i thought maybe it correlated to the number of stars in the constellation pisces but that's not right) and there just isn't a good way to keep all the characters separate and individual, especially when the author has chosen to keep the essay writers secret. that jumbles the characters too much and makes this much less fun and insightful to read. i'm not sure she handled cross-dressing and intersexuality well, but i can't say for sure, so just hope she had a sensitivity reader for those issues. i definitely didn't like the stereotypical way she wrote a black woman speaking to a white woman (like calling her 'white woman' when addressing her). as to the character relationships, i know two weeks isolated-ish together can feel like a long time, and i know that these people mostly already knew each other, but i just didn't believe real people would behave this way, for the most part. ( )

I thought it was OK, but not great. It's a pretty structured story, with lots of humor, about a group of 12-13 women, on a retreat in Vermont; trying to create a sculpture/literary project. A fishing project is also thrown in. The book presents the women's backstories with their present day personas; which would have been more interesting if the author had done a better job of delineating the characters. TBH; 13 major characters is a lot to get across, but I kept getting them mixed up. ( )

Most people think Ann McMan is great at writing humor but, for me, her biggest strength is the way she strips characters bare and exposes their souls. That's what I love about Backcast the most.

I wrote a longer review on my site (C-Spot Reviews) but it pretty much says what I wrote above.

(I went 4.5 on Booklikes but rounded up here) ( )

Pretty awful. ( )