Mystery

When the author started describing the horse's footprints I realized I was done. Nothing ever happened and the descriptions were not interesting. It was well written though. ( )

This cool and still story of the fictional prairie hamlet of Juliet, Saskatchewan for a 24-hour period one August won the Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Fiction in 2010. The ‘Welcome’ sign to Juliet announces a population of 1,011 people but more than you can imagine happens here.
Warren draws a selection of the townspeople in a clear and sure voice.

Her prose has been described as “leisurely and unpretentious” and like a “drink . . . from a deep well after crossing the parched sand hills of the west”. This is one of the books that you will finish and then sit back and realize that much more happened than you thought was happening.

It’s a richly rewarding read.

4½ stars ( )

Juliet is a small town (just over 1,000 people) in Southern Saskatchewan, near Swift Current. This book follows some of the town residents (and local farmers) for one day. We meet Lee, who has taken over his “family” farm (we learn early on, that Lester and Astrid were not his biological parents); Norval, the town banker, whose daughter, just out of high school, is pregnant and is getting married… neither she nor her fiance are particularly responsible; Blaine, whose farm has failed and he is having trouble making ends meet for him and his family, including six children; and more.

I really enjoyed this. I grew up in a small town/farming community in Southern Sask, and loved reading about the area, though this town was meant to be (I believe it’s a fictional town) just north of the Trans-Canada highway by the sand dunes, whereas I lived a ways south of the highway. Either way, it’s not fast-paced, but I was drawn in and interested in the characters, anyway. It actually reminded me a bit of Kent Haruf’s books and his small town characters. It does switch between characters quite frequently, but – for the most part – I was able to fairly quickly figure out who was who and whose perspective we were getting each time. ( )

I received this book as a Goodreads first reads winner. This book was a little hard to get into at first. It jumps around to different characters in the small town and covers about 24 hours. You have to concentrate at first to understand what is going on and to keep the characters straight. Once I was able to do that I enjoyed the book. One thing I didn't enjoy - with all the jumping around, I really didn't get to know the characters enough and I wanted to know more. It was a like a quick snapshot of each of them. I'm not a big fan of short stories because I like to know more and I like stories to go for a while and this was like a bunch of short stories thrown together. She is a good writer and it was enjoyable. ( )