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Loading... Land of a Hundred Wondersby Lesley Kagen
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book was hard to read. I struggled to stay engaged and sometimed i felt like it was a struggle to comprehend. Overall wasnt horrible i liked the ending but it took me forever to get through. ( ) I think this book was written to be picked up as a made-for-TV movie. It throws so many damaged people into one small community, and adds in all the hillbilly cliches you can think of. I think it's supposed to be a tear-jerker as we identify with the narrator, a 20-year old who has lost patches of her memory and her manners during the car accident that took her parents life. She's living with her Grampa, a gruff ex-drill sergeant who loves her a lot and gives her his own version of therapy: playing scrabble & writing a local 'newspaper' to help restore her spelling and focus, hiring her to bus tables at his breakfast cafe (which keeps her interacting with others), letting her keep a dog (who turns out to be a good guardian). A racist good-ol'-boy sheriff, dump deputy, lecher, wild pregnant highschool dropout, and soft-hearted pie-baking black 'mammy' are some of the other characters. For an author from Wisconsin to write so stereotypically about Kentucky might not set will on people from that area. Living in rural Kentucky in the early 1970's, 20-year-old Gibby has been NQR ("not quite right") since she was involved in an accident three years previously, which killed both of her parents. With dreams of being a reporter, she now lives with her grandfather and self-publishes a gazette which she passes around to the nearby folk, giving a summary of the local happenings. When she stumbles across the dead body of Buster Malloy, she's determined to figure out what happened and establish that maybe she's not quite as NQR as everyone thinks. Lesley Kagen is one of my under-the-radar favorite authors. My favorite of hers is still her debut, Whistling in the Dark, but I'm still working my way through her novels. I would rank this as maybe my least favorite so far, though I'm not sure why exactly. It may have been the Kentucky setting and the somewhat ridiculous plot, but she does still have a way with writing about endearing characters with unique personalities. This one didn't bring out the nostalgia of the 70's quite as much as some of her previous novels (which is partially why I love them so much), but it did incorporate some of the evolving racism of that era. And I did still enjoy this one and would recommend Kagen to anyone looking for a fresh voice in literature. no reviews | add a review
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HTML: From the national bestselling author of Whistling in the Dark comes another funny, poignant, unforgettable story. The summer Gibby McGraw catches her big break, the cicadas are humming, and it's so warm even the frogs are sweating. Brain damaged after a tragic car accident that took both her parents, Gibby is now NQR (Not Quite Right), a real challenge for a fledgling newspaper reporter. Especially when she stumbles upon the dead body of the next governor of Kentucky, Buster Malloy. Armed with her trusty blue spiral note-book, Gibby figures that solving the murder might be her best chance to prove to everyone that she can become Quite Right again. But she gets more than she bargained for when she uncovers a world of corruption, racism, and family secrets in small town Cray Ridge. Lucky for her, she's also about to discover that some things are far more important than all the brains in the world, and that miracles occur in the most unexpected moments. .No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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