Stiltsville

Susanna Daniel takes a look at the everyday lives of everyday people. Spanning about 25 years, we get a detailed, snapshot look at specific happenings in their lives. We learn about the characters as they go about dealing with some of the same successes and problems that confront us. Set against the background of Miami, the family-owned stilt house figures periodically in the story. Ms. Daniel does a credible job of portraying the characters of the protagonist and her husband. While some may criticize that nothing much happens in the story that is “newsworthy,” isn’t that what life is really all about? We are just ordinary people coping with the stuff life throws our way, and while decisions about our children, our health, our show more jobs, and the people we with deal with on a daily basis may not seem important to others, these things are important to us. It is somehow fulfilling to read about others who are, in reality, no more outstanding or important that we are. show less

I love being surprised by a book. When I first cracked open Stiltsville and read the opening chapter, I formed an opinion of the book and was a little hesitant to move forward. The actions by the key character touched close to home for me and I didn't know if this was a book I'd be able to get into, let alone give a fair shot.

But then I kept reading, because I needed to know more. I needed to know why people were still talking about this book. Plus, there was something about Frances and her friend Marse that hooked me.

So while I expected a book that would deal with a broken friendship, what I got was a look at everlasting friendship, a look at marriage that survives despite disappointing jobs, loss of children, debilitating disease, show more infidelity and more. In short, in Stiltsville I got a dose of really hard reality told in the most gentle way possible.

Sometimes, books that deal with these heavier issues can seem a little "fairy-tale like". Things magically go right, the right events happen, the story is manipulated by the author to give the reader a sense of closure. Susanna Daniel managed to give me that sense of closure without any of the fairy-tale nonsense. Not only that, but she dabbled in things that had me dreading turning the page, but she didn't go there - because she didn't need to. Just the touch, the very idea that a wrong choice might be made was enough to shock me into realizing just how precarious life can be and how fragile relationships are if not treated correctly.

While this isn't a light summer read, the setting of Miami, the descriptions of the water, the house on stilts - all these add up to a read that will make you think, but still give you that summertime feeling. Look Stiltsville up if you are wanting a break from fluff. show less

Slow start in which I kept asking myself why I kept reading about this fairly mundane family in their well-wrought Miami setting until 3/4 of the way through when events take over and the book becomes much more emotional and interesting as placid days turn to confrontations with crime, weather, health.

Not much happens to the main character, Frances, that is out of the ordinary---yet this book is strangely captivating. The characters are full and interesting; Daniel's portrait of a marriage, with all its attendant ups and downs, is spot on, and my guess is that many readers will recognize shades of themselves in small parts. My only complaint is that because I knew something difficult would happen at the end, I found myself impatient with the pace of the book as it meandered through Frances' and Dennis' early years. The end is terrifically sad.

A marriage is made up of so many different things: history, love, attraction, and the unknowable and unexplainable. We've been surprised when certain couples have divorced and have not been able to fathom what keeps others together. You just never really know what is going on in someone else's marriage. The only people who do are the two who are in it day in and day out. This novel gives an uncensored glimpse into a marriage, uncovering everything and allowing the reader to truly experience what we never can in life: someone else's marriage and life.

After a friend's wedding in Miami, Frances heads out to Stiltsville, a tiny community of stilt houses in the middle of Biscayne Bay, with a woman named Marse she's only just met at the show more wedding. They intend to spend a lovely relaxing day in the water and the sun with Marse's brother and Dennis, whose family owns the house. What Frances finds out there on the water, is her future husband. The native Atlantan moves to flamboyant Miami for Dennis, eventually starting a marriage and a family that the reader will follow for the next 25 years.

The novel tells the story of this everyday marriage, of its ups and downs, the challenge of raising a daughter together, the temptations that intrude, the waxing and waning of passion, the times of financial worry and unhappiness, the times of celebration and contentment, but most of all of steadiness and commitment. Daniel carefully draws the small, seemingly unimportant decisions that end up changing the direction of a life and a marriage because it's the commonplace as much or more than the extraordinary that drives regular life. Frances, the main character and narrator, is a little distant at times, holding her deepest feelings close to herself. We have to take on faith her abiding love for Dennis, her friend Marse, and her sister-in-law Bette since this is not a book of grand gestures but instead of the daily and the enduring. These secondary characters, including daughter Margo, are captured in snapshots, more shade than flesh, as ultimately unknowable to the reader as to Frances, as it would be in real life.

The plot is not mundane and yet it doesn't deal with the extraordinary very often. Daniel does weave in some of the terrible and affecting news of the time: the beating death of Arthur McDuffie and the acquital of the police officers in the case, the murders at the University of Florida in 1990, and Hurricane Andrew that flattened most of Stiltsville. These events serve to ground the story firmly in time and place. Without major happenings driving it, the pace of the novel is fairly slow. It's not an adrenline-charged summer read but instead a forthright look at the work involved in maintaining a marriage and facing the challenges of life with another person. show less

Well-known librarian Nancy Pearl has suggested that readers are drawn into a story through four doorways: story, setting, language, and/or character. For setting and language lovers, Stiltsville may be a 5-star read. But those looking for appealing characters or a compelling plot will be disappointed. Daniel's main character, Frances, meanders through most of her life, experiencing the usual ups and downs of marriage and parenting. Even though Daniel conveys the emotions of a long marriage honestly, the character remains unsympathetic. Daniel captures the distinct feel of life in a house built on pilings in the middle of Biscayne Bay (until they were swept away by Hurricane Andrew) but awkwardly inserts bits of Miami's history into show more Frances' fictional memoir. Some readers will be captivated; others will be merely bored. A turn of events late in the novel reveals the depth of Frances's love for her husband but it's too little, too late for a reader drawn into a novel through the character and/or story doorways. show less

Slow start in which I kept asking myself why I kept reading about this fairly mundane family in their well-wrought Miami setting until 3/4 of the way through when events take over and the book becomes much more emotional and interesting as placid days turn to confrontations with crime, weather, health.