She Was: A Novel
by Janis Hallowell
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Read in June, 2008
Summary:
This book has been an interesting read as it incorporates the seventies history era with today’s. The setting takes place in major cities around the United States and follows the life of a former radical group member, Lucy Johansson. As the war in Vietnam is going on, Lucy joins a radical group and plants a bomb in a New York university hoping to bring attention to their views against the war. Unfortunately, plans go wrong and the bomb Lucy plants ends up killing a person and she mus...more
This book has been an interesting read as it incorporates the seventies history era with today’s. The setting takes place in major cities around the United States and follows the life of a former radical group member, Lucy Johansson. As the war in Vietnam is going on, Lucy joins a radical group and plants a bomb in a New York university hoping to bring attention to their views against the war. Unfortunately, plans go wrong and the bomb Lucy plants ends up killing a person and she mus...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
all readers....
SHE WAS
Hallowell is a deft craftswoman, and her novel, an absolutely must read, is a masterful braiding of two counterpoint stories: Doreen the passionate anti-Vietnam war Weather Underground activist who plants a bomb that inadvertently kills a man, and her brother Adam, who serves in that war only to prove to their father that he’s not a coward—neither realizing that their choice will have unintended repercussions which will dictate the shape of their lives.
Vietnam wasn’t the fro...more
Hallowell is a deft craftswoman, and her novel, an absolutely must read, is a masterful braiding of two counterpoint stories: Doreen the passionate anti-Vietnam war Weather Underground activist who plants a bomb that inadvertently kills a man, and her brother Adam, who serves in that war only to prove to their father that he’s not a coward—neither realizing that their choice will have unintended repercussions which will dictate the shape of their lives.
Vietnam wasn’t the fro...more
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Read in May, 2008
Janis Hallowell's amazing novel SHE WAS lifted off for me in the first few lines, and soared the deeper I got into it. It takes its charge from a young woman's bombing of an ROTC building to protest the war in Vietnam, but it's a novel very relevant to today's political climate. It draws parallels between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, but its real resonance is in the emotional devastation wreaked on the characters. Doreen Woods--an activist turned mother and dentist, her husband Miles, and their...more
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"She Was" is a wonderful new novel by Janis Hallowell, the author of "The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn". Set in 2005, it is the story of a secret that has been tightly held for 34 years by Doreen Woods, the main character. Suddenly, as it breaks through the surface of her happy and orderly life, we see the many and painful consequences of one horribly wrong decision made by a young woman caught up in the swirl of the anti-war movement in the United States during the 19...more
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Read in April, 2008
A writer of extraordinary range, Janis Hallowell has followed up her lovely and mystical first novel – The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn – with She Was, a tale of personal politics that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. Doreen Woods leads the most apolitical life imaginable on a quiet street in Denver. She’s married to the gentlest husband imaginable, has a perfectly nice son, and is a DENTIST, of all things. But it is a fabricated life, and the week in which Doreen’s carefu...more
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Read in May, 2008
This book by Colorado author Hallowell (who also wrote The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn) is perfectly at home in today's political climate with it's under-tones of "recreate '68". It centers on Doreen Woods, Denver dentist and mother. She does charitable work, she takes care of her brother (a Vietnam vet in the last stages of MS), worries about her son who has recently graduated from high school, and loves her husband of 20some years. But Dorrie has a secret that is about to blow...more
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Read in May, 2008
Hallowell follows up on The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn with another novel that throws quotidian family life together with big, over-arching American political themes. She Was follows a 1970s radical who reinvents herself as a wife, mother, and dentist, only to be "outed" three decades after she dropped out of the movement. Although some of the historical sections, in which we see the heroine enmeshed in the politics of the 60s, felt more studied than instinctive, but ...more
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B At times, I couldn't wait to get to the end of this novel, but other times, I was feeling more eh. There are three stories: young Lucy who is becoming engaged with a radical movement of the sixties, who ultimately plots a bomb that kills someone; Lucy as Doreen who has lived for years in hiding, forgetting her past, as a dentist, wife, and mother; and Lucy/Doreen's brother's Adam's recollections of his horrendous time in Viet Nam while he suffers with MS. Interesting plotlines, though at times...more
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Read in April, 2008
Doreen Woods is a middle class successful dentist, with a decent marriage, a son about to head off to college, and a secret which seems to be catching up with her. One wishes the author had been able to take the story to a deeper level emotionally, but it was still an interesting read.
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Read in May, 2008
Quite good. Reminds me a bit of Jodi Picoult, a bit of Alice Hoffman, a bit of...maybe Anna Quindlan. Can't wait to read her first book. (And maybe interview her? She's in Denver!)
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Loved it. Such a timely story. Enjoyed meeting the author at my bookclub.
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