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Marissa is expecting her first child and fixated on securing the same cradle she was once rocke... read full description
Marissa is expecting her first child and fixated on securing the same cradle she was once rocke... read full description
reviews
Mar 31, 2009
Mike
rated it: 
This slim novel, from the many effusive reviews' distilled plot summary and on through each station of the plot's serendipitous collisions, teetered precariously on the brink of the mawkish, the whimsical, the high-concept. I pictured a certain kind of Sundance film, until I got a few pages in, and then suddenly I was done, engrossed, entranced, delighted.
At every step Somerville gracefully floats above the big-booted possibilities to produce something far lighter on its feet. Part More...
At every step Somerville gracefully floats above the big-booted possibilities to produce something far lighter on its feet. Part More...
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Dec 30, 2010
Emily
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At the annual Wisconsin Library Association conference this year, I was lucky enough to sit in on a panel discussing some of 2010's best books. One of the books mentioned was Somerville's, "The Cradle." Clocking in at a mere 200 pages, it can be read in a couple of sittings--which is easy to do when a book is as descriptive and flows as well as this one does.
The story centers on Matthew Bishop and his wife Marissa who are looking to recover an antique cradle Marissa slept More...
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Apr 20, 2009
Mike
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I'm not giving this book five stars because Patrick Somerville gave us (Barrelhouse) a story or because he seems like a genuinely decent human being whose success I'd be more than happy to help along in my tiny, tiny way. I was prepared to give it five stars for those reasons, but then the book turned out to be amazingly good. It's not flashy, the prose is deceptively simple, there are no tricks. Well, okay, there's one trick, but it's not even a trick, really, just an interesting temporal/struc
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Sep 05, 2011
Kathy (Bermudaonion)
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**Warning: May contain spoilers.**
It’s 1997 and Matt and Marissa are a young married couple expecting their first baby in a month or so. Marissa’s mother left her family when Marissa was 15 and Matt is an orphan. When Marissa is 8 months pregnant she decides the baby must have the cradle she slept in as a child and wants Matt to get it for her. The problem is that Marissa’s mother took the cradle with her when she left. The only lead Matt has is an address for Marissa’s aunt (her More...
It’s 1997 and Matt and Marissa are a young married couple expecting their first baby in a month or so. Marissa’s mother left her family when Marissa was 15 and Matt is an orphan. When Marissa is 8 months pregnant she decides the baby must have the cradle she slept in as a child and wants Matt to get it for her. The problem is that Marissa’s mother took the cradle with her when she left. The only lead Matt has is an address for Marissa’s aunt (her More...
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Apr 19, 2009
Noah
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A slim book in terms of length and depth. Too many coincidences and deliberately quirky characters. Avoids some of the deeper emotions to which it alludes. Reads like a literary version of a weepy movie-of-the-week. A kernel of the real exists here, but it's swamped by sentimentality.
Jan 10, 2012
Jennifer
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From My Blog...[return][return]Family is the central theme in Patrick Somerville's debut novel The Cradle, which consists of two differing stories told ten years apart. The reader is first introduced to Matt and Marissa, who are expecting their first child and Marissa, eight months pregnant, is insistent that Matt find the Civil War cradle that mysteriously was stolen from her home when she was 15, the day after her mother walked out on her family. Somerville then propels the reader ahead ten ye
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May 19, 2010
Jennifer
rated it:
From My Blog...
Family is the central theme in Patrick Somerville's debut novel The Cradle, which consists of two differing stories told ten years apart. The reader is first introduced to Matt and Marissa, who are expecting their first child and Marissa, eight months pregnant, is insistent that Matt find the Civil War cradle that mysteriously was stolen from her home when she was 15, the day after her mother walked out on her family. Somerville then propels the reader ahead ten years More...
Family is the central theme in Patrick Somerville's debut novel The Cradle, which consists of two differing stories told ten years apart. The reader is first introduced to Matt and Marissa, who are expecting their first child and Marissa, eight months pregnant, is insistent that Matt find the Civil War cradle that mysteriously was stolen from her home when she was 15, the day after her mother walked out on her family. Somerville then propels the reader ahead ten years More...
Feb 14, 2010
William
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One of the first signs of the felicitous writing in this short novel is the graceful switch between voices in the first two chapters, from Matt, a man in his twenties who is about to become a father and who is charged by his wife, Marissa, with a mysterious task; to Renee, a woman in her fifties who has a secret. From there the novel takes Matt on a classic American road trip, but with a difference -- this picaresque journey has a serious purpose, in the noble tradition of the Grail quest. More...
Oct 11, 2009
Mocha Girl
rated it:
With only about 200 pages in its entirety, The Cradle has a rather immediate opening with Matt's very pregnant wife, Marissa, insisting he find her long-lost antique cradle from childhood. We quickly discover, via a series of flashbacks, that both Matt and Marissa have unresolved issues from their youth, stemming from Matt's adoption and foster care experiences and Marissa's mother's unexplained abandonment. In the first of many "coincidences," Marissa's father recalls the last known a
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Sep 25, 2009
Christie
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I knew going into the book that the request was a bit out there, but it wasn't until toward the end of the book that I understood Marissa (not her motivations so much, the narrations *tells* us what her motivation is, more what it was about her personality and the nature of Matt and Marissa's relationship) that I believed that Matt would go on a wild goose chase for this cradle. I think it would have helped if readers were eased into the narrative before she made her request. Instead she asks he
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Jul 22, 2009
Book
rated it:
THIS BOOK IS GREAT! DON'T BE FOOLED BY IT'S HORRIBLY BORING COVER! This book is nothing like a the Hallmark card cover art that adorns it, bringing up feelings of bad made-for-TV movies with or without Tracy Gold in them. This book is pretty fantastic. It's an inisghtful, epic journey rolled unbelievably sparsely into two hundred pages. Whimsical, meaningful, sentimental - this is one of the best books I've read this year. With one of the lamest covers.
-Brandon
-Brandon
Apr 23, 2009
Meave
rated it:
The review I read of this novel (NY Times?) and the actual book's inside flap made it sound wondrous and miraculous and close to transcendent. It is. Certainly it's not perfect, but the amount of story compacted into however few pages there are comes close. Vendela Vida does a lot in a shorter format too, but much starker and more depressing. In The Cradle, every strange discovery leads to another, even stranger discovery, and the best part is that the entire chain of events seems so believable.
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Apr 13, 2009
Diane
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In Patrick Somerville's debut novel: The Cradle, two stories are woven together -- both stories are about family histories.
In the first story we meet Marissa and Mark. Marrissa is very pregnant with the couple's first child. She becomes obsessed with locating an antique Civil War cradle that her mother took with her when she abandoned the family many years earlier. Matt, wanting to please his wife, as this cradle seems so important to her, sets out on a mission to find it. Along the More...
In the first story we meet Marissa and Mark. Marrissa is very pregnant with the couple's first child. She becomes obsessed with locating an antique Civil War cradle that her mother took with her when she abandoned the family many years earlier. Matt, wanting to please his wife, as this cradle seems so important to her, sets out on a mission to find it. Along the More...
Apr 18, 2009
Cari
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This book was quite short, for all that was packed into it. I frequently found myself thinking of it as a fable. The two main characters are very clearly drawn, but in pencil - no extra colors or shapes or irritating background scenes, just their "beings," if that makes any sense at all. Their histories are told in short bursts that focus only on the critical memories that have shaped who they are. As someone who frequently wonders why I don't remember more than I do and why I reme
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Dec 11, 2009
Ralph
rated it:
"What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin." ~Henry Ward Beecher
I originally picked this book up because it was in a Barnes & Noble Discover recommendation. I enjoy reading books from this seasonal pamphlet of first-time writers for a number of reasons:
- I really want to support first-time writers and if I like the book I like to follow their writing career.
- I am always looking for books that are outside of the realm of bo More...
I originally picked this book up because it was in a Barnes & Noble Discover recommendation. I enjoy reading books from this seasonal pamphlet of first-time writers for a number of reasons:
- I really want to support first-time writers and if I like the book I like to follow their writing career.
- I am always looking for books that are outside of the realm of bo More...
Jan 28, 2011
Diane
rated it:
This was a rather unusual book, chosen by one of the women in our book club. It took me longer than I thought it would to finish it, distracted with life happening around me, but an indication that I wasn't totally absorbed with it either. I had a little trouble with the sequence of events. There were two interlocking stories going on, in different time points, and it was not always - I should say never - clear when events were playing out and who the people in the book were. I wasn't even s
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Aug 15, 2010
Todd
rated it:
Really enjoyed this book for various reasons. The Upper Midwest setting not only was familiar to me, but the author nailed the attitudes and speech patterns of the area. Most of all, I appreciated the protagonist. Matt could have been portrayed as a person whose difficult childhood made him a mess as an adult, but instead, apart from a moment or two, he had a full, competent grasp on life. I also liked seeing a young, lower-middle class family portrayed, a socio-economic group that is woeful
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Nov 02, 2009
Lori
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Hardcover 208 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: March 9, 2009
Beautifully written! Read it, then pass it to your significant other.
In the spirit of Somerville's novel and the words of Strunk and White, I'll try to "eliminate unnecessary words" in my recommendation. The Cradle is a fantastic, wonderfully written story. It is compelling and unsentimental. Most characters are likeable but when they aren't, you'll enjoy disliking them. He paints a b More...
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: March 9, 2009
Beautifully written! Read it, then pass it to your significant other.
In the spirit of Somerville's novel and the words of Strunk and White, I'll try to "eliminate unnecessary words" in my recommendation. The Cradle is a fantastic, wonderfully written story. It is compelling and unsentimental. Most characters are likeable but when they aren't, you'll enjoy disliking them. He paints a b More...
Jun 01, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
rated it:
Critics uniformly praised Somerville's moving debut about the meaning of family and its power to heal. Somerville's spare but buoyant prose strikes the right emotional balance, expressive without being sentimental, and his fast-moving plot steers steadily between the profound and the whimsical toward a satisfying conclusion without ever veering into melodrama. Despite a few flawsósome awkward narrative shifts, one-dimensional characters, and clich»sóThe Cradle is a finely crafted full-length nov
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Nov 24, 2009
Alcornell
rated it:
Young man with history of multiple abandonments (in of process of being relinquished for adoption.) The story is not "about" adoption, but certainly has that theme at its center. The portrayal of American adoption, all given obliquely in the course of the story's action, is harsh. The somewhat poetic asides in the book were not always successful in my view..they changed the pace of the reading more than I could manage without stumbling...but that may just be me, and is a small thing o
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Apr 20, 2010
Charlotte
rated it:
This book caught my attention when I read daughter-in-law, Jessica's review of it here on Goodreads. Parallel stories are revealed. Matt is on a mission to find a cradle used by his wife when she was a baby and that she desperately wants for their baby to come. The departure of her soldier son, triggers deeo and secret memories for Renae of the loss of her first love to the war in Vietnam. Matt's personal integrity and caring spirit are touchingly revealed during the many encounters he has d
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May 24, 2009
Mike
rated it:
The adult lost boy in Patrick Somerville's marvelous debut, "The Cradle" (Little, Brown, $21.99) starts out beholden to his pregnant wife's obdurate demand that he retrieve a long-lost cradle. On this dubious premise Somerville builds a road narrative that gradually accumulates the mythic echoes and dreamlike inevitability of allegory. Matt's search for the cradle takes on a picaresque nobility; he's like a blue-collar Odysseus, crisscrossing the Midwest in his quest to return home to
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Aug 06, 2011
Haven
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I was captivated by the book jacket, but disappointed once inside. The characters were not well developed at all. There were actually points that I was enthralled with the plot and couldn't put it down. Not familiar at all with the areas where the book took place, however, I felt I could have used a map while reading it. In the end, I discovered a major literary flaw in that he had two plot lines running through the book (confusing as it was) and it wasn't revealed until the end that they we
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Sep 05, 2011
Candice
rated it:
Two stories are interwoven here. The main story is of Matt and Marissa. Marissa is 8 months pregnant and desperately wants to use the cradle she slept in as a baby for her soon to be born child. The only problem is she doesn't know where the cradle is. It was stolen from their home soon after her mother left the family. With just one clue to go on, Matt starts off on a journey to recover the cradle for his wife. The other story is of Renee Owen, an author of children's books, who has a sec
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Apr 01, 2010
Christine
rated it:
This could have been a story about a pregnant woman asking her husband to pick up some furniture. Instead Patrick Somerville wrote about a modern day quest for family. The classic elements of the quest are represented: helping an old woman in return for information. Otherworldly assistance from a troll, or just some guy with half a dozen computers who lives in his mother's attic. Answering a riddle to gain the ultimate prize. What I truly loved was the blending of modern cultural aspects wi
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Sep 19, 2009
Rose
rated it:
Lately I find myself gravitating towards books that are memoirs of a sort or have a profound meaning to them, I know , deep. I guess to keep my mind from spoiling in a way. This particular book was very interesting to read in that it had a few stories intertwined that were all connected. A bit confusing, it jumps forward and back in time without warning, but in the end all the loose ends are tied up, sort of. I loved however that there was a meaning to it all, and with all the twists and turns a
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Mar 23, 2009
Jim
rated it:
"All she was, was words. She was so tired of all that kind of energy. Write that sentence and make sure the sun looks like it looks. Does the person telling it sound enough like a human being or is there too much there?"
No, there's not too much there. Patrick Somerville has crafted a slim, full-hearted tale in the midwestern mode perfected by William Maxwell. He also reminded me of Michael Cunningham. Several times I felt the same quiet melancholy pleasure as when I read Th More...
No, there's not too much there. Patrick Somerville has crafted a slim, full-hearted tale in the midwestern mode perfected by William Maxwell. He also reminded me of Michael Cunningham. Several times I felt the same quiet melancholy pleasure as when I read Th More...
Dec 07, 2009
Nicolemauerman
rated it:
This very short book is about a man who is sent to retrieve a cradle that belonged to his wife's mother. Both the main characters in this novel have been abandoned by their mothers and through the course of the book the characters are made to confront their past. I felt indifferent about this book. I finished the book relatively quickly, so obviously it wasn’t horrible, but I felt that there were a lot of crazy situations and coincidences. The unresolved ending is thought provoking, but I wa
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Aug 26, 2009
Kat
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Here is how to write a good book without too much fuss: a good premise, good, though somewhat serviceable, writing, interesting characters. This slim first novel is and engaging and simple 2-3 hour pleasure. It feels very Midwestern but in a good way: no-nonense people, no fake sentimentality, genuine emotions. The plot device (a quest for a lost cradle) is a teensy bit contrived, but in a good way, as it provides a setting for all these other admirable qualities to emerge. I guess good is the m
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May 23, 2010
Jackie says:
Is this a likely story? No. But it is a very beautiful, very hopeful story. It's about a man who goes in search of a simple piece of his wife's past--the antique cradle she herself was rocked in--that ends up changing the future for many, many people. It's about taking chances, getting second chances, and creating families in the most unlikely of ways. It begins as many stories, but ends as one. The smile you will have on your face as you finish the last page of this book More...
Is this a likely story? No. But it is a very beautiful, very hopeful story. It's about a man who goes in search of a simple piece of his wife's past--the antique cradle she herself was rocked in--that ends up changing the future for many, many people. It's about taking chances, getting second chances, and creating families in the most unlikely of ways. It begins as many stories, but ends as one. The smile you will have on your face as you finish the last page of this book More...
