Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap, Book 1)

Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap #1)

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3.84 of 5 stars 3.84  ·  rating details  ·  17,549 ratings  ·  1,393 reviews

It's 1978, and Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She's also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the town's long-running Outdoor Drama. Ave Maria is content with her life of doing errands a

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Hardcover, First Edition, 272 pages
Published April 4th 2000 by Random House (first published January 1st 2000)
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Mara
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Caroline
Jan 21, 2008 Caroline rated it 5 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to Caroline by: Mom
Shelves: appalachia, fiction
If you haven't read and of Adriana Trigiani's books, you MUST put them on your list and then make it a priority to read this entertaining series. Although, not imperative to following the plot, I suggest reading them in order, starting with this one. The simple ups and downs of a woman living in a small Virginia town are delivered with charm and poignancy and I found her writing addictive. I loved the characters and the setting.
Snap
I really enjoyed Big Stone Gap and was delighted to learn that this is the first in the series of novels featuring the folks of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. It is a feel good novel with a strong southern story line that includes Chinese face reading and a bookmobile! (Remember the bookmobile?) Family secrets, generous hearts, self-discovery. A sit back and relax with a glass of ice tea book ... Perfect summer read.
B
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Marleen
This is the second time I read Big Ston Gap and I remember why I enjoyed it so much the first time around. The funny thing is that I have evolved in these past years and I have enjoyed this book for different reasons. I like and I don't like Ave Maria because she's too hard on herself and sometimes even, contrary to what the book pretends, on others. I understand protecting yourself out of self preservation, but in my mind Ave Maria acts more out of ignorance. She's so naive at times! Luckily Av...more
Stina
I am so sick of female characters who are confused with their lives and themselves and have to stomp off when someone is trying to tell them something. I think miscommunication is a weak plot point and this book would have been better if the author had the balls to give the main character some balls as well.
Jenny
This was a great book. I read so many young adult books and it was a nice change to read about an adult. The characters were great and I loved the town. I felt like a fly on the wall. I can't wait to read the next one. It's already on hold from the library.
Amy
I found this book just perfect for light reading without the forced high drama that sometimes authors feel they need to interject. The story was perfect without some mangled twist. While it did contain an character twist, it was a reasonable one without giving away the whole story. I was kept guessing at the ending for almost the entire book. Each time I felt I knew how things would turn out Ms. Trigiani would plant that seed of doubt.

I was interested enough to pass it along and go check out a...more
Mary Ronan Drew
When I was in college I drove to school every day in my 1955 Buick Dynaflow. These trips were almost entirely uneventful. But one morning when it had snowed heavily overnight I slid into a snowbank on Main Street in front of the Braleys' house. Arthur came out and helped shovel me out and I was on my way. No big deal. But when I got home that evening, my mother was waiting at the door to see if I'd been hurt or if there had been any damage to the car. How did she know it had happened? Six or eig...more
Hilary G
Another ex-bookworm group review:

Since I chose this book it will come as no surprise to anyone that I like it. I like it a lot. Yet, at first glance, it doesn't seem my sort of book at all. Had someone outlined the plot, I might have rolled my eyes heavenwards and thought to myself "Mills and Boon" or, since it is set in a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains, "Mills and Boondocks"! But I would have missed a delightful experience had I not read it. I think Ms Trigiani's strongest talent is...more
Melinda
This was an agreeable read. I loved the small-town feel of Big Stone Gap, Virginia and the simplicity of each of its eclectic residents. Ave Maria Mulligan's description and lifestyle fit her perfectly; working overtime as the town's pharmacist, rescue squad volunteer and community play director. Unmarried at 35, an only child and having lost both of her parents, it made perfect sense for her to be so set in her ways, completely independent and resolute that she had missed her opportunity to fin...more
Erica
If I had to guess, I'd say Ave Maria is Adriana Trigiani's unique heroine. She's Italian, like the rest, but lives in the Appalachians. She owned, then sold and worked at, a drugstore. She was the town spinster and enjoyed small-town life. She had issues with her mother, recently deceased, who had never been happy; she had issues with her father who had never loved her. She had issues with her father's sister who was all bitter than Ave Maria got the family house and the drugstore after her pare...more
Kathleen Hagen
Big Stone, by Adriana Trigiani, narrated by Adriana Trigiani, produced by Random House Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

Ave Maria Mulligan lived in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Big Stone, Virginia. She had just lost her mother and had inherited a pharmacy business. She became a pharmacist and ran the store. She also inherited her mother’s house. She also got from her lawyer a copy of a letter which her mother left for her to read after her mother’s death. This letter indicated tha...more
Karen maslen
In the town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, not much happens. The highlight of 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan's week comes on Friday, with the arrival of the Bookmobile, the sight of which sends her into raptures. Her favorite book concerns the ancient Chinese art of reading faces. Through her face-readings, we come to understand the hostilities simmering within her family: her father whose small eyes are the clear "sign of a deceptive nature." Her aunt who "has a small head and thin lips. (That's a...more
Sarah
This is the book that started my mom's & my love for Adriana Trigiani. I decided to reread the whole Big Stone Gap series in anticipation of the new installment, Home to Big Stone Gap. Rereading a book I got ten years ago was really fun. Generally I don't reread books because there are too many new books out there for me to read, but maybe I'll have to try it more often.
Big Stone Gap is the story of 35-year-old town spinster Ave Maria Mulligan. The story is set in the small Blue Ridge Mounta...more
Debbie Evancic
Ave Maria Mulligan is a 35 year old pharmacist, who recently lost her mother. She had previously lost her step father and she had no siblings. She loves to read and spends most of her time running her pharmacy, running the yearly drama show, being on the Emergency Squad, and keeping up with her household. Life starts to change for her when she discovers letters in her mother's closet from her relatives and Ave Maria realizes her father is still alive. Ave Maria also discovers that someone she ha...more
LindyLouMac
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7...

I was recently given three titles in the Big Stone Gap series, this being the first I have just finished reading it. It was so unmemorable that I did not realise that I had actually read it for the first time just over two years ago! I had felt that some of the scenes seemed familiar and had just assumed the same themes had been used elsewhere.
The story was rather slow at first and I wondered if I was going to enjoy the series? Nothing much happens in the...more
Kasey
This is a sweet book about life in a small mining town in the Appalachian Mountains. I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't an exciting or adventurous book, but I enjoyed it all the same. Here are two of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible things, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's nt very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father hold...more
Suzanne
Adriana Trigiani really knows how to tell a story!

The place, a mining town in southwestern Virginia. The era, mid-1970s. Who, Ave Marie, the self-declared town spinster. Trigiani weaves a complicated tale of Ave, and her quest to find out the truth about her self.

The story begins with Ave, the town pharmacist and general do-gooder, heading up the town's theatrical productions, serving on the rescue team, and generally helping just about everyone in town with their challenges and crisis. Ave re...more
Laurel-Rain
It's the seventies in a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. A thirty-five year old single woman has decided that she is the spinster of Big Stone Gap. She is completely independent; she is the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of the town's long-running Outdoor Drama.

So secure is Ave Maria Mulligan in her position in life and in this community that she will go into a tailspin when things seem to change. These changes begin with a long-burie...more
Barb Terpstra
I truly enjoyed this book. I loved Ava Maria (what a name!), and all the characters in Stone Gap. I loved the descriptions of the small mountain community and the way it brought back memories of my visits to Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. Ava Maria begins the book with this thought: This will be a good weekend for reading, I picked up a dozen of Vernie Crabtree's killer chocolate chip cookies . . . those, a pot of coffee, and a good book are all I will need for the rainy weekend rolling...more
Laura
This was a very light fun book to read. The story is set in the 70's in a very rural mountain town in Virginia. If there was a list called: "Books set in small quirky towns," I would add this book to it. The cast of characters includes all the quirky lovable types that you would expect in a book like this. The story follows Ave Maria, a single Italian-American woman, as she turns 35 and the following year in her life. I found her character to be very likable and could easily relate to her. The d...more
Michelle
I'm really not sure where I stand on this book. Had I read it instead of listened to it, I might feel a little different because the narrator did start to get on my nerves a little toward the end.

As did the main character. I started out really liking her, but then I wanted to smack her. So she's single and thirty-five (can I relate or what?). And I get all her nerves about men and such, but then she gets two proposals (spoiler alert? not really). When she tells them both no, I was a little bugge...more
Marca
Not sure what to think of this novel. I originally checked it out thinking it was a mystery, but it was a novel in the vein of Fanny Flagg, which I do enjoy. I listened to it on audio and unless you are David Sedaris, Sara Vowell, or an otherwise well-known personality associated with a voice, you should not read your own audio books. The author’s reading was a distraction and not a good one. The main character of Ave Maria Mulligan, the thirty-five year old town pharmacist (and town spinster),...more
Sandy
Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the tiny town of Big Stone Gap is home to some of the most charming eccentrics in the state. Ave Maria Mulligan is the town's self-proclaimed spinster, a thirty-five year old pharmacist with a "mountain girl's body and a flat behind." She lives an amiable life with good friends and lots of hobbies until the fateful day in 1978 when she suddenly discovers that she's not who she always thought she was. Before she can blink, Ave's fielding marriage p...more
Lorna
I saw this book on the shelves at the Villa I am staying at and seeing it was by Adriana Trigiani ad to read it despite having lugged 8 other carefully curated 8 books the 4000 miles to get here!

I love Trigiani's writing and this book was not a disappointment. I am sure that some people may get bored that all of her books are about Italian women living in small towns in America with exceptional detail to matters of fashion and clothing construction but these are clearly Trigani's areas of expert...more
Alli Elggren
Love this series! The characters in this first book are so wonderfully quirky and flawed, yet still lovable. The main character Ave Maria is age 35, single and Italian. I'd like her as a friend and I found myself cheering for her as she struggles to come to terms with herself, her family and her heritage as she falls in love.

*First read in 2003. Reading again for Book Club: March, 2010.
Nancy
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Ali
I liked this little book. It belongs on the "charmer" shelf. I don't relate to the commenters who have suggested the romance comes out of nowhere--I knew from the first moment Ave saw him in his underwear that Jack was the romantic lead, and I thought Trigiani did a nice job of making me cheer for him over Theodore. In fact, she did a nice job of showing those painful moments when Jack is hoping but our heroine is ignorant.

However, I also notice that now, when I've finished reading it and am loo...more
Michael
A good choice if you want to escape into a small town in the Appalachian part Virginia with some colorful, gossipy characters and want a few laughs. Ave Maria is in her mid-30s and is worried about becoming an old maid, so gets serious about acquiring a love life. I appreciated some of the details of her life as a pharmacist, town theater producer, emergency response team member, and all around do gooder. Her lusty friend who runs a bookmobile, Iva Lou, advises her on romance strategies:
“There a...more
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Anyone interested in reading this series with me? 5 32 May 03, 2013 09:32am  
Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap, #1)
Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap, Book 1)
Big Stone Gap (ebook)
Big Stone Gap
Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap, #1)

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ADRIANA TRIGIANI is beloved by millions of readers around the world for her hilarious and heartwarming novels. Adriana was raised in a small coal mining town in southwest Virginia in a big Italian family. She chose her hometown for the setting and title of her debut novel, the critically acclaimed and bestselling BIG STONE GAP, followed by the sequels BIG CHERRY HOLLER and MILK GLASS MOON. Since 1...more
More about Adriana Trigiani...
The Shoemaker's Wife Lucia, Lucia Big Cherry Holler (Big Stone Gap, #2) Very Valentine Milk Glass Moon (Big Stone Gap, #3)

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“...I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - allof those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us...” 119 people liked it
“The terrible things that happen to us in life never make any sense when we're in the middle of them, floundering, no end in sight. There is no rope to hang on to, it seems. Mothers can soothe children during those times, through their reassurance. No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe, things that happen unwieldy. You cannot turn to her anymore, and it changes your life forever. There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you'd had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childgood goes with her. Memories are very different and cannot soothe you the same way her touch did.” 50 people liked it
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