Julie's review of Song Of The Sparrow
Song Of The Sparrow by Lisa Ann Sandell (Goodreads author!)
The first thing one notices about Ms. Sandell's re-imagining of the Lady of Shalott tale is her use of free verse. When it works, it works wonderfully, most notably in cases where our heroine's thoughts are inconsistent with her speech. For the most part, however, the reader is left to scrutinize and speculate why the author chose to put a line break at this point in the phrase rather than elsewhere. If you're like me, it takes much longer to finish a page when you're questioning the author's punctuation motives.
Throughout the book Ms. Sandell drops hints, details that ostensibly would be picked up and added to the typical Shalott story. One instance where it doesn't quite work is in Elaine's memories of her childhood home. She remembers oak trees and her mother's loom quite fondly. This seems to be an allusion to the all-important loom in Tennyson's poem, but how it would have been picked up by that world's mythmakers is beyond me.
Minutiae aside, Elaine is a lovel...more
Throughout the book Ms. Sandell drops hints, details that ostensibly would be picked up and added to the typical Shalott story. One instance where it doesn't quite work is in Elaine's memories of her childhood home. She remembers oak trees and her mother's loom quite fondly. This seems to be an allusion to the all-important loom in Tennyson's poem, but how it would have been picked up by that world's mythmakers is beyond me.
Minutiae aside, Elaine is a lovel...more
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