Did I really like this book? On the whole, not really. Another one where its length works as an advantage, Brother Jacob is not, overall, particularly good. Overall, it's a passable - mostly predictable - parable soup made with a generous helping of Nemesis and a dash of retard. I can't even say I recommend the whole thing.

But. But. There's just this one part that's so damn good - just a few pages, nothing major - about how opening a pastry shop single-handedly caused a slow and steady demoralization of the entire town. No one can capture community psychology like Eliot: the rumors, the imputation, the knowing nods...and getting to experience just a little bit of that again teeters the whole thing just barely into the "like" range. Brother Jacob is mostly a slight and (surprisingly) inoffensive re-telling of the whole "coming back to haunt you" thing that we've seen everywhere. But there's that one totally killer excerpt that would make me feel guilty had I not thrown an extra star at it. The first passage I ever highlighted on a Kindle. Take that, technology!