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What Members Thought
First off, I find a long novel about intellectual, snobby people staring at their toes, thinking that they are navel gazing, immensely satisfying. I felt regret when the novel ended as I had been page-turning for days, and had happily been immersed in Wolitzer's world.
So yeah, but these people are awful. Or not awful per se, but not fully enough developed for me to feel like I could do anything but judge them.
Of course most of the character's development is secondary to the narrator's, Jules.
Pr ...more
So yeah, but these people are awful. Or not awful per se, but not fully enough developed for me to feel like I could do anything but judge them.
Of course most of the character's development is secondary to the narrator's, Jules.
Pr ...more
3.5 stars, maybe closer to 4... I don't know. I WANTED to love it. I loved the writing, but I just spent the whole book wishing Jules would just GET OVER IT already and stop living in the past. I just wanted her to be satisfied with her own life, and I hope I'm not spoiling anything by saying she NEVER IS. It's nearly 500 pages of a middle-aged woman wishing she were 16 again. I suppose that was the point, but to me it was bit torturous.
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What a big-hearted, smart and fulfilling read. Realistic fiction has been letting me down these days, but this is seamless, generous and real in a way that isn't pretentious or precious. Wolitzer delves into the lives of a group who meet at high school at an exclusive summer camp. That she chooses to make the two more plain/homely characters the leads is also a relief--there are plenty of pretty people here, to be sure, but the world is more complex than many books and films lead us to believe a
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Reading this book wasn't wholly unenjoyable, but I spent a lot of time waiting for someone to call the primary narrator out for her incredibly shallow point of view. And even when it seemed like there was a turning point, nothing really changed. Thankfully there were brief moments of narration from other characters, but I'm unsure why that wasn't extended to more of the group.
I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading this book, but it fell short of what I'd hoped it was. ...more
I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading this book, but it fell short of what I'd hoped it was. ...more
Three and a half. I enjoyed it, even though in short it's a novel about privileged people worrying about their privileged New York City lives. On the back of the paperback, the NY Times book review compares it to The Marriage Plot by Eugenides, & in my opinion this book far surpasses that one. This, at least, is just a novel about people, and not a pretentious effort to be anything more. I liked some of the characters & enjoyed following them across the years from 1974 to near present day. Not s
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3.5 stars rounded up. I agree with so many of the reviews here - the negative and the positive. Yes, this book is extremely long and not a lot happens and some of the assessments about characters are mean and repetitive. Yes, this is an ambitious and sweeping narrative of a group of friends who meet as teenagers at an arts camp in the 1970s and grow into middle age. And yes, as my copy says on the cover, this belongs among the ranks of books by Franzen and Eugenides - which is not 100% a good th
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It's a sad story, actually.
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Dec 03, 2013
Lidia K
marked it as to-read
Dec 22, 2013
Lisa
marked it as to-read
Jan 15, 2014
Jill
marked it as to-read
Aug 20, 2014
Megan
marked it as to-read
