From the Bookshelf of Crazy Challenge Connection…

Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap, #1)

Adriana Trigiani

Start date: December 1, 2014

Finish date: December 31, 2014

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Aug 02, 2014 Olivermagnus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, fiction, romance

I was searching for a book set in Virginia for a challenge and came across Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, set in the late 1970’s. The main character, Ave Maria Mulligan is a 35 year old self-proclaimed spinster and the local pharmacist in Big Stone Gap, a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Ave Maria gets called over to the local lawyer’s office where she receives a letter from her recently deceased Italian mother. Her mother tells her the secret of how she came to America and who her re ...more

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Jun 11, 2014 Susan rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014, set-in-north-america, historical-fiction, character-book, cultural-usa

I had a difficult time choosing how to rate this one and an uneasy time writing the review. I think, for me, it might be closer to 2.5 stars but I am giving it the benefit of the doubt.

This is a character-driven book so for me it is important to like the characters and their development through the course of the story. Unfortunately, for me, I liked the main character less over the course of the novel. At the start of the book, I really like the protagonist, Ave Maria. She seemed like a thoughtf I had a difficult time choosing how to rate this one and an uneasy time writing the review. I think, for me, it might be closer to 2.5 stars but I am giving it the benefit of the doubt.

This is a character-driven book so for me it is important to like the characters and their development through the course of the story. Unfortunately, for me, I liked the main character less over the course of the novel. At the start of the book, I really like the protagonist, Ave Maria. She seemed like a thoughtful, and thinking, person who knew her own mind, had good, supportive friends, generally cared about herself and others. She then makes a discovery about herself that changes who she is, for the worse. Through the rest of the book she devolves from a woman who knows her own mind and own self to one who becomes a 'like me! like me! I'll let you treat me badly and love you if only you will like me!' person, all the while claiming that the opposite course of personality 'development' was happening. It was frustrating.

I also found that while the book started well, plot-wise (and it is a character- rather than plot-driven novel), there was this slump about 2/3 in, where nothing happened except Ave Maria taking some bizarre behaviours and running like a puppy with her tail wagging in the hopes she would be chosen/hoping to be not chosen by the men in her life. I think this 'conflict' was supposed to indicate Ave Maria's growth and add suspense to the plot but it did neither - quite the opposite in fact. Then, the last 1/3 (or less) of the book had the rest of the plot from the first third crammed into it as if the author was told 'it's getting too long' so, instead of editing the previous section, she stuffed all of the rest into as small a number of pages as she could.

Overall, I really do not know how to rate/review this book. I really wanted to like Ave Maria, and for the most part I did. I enjoyed the setting, the descriptions of the surroundings and people, the supporting characters' characters, but the book just seemed to go in the wrong direction for me. ...more

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