Eliza Minot

In the Orchard by Eliza Minot is a recommended internal monologue of a young mother and wife over the course of one day. Maisie Moore reflects on motherhood when up late at night nursing her newborn and then during a family outing to an apple orchard. This one is for poets and those who love language, especially mothers. Those interested in a plot might want to give it a pass.

Admittedly, I had several passages that I saved for the meticulously, masterfully crafted writing or the profound insight conveyed, but there are also many, many more excessively descriptive passages that felt over-the-top. If you are a mother, you will understand and even sympathize with Maisie. However, you might grow weary of the repetition in her contemplation of motherhood, nursing, other mothers, and the Moore's inexplicable crushing debt. Readers may find themselves talking back to some of Maisie's inner dialogue. Many young families are careful and follow a strict budget rather than spending beyond their means. 3 stars for the passages I highlighted.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday via Edelweiss.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2023/04/in-orchard.html… (plus d'informations)

3 grownup children — different issues — ties together — loosely with info at end?

This is the story of the Bramble family Margaret, Max, and Edie three adult siblings careening through wildly different byways of adult life. Margaret, mother of three, drowning in a sea of runny noses and lost mittens, is a nurturer with a sense of humor, a witty woman at wits end, about to take her ailing father into the tumult and chaos of her already overcrowded home. Edie, her younger sister, is a barely recognizable version of Margaret' s former self young, single, clicking smartly down city streets in good shoes, but struggling mightily beyond her sister's vision to anchor her desultory, and intensely solitary, life. Max, newly married, newly a father, is buckling under the weight of new responsibilities. Over the course of one critical season, a long hidden secret will be revealed, remaking each of them, and all they thought they knew about one another and about themselves.… (plus d'informations)

The writing was overly descriptive and too wordy for my taste, but I did like the characters and wanted to trudge through the book in order to find out what happened to them. The ending was stupid, though. Not sure why the story couldn't just have been about the Bramble family coming to grips with the fact that Gramps is dying of cancer, instead of also throwing in the part about the "family secret." The latter was revealed too close to the end of the book to be a real part of the story, and seemed very contrived.

Side note: Margaret's kids are either exceptionally brilliant, or written to be too mature for their stated ages of 6, 5 and 3.… (plus d'informations)