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Chargement... A Handful of Pearlspar Mary Ann Noe
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing. I was unable to read this e-book as the font was too tiny to read and I could not enlarge it for some reason on my kindle.Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing. The plotting was decent, and the ability to mirror different time periods was there. It was a good read. But it was a very light read.The issue was that in trying to fit in the life stories of two women, we didn't get much of either of their stories. And neither character really was developed. They each started off with great friends, and the friends just sort of..disappeared. We never really understood why Betty handled things as she did, and Reggie was just an unsympathetic character for most of the book. The end where everything tied back together was a little abrupt and simplistic. Again, I'd call it a decent read. I finished it. But it lacked the emotional impact I was expecting. Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing. A gentle interesting read where I was expecting a big blow up between the main characters of mother and daughter which didn’t happen, the tensions in their relationship were handled in a different way which of course is a true reflection of life and real relationships. Easy to read, I felt the characters were well developed, and were balanced about by the men in their lives. Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing. Disclaimer: An electronic copy of this book was provided in exchange for review by publishers Black Rose Writing, via Library Thing.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ It’s a grand old tradition in fiction to place some of your characters at odds with one another, and to make the arc of the piece lead to a resolution of those differences, one way or another. And while it’s relatively easy to establish one character as The Good Guy and the other as The Bad Guy, it’s a bit trickier to create a pair of Good Guys (or, in this case, Good Women) who are both essentially sympathetic characters but who, for whatever reason, often seem to find themselves at cross-purposes. That’s the task Mary Ann Noe has set out for herself in ‘A Handful of Pearls’, and unfortunately, it’s a task which remains largely unaccomplished. The novel is told from two viewpoints – that of Betty Quinn and of her daughter, Regina (or Reggie, as she prefers to be called), with narration bouncing back and forth between the two and spanning better than 60 years of Betty’s life. Reggie begins chiming in as a college student, and it’s obvious that each woman, in her own way and under the strictures of her own era, will be traveling down similar paths as they find romance, build a family, and meet challenges. The problem here is that Reggie comes off as self-centered, whiny, and incredibly hostile to her mother, whom she sees as “stone-faced” and emotionally distant. She never misses an opportunity to complain – to her college chums, to the man she ultimately marries, and to herself if no other audience is available – about how her cold, unfeeling mother doesn’t love her, has never loved her, and has basically ignored and emotionally abused the father she dotes on. The reader, meanwhile, is getting frequent reports from Betty’s viewpoint, which hardly seem to substantiate Reggie’s hostility. At about the point when the reader is tempted to give up on the whole thing, there’s a fragile reconciliation beginning with Reggie’s engagement, but the relationship continues on uncertain ground as the daughter continues to be unable fully to forgive Betty’s alleged parental war crimes. Eventually, Reggie faces a major emotional trauma, and Betty decides to break 50 years’ worth of suffering in silence, via a journal that will explicitly demonstrate that Reggie doesn’t really know everything about her parents’ marriage, and that perhaps the rocky road she is facing has already been walked by the woman who gave her life. It’s not a bad novel, overall, but it’s not particularly deep, either. Because of the long span of time covered, there are decades in which neither narrator is heard from. Major life milestones pop up, are dispatched in a chapter or two, and it’s on to the next turning point. Young love? Check. Heartbreak? Check. Temptation? Check. Motherhood? Check. Mortality? Check. This skin-deep exploration and breakneck pacing, combined with readers potential inability to form any emotional connection with the daughter, keep the work from rising above its literary peers in any meaningful way. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Betty, an 84-year-old mother and wife, is finally forced into facing a flaw she dealt with her entire life: her inability to communicate. In the loss of a child, in flirting with affairs, in the midst of a troubled marriage, Betty keeps her own counsel. No one knows her deepest heart, not even her own daughter, Reggie, because such things are not spoken of. As a result, Reggie withdraws further and further from her mother. Watching Reggie fight with issues of her own, edging ever closer to the precipice of a broken life, Betty comes face to face with the necessity of revealing the pearls and daggers of her own life in hopes of helping her daughter. Because she cannot bear to speak of the cracks in her heart, Betty writes a journal chronicling everything she protected. In a moment of monumental risk, she hands off the book to Reggie, hoping for salvation for both of them, and their families. In turn, Betty and Reggie give the journal to Reggie's daughter with the admonition to remember the story. Spanning three generations, A Handful of Pearls is the story of love and family, loss and hope. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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This was a good and easy read. The two different points of view and time lines were quite easy to follow and it gives us a good notion of the two main characters and how their lives, even if different, can be so similar at the same time. Almost has if showing us that even though time goes by, things and people keep being and doing the same things.
We never really understood why Betty handled things as she did, which was a bit lacking for me since we don't have a backstory, but we can see some character development at the end.
Speaking of the end, I think it is the perfect way to end, but I was not expecting Reggie to do that so fast. I thought that it would go by for some years or after Betty died. ( )