Helpful Score: 6
This book was funny, insightful, and heartbreaking all at once, told from the point of view of one character as both a child and an adult.
Helpful Score: 5
This was a very interesting and compelling book. The book seemed to start out a little slow, flipping back and forth between the past and the present. At times I felt sorry for the adult Rebecca because she is married to a man that does not love her. When she gets pregnant, Alastair convinces her to get an abortion. After making a family tree, she realizes that her grandmother and grandfather were first cousins. Her father and aunt are lovers. While her mother is giving a party at their house, she kills herself in the bathroom. Sometimes a lot of the stuff that happens in the book is hard to keep track of.
Very enjoyable novel. Cultural studies graduate student Rebecca switches between narration on her crumbing marriage to a geneticist and on her family's own troubled history. For once, I thought the use of footnotes in a novel was not overly precious, as the narrator uses them to interject information on the pop culture topics she studies.
Helpful Score: 2
This book is a funny/sad commentary on a family that we can all relate to!
Helpful Score: 1
Excellent book.
not a great read.
I really liked this book! I read an advanced reader's copy. I hope the author didn't change much in the final product, because it was very good. Carole goes back and forth in time as she deals with one family. She does a very good job at keeping the reader from getting confused. Sometimes, I can't read books that flip around because the author is not deft enough to pull it off. The characters are very interesting and I couldn't put it down at the end, staying up an hour past my bedtime to do so. The only complaint I have is what seems to be the style these days: The chapters get shorter and shorter at the end until they are only a series of one pagers. I don't care for that style. Otherwise, a very insightful, thoughtful, interesting book!
On the day that Lady Diana married Prince Charles Rebecca's mother locked herself in the bathroom and never came out. According to Rebecca's scientist husband, our genes control our fate, but Rebecca isn't sure. Leaving everything to science allow little room in our
lives for the events that shape our lives.
What truly makes us who we are??
lives for the events that shape our lives.
What truly makes us who we are??
This is a funny book about a family that is a bit odd to say the least. For example, on the day that Lady Diana married Prince Charles, one of them characters locked herself in her bedroom and never came out.
