okiecozyreader's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Woohoo! I started this book a few years ago when it was a Barnes and Noble bookclub selection. I started it on audio once or twice and never finished it before it was due back at the library. This month, it’s the Jen Hatmaker book selection, so I picked it back up. She read it last summer in Maine; and that is the perfect setting for this book. It’s a longer one and a family saga, that takes place on several places, one being the family’s private island in Crockett’s Island, off the Maine coast. 1935-
This book tells the story of multiple generations (thank goodness for the family tree at the beginning). One of the hardest parts of the book was keeping everyone straight. I would have it figured out and not pick up the book for a few days, and get a little rusty. Sometimes chapters change generations, so all of that became confusing at times, and I would have to go back and re-read.
But I did love the family saga at the island. It includes relationships between many characters - romantic and friendships; especially the friendship between their son Moss and his black friend Reg Pauling and a Jewish co-worker Len Levy.
Quotes
“It started so slowly, Milton. Coming toward us like a river shifting from its banks, one centimeter at a time. One lie, then the next. Lies so big there had to be a reason to tell them, there had to be some purpose, maybe even some truth…” ch 1
“Did the island keep her happy?” …
“It kept her.” Ch 7
“because I’m willing to bet that a good marriage relies on secrets.” ….
“Secrets are the stuff of books,” Kitty pronounced. “Good books.” Priss slid the book into her bag.” Ch 7
“And Kitty walked toward the house on the hill, a spot in time she would return to like a stone in her pocket she could reach for and rub, over and over in the years to come.” Ch 8
“It had seemed simple, and easy, and right. But nothing at all now was simple, or easy, or right.” Ch 9
“It would always be that first day here, Kitty realized with a start. Every arrival, every year would have them in it. The island would hold them all.” Ch 12
“Mrs. Milton’s guest book sent from the city, unwrapped, and placed on the table in the front room, ready for the new year: 1938.” Ch 12
“Accident, his father had always said, is not accidental.” Ch 13
“There is the crime and there is the silence.” Ch 17
““My body has a crack running right down the middle. You’ve seen it. A fault line. I’m damaged goods,” she said.”
“There was no earthly reason for it, but he believed it with a certainty like faith.” Ch 18
“—this hot, explosive summer that would detonate the golden, gentle gates of fall. She would stand in the heat and know that gentleness was gone for good” ch 19
Chapter 21
“There’s old money. There’s new money. There is comfortable. There’s rich. There is filthy stinking rich,” she said blithely, and paused. “And then there are the people who know better.”
“Know better about what?” Seth asked.
“About not spending money.”
“The boys were meant to take up the reins their fathers held—go into banking or go down to Washington and be of service. Be useful.”
….
“The girls? We were to adorn. To adorn and to add.” “Add what?” Evie mimicked her grandmother’s tone, her eyes on Paul. “That irreducible something—color in a room, good conversation—grace.”
“If there is anything history teaches, it’s that nothing happens. No single moment. No story. Just people going around doing the best they can, without knowing what on earth they are doing.”
“How quickly the world plows us under, she thought with a pang. For two generations, maybe three, we lived on. After that, we’re nothing more than a name, or—her eye fell on one of Great-Aunt Minerva’s chairs standing like a sentry against the wall—a part of the furniture.”
“I spent all my life determined not to be her, not to be mistaken for her, and now that she’s gone, all I want to do is sit her down and ask her.”
Ch 24
“To see something, to want it that bad. To want and want and know that it’s impossible—it’s impossible. What you want is just under the surface, just under the skin. But not yet arrived. And still you want.”
Ch 25
“The gap between them opened, the silence shrouding them. Paul looked at her, waiting. She could choose to put a tear in the shroud right then. She could rip a hole in it.
…
“The silence between them just then was windy and vast.”
Ch 26
“No matter how old she grew, up here the general order of things never shifted. On and on. Nothing ever changed. Sunlight. Twilight. Drinks on the dock. A cardigan sweater thrown over a chair.”
“When you are young you think you can change the world—make it over, straighten it out. I did—your godfather, Dunc, did too.” …
He looked back out at the water. “But the world doesn’t change; only you do.”
Ch 27
“No matter that she arrived just like this, every summer, year after year, there was always this moment when she felt that she had cheated time, that this was the place on earth that unfolded and opened, bending toward her and saying, Child. Standing there in the boat, looking up at the house, she felt the hand of the place; the sky and the water retook her. She forgot this moment as soon as she left the place, and then always, on the return, there it was, there she was. Here, like nowhere else, she belonged.”
“Silence had been Joan’s weapon and her shield,…”
Ch 28
“He could be, like her apartment, something only for her, with a lock only she could open.”
“Look at this place. Your mother creates worlds out of air.”
““I want,” he said softly, his eyes on his mother, “for someone to look at me, and only me, and not the air beside my head, as if they are always looking for someone else.”
Ch 33
“The slow beat of race—heard, unheard, and heard again. Always there, always sounding.”
Ch 37
“As if all of us could see what history will tell, when instead all we see is the present, what’s around us.”
Ch 43
““And it doesn’t bother you that we’ll never know why?” Evie asked after a little while. “Honestly?” Min turned to her. “It doesn’t. There is never any bottom to a why.” Evie”
This book tells the story of multiple generations (thank goodness for the family tree at the beginning). One of the hardest parts of the book was keeping everyone straight. I would have it figured out and not pick up the book for a few days, and get a little rusty. Sometimes chapters change generations, so all of that became confusing at times, and I would have to go back and re-read.
But I did love the family saga at the island. It includes relationships between many characters - romantic and friendships; especially the friendship between their son Moss and his black friend Reg Pauling and a Jewish co-worker Len Levy.
Quotes
“It started so slowly, Milton. Coming toward us like a river shifting from its banks, one centimeter at a time. One lie, then the next. Lies so big there had to be a reason to tell them, there had to be some purpose, maybe even some truth…” ch 1
“Did the island keep her happy?” …
“It kept her.” Ch 7
“because I’m willing to bet that a good marriage relies on secrets.” ….
“Secrets are the stuff of books,” Kitty pronounced. “Good books.” Priss slid the book into her bag.” Ch 7
“And Kitty walked toward the house on the hill, a spot in time she would return to like a stone in her pocket she could reach for and rub, over and over in the years to come.” Ch 8
“It had seemed simple, and easy, and right. But nothing at all now was simple, or easy, or right.” Ch 9
“It would always be that first day here, Kitty realized with a start. Every arrival, every year would have them in it. The island would hold them all.” Ch 12
“Mrs. Milton’s guest book sent from the city, unwrapped, and placed on the table in the front room, ready for the new year: 1938.” Ch 12
“Accident, his father had always said, is not accidental.” Ch 13
“There is the crime and there is the silence.” Ch 17
““My body has a crack running right down the middle. You’ve seen it. A fault line. I’m damaged goods,” she said.”
“There was no earthly reason for it, but he believed it with a certainty like faith.” Ch 18
“—this hot, explosive summer that would detonate the golden, gentle gates of fall. She would stand in the heat and know that gentleness was gone for good” ch 19
Chapter 21
“There’s old money. There’s new money. There is comfortable. There’s rich. There is filthy stinking rich,” she said blithely, and paused. “And then there are the people who know better.”
“Know better about what?” Seth asked.
“About not spending money.”
“The boys were meant to take up the reins their fathers held—go into banking or go down to Washington and be of service. Be useful.”
….
“The girls? We were to adorn. To adorn and to add.” “Add what?” Evie mimicked her grandmother’s tone, her eyes on Paul. “That irreducible something—color in a room, good conversation—grace.”
“If there is anything history teaches, it’s that nothing happens. No single moment. No story. Just people going around doing the best they can, without knowing what on earth they are doing.”
“How quickly the world plows us under, she thought with a pang. For two generations, maybe three, we lived on. After that, we’re nothing more than a name, or—her eye fell on one of Great-Aunt Minerva’s chairs standing like a sentry against the wall—a part of the furniture.”
“I spent all my life determined not to be her, not to be mistaken for her, and now that she’s gone, all I want to do is sit her down and ask her.”
Ch 24
“To see something, to want it that bad. To want and want and know that it’s impossible—it’s impossible. What you want is just under the surface, just under the skin. But not yet arrived. And still you want.”
Ch 25
“The gap between them opened, the silence shrouding them. Paul looked at her, waiting. She could choose to put a tear in the shroud right then. She could rip a hole in it.
…
“The silence between them just then was windy and vast.”
Ch 26
“No matter how old she grew, up here the general order of things never shifted. On and on. Nothing ever changed. Sunlight. Twilight. Drinks on the dock. A cardigan sweater thrown over a chair.”
“When you are young you think you can change the world—make it over, straighten it out. I did—your godfather, Dunc, did too.” …
He looked back out at the water. “But the world doesn’t change; only you do.”
Ch 27
“No matter that she arrived just like this, every summer, year after year, there was always this moment when she felt that she had cheated time, that this was the place on earth that unfolded and opened, bending toward her and saying, Child. Standing there in the boat, looking up at the house, she felt the hand of the place; the sky and the water retook her. She forgot this moment as soon as she left the place, and then always, on the return, there it was, there she was. Here, like nowhere else, she belonged.”
“Silence had been Joan’s weapon and her shield,…”
Ch 28
“He could be, like her apartment, something only for her, with a lock only she could open.”
“Look at this place. Your mother creates worlds out of air.”
““I want,” he said softly, his eyes on his mother, “for someone to look at me, and only me, and not the air beside my head, as if they are always looking for someone else.”
Ch 33
“The slow beat of race—heard, unheard, and heard again. Always there, always sounding.”
Ch 37
“As if all of us could see what history will tell, when instead all we see is the present, what’s around us.”
Ch 43
““And it doesn’t bother you that we’ll never know why?” Evie asked after a little while. “Honestly?” Min turned to her. “It doesn’t. There is never any bottom to a why.” Evie”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death and Racism
kmtd's review
As a lover of intergenerational narratives that track the impact of war and social upheaval, I was excited. However, as the parent of a young, rambunctious boy I was struck with immense anxiety at the close of the first chapter.
Spoiler
The sudden and shocking death of Neddy was so unsettling that I knew it would continue to shape the story and I am just not in a place to follow through with that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death
More...