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skynet666's review against another edition
3.0
I'm sure this a much better book than I got to hear. I listened to this as an audio book and that somehow only seems to work for certain books. It was good, but I kept falling asleep.
erinthelibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
I read this book for my book group and I greatly enjoyed it. It's a soft and contemplative story about a family living in depression-era Alabama in a coal-mining town. There's not much plot in the story, but the characters and the setting and the relationships are so finely drawn it pulls you in. The father was a particularly interesting and surprising character. There is a bit of a mystery involving the well, but that's not what really drives the book.
readingwithavengeance's review against another edition
3.0
Don't expect much from the plot, there's not much to it. Don't get me wrong, the plot will interest you and in the end there is resolution. But the plot isn't what makes this a good read; it's the characters, the depression - Era time frame and the deep south, coal-mining town backdrop.
selenajournal's review against another edition
4.0
After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time. But I kept hearing that splash. (Tess, pg 1)
The sun was strong, and I was calmed by the heat, the sweat. Amazing the difference between the smell of the earth, warm and moist, full of cucumbers and tomatoes, watermelon and corn, compared to barren dirt, ripe with only black rock. I loved sucking up great breaths of that growth and green - full-sized lungfuls of peas and squash and soil instead of careful, shallow sips always testing for a pocket of after damp or black damp, one of the stranglers. -pg 43
None of the operators wanted to do a thing for you. Living in their big houses with maids and gardeners, cream in their coffee and roast chicken whenever they wanted, they could empty out the change in their pockets and pay a crippled man a year's wages. But they didn't. Could be money was a sickness that spread through their veins, but they couldn't ever have enough. They'd let a man die from bad mine construction, with his wife and children looking forward to starving as soon as the funeral was over, and they'd no more than toss a bill or two on the coffin. Hearts choked off, no feeling at all. Like a women who could kill her own child. We couldn't do nothing about them. But we might could do something about her. -pg 53
I wanted my well and my creek and my dreams back. Some nights, sitting out there on the porch by the well, I'd thought that view was the most beautiful, perfect thing in the world. And the more I thought about the baby, the uglier everything got. I wanted to stop thinking about it altogether. -pg 60
The woods started at the edge of the creek, and the sound of moving water blocked out the sound of birds until I got deep into the trees. Then the ground was speckled with shadows and leaves and sometimes sunshine, and my shoes made loud sounds that made me feel like I didn't belong. But if I was still, I could be compltely quiet, and I could sink into the woods, maybe lean against a tree or sit down on a flat rock with no moss or bugs. I could hear pecans or hickory nuts hit the ground. No one else there. No one watching, no one listening. I liked the woods best when I could be alone. -pg 66
Grandma Moore had separated from Grandpa Moore before I was born, leaving him in Fayette and moving here to a house Papa bought her. That was the first house she ever lived in that was her very own. And Grandpa Moore's mother had divorced her husband and changed her name and all the kids' names back to her maiden name. That's why we were Moores. He must've done something awful to make her want to go out and not just erase him out of her life, but erase his name, too. Whatever he did, if he hadn't done it, we'd all be named Adams. -pg 68
With boys and most grown-ups, you ended up feeling like they were holding up some yardstick to you. I didn't like being measured was all. -pg 69
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
-pg 79
1873 hymn written by Horatio Spafford, used in the context in the book as a hymn the girls like, in church, as they're looking around for who which woman may have killed their child
For years I thought of her sweetness as written there in the darkness of her eyes, the softness of her mouth. Remembered--imagined?--that from that first night, I knew her small hands would mend a pain in my neck as sure as a swig of whiskey, that the crook of her elbow would fit a baby like God had carved it purely for that purpose. -pg 103
In church we learned about Cain and Abel. Abel tended the flock and Cain worked the soil, and the Lord preferred Abel's offerings of fat firstborn animal sacrifices to Cain's offerings of vegetables. (Even as a teenager, Tess would keep on about that passage all the way home from church - "Do you think God would like squash? Do you think Cain got in all that trouble just because God was allergic to green beans or some such?" And eventually Papa would tell her to hush because she was being sacrilegious, and he'd try to keep his mouth from twitching. But Cain was jealous that the Lord favored Abel, and he killed his brother. The Lord heard Abel's blood cry out to him from the ground, and he cursed Cain to wander ceaselessly across the earth. And to make sure that Cain wasn't killed before he got in a life's worth of wandering, God put the Mark of Cain on him. -pg 118
(The next passage talks about how this was used the Sunday school teacher to explain race relations and prejudice - ascribing Blackness as the Mark of Cain.
She goes on to say: "There was ugliness to it, too, I didn't miss that, but church was full of ugly things - blood and crucifixion and thorns and swords and ears lopped off - that were part of God's perfect plan. -pg 118
An educated old maid was the worst of all, bottom of the list. Aunt Celia said no man wanted a woman who cared more about books than she did about him. When I was learning long division, the numbers all swam together and I hated it. Aunt Celia said then that it didn't pay to be too smart, that it wouldn't serve me well anyhow. I figured out long division anyway, partly because that made me mad, and partly because when I repeated it to Papa, he said, "It don't pay to be too stupid, neither." -pg 140
I never liked sermons about this world being just a train stop. It had always seemed like a pretty nice place to me, with magnolias and chocolate cake and baby chicks. But it could be that I'd missed something important, that really the earth was a place as full of hatefulness and danger as the preacher said. -pg 151
Mama's sister Emmaline died at eighteen, and Aunt Merilyn named her youngest daughter for her. That daughter's granddaughter named her youngest daughter Emmaline. When the family and friends packed into a tiny maternity-ward room in Boston, Massachusets, in 2004, text-messaging the good news while they waited their turn to tug at the fingers of a dark-headed baby, they were touching some part of a girl who died quietly on top of a handmade quilt in 1906. -pg 162
Ever since that baby died, pieces didn't fit together as well as they used to. Some things were convoluted before, of course. Papa was the strongest man in the world, so of course nothing could hurt him, but he was cracked all over from the mines. God was good, but he might decide to send you to hell. Getting baptized in the river cleaned your soul, but I still had to take a bath on Saturday nights even if I'd just been swimming. -pg 173
But usually I tried to ignore it when the pieces didn't come together quite right, even when something big and heavy poked at the edge of my mind and tried to shove its way in. Especially then. -pg 173 (next paragraph after the above)
I didn't want to live in some far-off place or do some remarkable thing. And I didn't want this. I didn't want to give every last speck of energy to my husband and houseful of kids and have no ime at all for any pleasure of my own. I wanted something left for myself. ALl that was left was to figure out what was in the middle between remarkable and Carbon Hill. -pg 274
"How did it feel to shoot that deer, Jack" I asked. "Were you scared? Did it look dangerous? Or did you feel bad about it 'cause it was pretty?"
He answered with his mouth full. "Both, I guess."
He figured that out quicker than I did. That the right answer could be more than one thing at the same time.
-pg 287 (last paragraph)
The sun was strong, and I was calmed by the heat, the sweat. Amazing the difference between the smell of the earth, warm and moist, full of cucumbers and tomatoes, watermelon and corn, compared to barren dirt, ripe with only black rock. I loved sucking up great breaths of that growth and green - full-sized lungfuls of peas and squash and soil instead of careful, shallow sips always testing for a pocket of after damp or black damp, one of the stranglers. -pg 43
None of the operators wanted to do a thing for you. Living in their big houses with maids and gardeners, cream in their coffee and roast chicken whenever they wanted, they could empty out the change in their pockets and pay a crippled man a year's wages. But they didn't. Could be money was a sickness that spread through their veins, but they couldn't ever have enough. They'd let a man die from bad mine construction, with his wife and children looking forward to starving as soon as the funeral was over, and they'd no more than toss a bill or two on the coffin. Hearts choked off, no feeling at all. Like a women who could kill her own child. We couldn't do nothing about them. But we might could do something about her. -pg 53
I wanted my well and my creek and my dreams back. Some nights, sitting out there on the porch by the well, I'd thought that view was the most beautiful, perfect thing in the world. And the more I thought about the baby, the uglier everything got. I wanted to stop thinking about it altogether. -pg 60
The woods started at the edge of the creek, and the sound of moving water blocked out the sound of birds until I got deep into the trees. Then the ground was speckled with shadows and leaves and sometimes sunshine, and my shoes made loud sounds that made me feel like I didn't belong. But if I was still, I could be compltely quiet, and I could sink into the woods, maybe lean against a tree or sit down on a flat rock with no moss or bugs. I could hear pecans or hickory nuts hit the ground. No one else there. No one watching, no one listening. I liked the woods best when I could be alone. -pg 66
Grandma Moore had separated from Grandpa Moore before I was born, leaving him in Fayette and moving here to a house Papa bought her. That was the first house she ever lived in that was her very own. And Grandpa Moore's mother had divorced her husband and changed her name and all the kids' names back to her maiden name. That's why we were Moores. He must've done something awful to make her want to go out and not just erase him out of her life, but erase his name, too. Whatever he did, if he hadn't done it, we'd all be named Adams. -pg 68
With boys and most grown-ups, you ended up feeling like they were holding up some yardstick to you. I didn't like being measured was all. -pg 69
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
-pg 79
1873 hymn written by Horatio Spafford, used in the context in the book as a hymn the girls like, in church, as they're looking around for who which woman may have killed their child
For years I thought of her sweetness as written there in the darkness of her eyes, the softness of her mouth. Remembered--imagined?--that from that first night, I knew her small hands would mend a pain in my neck as sure as a swig of whiskey, that the crook of her elbow would fit a baby like God had carved it purely for that purpose. -pg 103
In church we learned about Cain and Abel. Abel tended the flock and Cain worked the soil, and the Lord preferred Abel's offerings of fat firstborn animal sacrifices to Cain's offerings of vegetables. (Even as a teenager, Tess would keep on about that passage all the way home from church - "Do you think God would like squash? Do you think Cain got in all that trouble just because God was allergic to green beans or some such?" And eventually Papa would tell her to hush because she was being sacrilegious, and he'd try to keep his mouth from twitching. But Cain was jealous that the Lord favored Abel, and he killed his brother. The Lord heard Abel's blood cry out to him from the ground, and he cursed Cain to wander ceaselessly across the earth. And to make sure that Cain wasn't killed before he got in a life's worth of wandering, God put the Mark of Cain on him. -pg 118
(The next passage talks about how this was used the Sunday school teacher to explain race relations and prejudice - ascribing Blackness as the Mark of Cain.
She goes on to say: "There was ugliness to it, too, I didn't miss that, but church was full of ugly things - blood and crucifixion and thorns and swords and ears lopped off - that were part of God's perfect plan. -pg 118
An educated old maid was the worst of all, bottom of the list. Aunt Celia said no man wanted a woman who cared more about books than she did about him. When I was learning long division, the numbers all swam together and I hated it. Aunt Celia said then that it didn't pay to be too smart, that it wouldn't serve me well anyhow. I figured out long division anyway, partly because that made me mad, and partly because when I repeated it to Papa, he said, "It don't pay to be too stupid, neither." -pg 140
I never liked sermons about this world being just a train stop. It had always seemed like a pretty nice place to me, with magnolias and chocolate cake and baby chicks. But it could be that I'd missed something important, that really the earth was a place as full of hatefulness and danger as the preacher said. -pg 151
Mama's sister Emmaline died at eighteen, and Aunt Merilyn named her youngest daughter for her. That daughter's granddaughter named her youngest daughter Emmaline. When the family and friends packed into a tiny maternity-ward room in Boston, Massachusets, in 2004, text-messaging the good news while they waited their turn to tug at the fingers of a dark-headed baby, they were touching some part of a girl who died quietly on top of a handmade quilt in 1906. -pg 162
Ever since that baby died, pieces didn't fit together as well as they used to. Some things were convoluted before, of course. Papa was the strongest man in the world, so of course nothing could hurt him, but he was cracked all over from the mines. God was good, but he might decide to send you to hell. Getting baptized in the river cleaned your soul, but I still had to take a bath on Saturday nights even if I'd just been swimming. -pg 173
But usually I tried to ignore it when the pieces didn't come together quite right, even when something big and heavy poked at the edge of my mind and tried to shove its way in. Especially then. -pg 173 (next paragraph after the above)
I didn't want to live in some far-off place or do some remarkable thing. And I didn't want this. I didn't want to give every last speck of energy to my husband and houseful of kids and have no ime at all for any pleasure of my own. I wanted something left for myself. ALl that was left was to figure out what was in the middle between remarkable and Carbon Hill. -pg 274
"How did it feel to shoot that deer, Jack" I asked. "Were you scared? Did it look dangerous? Or did you feel bad about it 'cause it was pretty?"
He answered with his mouth full. "Both, I guess."
He figured that out quicker than I did. That the right answer could be more than one thing at the same time.
-pg 287 (last paragraph)
cupcakes_and_coffee's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
An unhurried, sweet, coming of age story with ordinary people trying to do the best they can for themselves and others. Both the insight into the characters’ personalities and the detailed descriptions of the 1930’s Alabama mining community setting were incredible and felt astonishingly real. I felt their struggles and hardships, but also the love, compassion and was right with them in their search for true morality and understanding.
Many readers want excitement in a plot-driven style, but I’ve always loved books like this that are slower but where the well-developed characters are the focus, and the plot is only weaved in. I thought the writing was beautiful.
Many readers want excitement in a plot-driven style, but I’ve always loved books like this that are slower but where the well-developed characters are the focus, and the plot is only weaved in. I thought the writing was beautiful.
lurdesabruscato's review against another edition
5.0
The author used a clever and unique method -- snippets from five different members of a family to tell an interesting tale of growing up in a coal town during the Depression and an odd mystery woven in. Enjoyed it very much, even though I originally thought it'd be too morbid.
apasc's review against another edition
3.0
This was an interesting story that made me think about all the things I take for granted, and I also connected with the older sister. However, this isn't really my kind of book, which is why I gave it 3 stars. Good story, though.
karieh13's review
3.0
…”the right answer could be more than one thing at the same time.”
That’s the last line of “The Well and the Mine”, by Gin Phillips. I begin with that because when thinking about my review of this book, I realized that I had no set answer to the question about how I felt about it.
I’m neither from the South or a small town nor did I grow up in the 1930’s. I am dependent on what I read and hear and watch to get some sense of what that life must have been like. In this book, I get some vivid glimpses of what for me is usually a slow motion, sepia movie. Some smells and sounds and tastes burst forth through Miller’s words.
“With your teeth about gone and your stomach not handling much, I could see how fruit would be on your mind, how a taste of sunshine and breeze might hold you over until you’re wrapped up in blankets, sore from not leaving the bed for so long. When you pass away in the summer, they can bring the summer into you.”
With passages like these, she manages to bring forth the contrast of misery, despair, pain…and the wonderful yet simple gifts that make up our world. More than one thing at the same time…
And the simple things, described in such a way that they shine forth out of the grueling life of the characters that inhabit this book and the small town of Carbon Hill, Alabama, are the strength of this book.
“Leta was a great cook, good as any woman I’ve ever known, but the real mystery was how she knew what should fit together, what mix of foods made the right mouthful. Beans and onion. Squash and tomato. It was the different tastes together, the ones that it didn’t make no sense at all to stick on the same fork, that your tongue really remembered.”
Miller does a good job in detailing very clearly the reality of life in a mine town, population 3000, in the 1930s. Life was a battle fought each and every day. As Fannie Flagg mentions in her introduction to this book – “The Moores have no safety net, no protection against the worst other than Albert Moore’s good health and paycheck.” I felt that throughout the book. The incredibly long hours of backbreaking work, the fear that each and every day, not only the mine but life itself might come tumbling down…but there are those gleaming moments that these characters appreciate and hoard, and that serve as the bright spots in dark times.
“We sank into the mattress, with the weight of two bodies and all the tiredness and the work and the bills to be paid. Usually he’d squeeze my leg and I’d nuzzle his neck and we’d fall into sleep without saying a word. All the words and the moving and all the thinking were used up by dark.”
The voices of the different characters, Tess and Virgie, Jack, Albert and Leta, took a while to build in volume. I kept having to turn back to see who was talking. About midway through, I also started hearing the voices of Scout and Atticus Finch. And while I certainly see that two books written about small towns in Alabama in the 1930s would have some similar themes…this seemed a bit much.
One very jarring note occurs when suddenly the reader is jerked forward into present day. This felt very disruptive to the flow of the book and although I understand the contrast that was being made, I wish these random journeys out of the timeline of the book hadn’t been there.
But I will finish, then, with the first line of the book. “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.” A mystery woman throws a baby in a well. That is the start of the book – but in the end – that mystery plays a minor roll. I kept forgetting about that (which given the importance one would think an event like that would hold, felt odd) and the book would only go back to it every now and again. What starts out seeming to be a story about a shocking event in the life of a small town, ends up being about a small town world where shocking events sometimes get buried under the dirt and sweat and tears of life.
That’s the last line of “The Well and the Mine”, by Gin Phillips. I begin with that because when thinking about my review of this book, I realized that I had no set answer to the question about how I felt about it.
I’m neither from the South or a small town nor did I grow up in the 1930’s. I am dependent on what I read and hear and watch to get some sense of what that life must have been like. In this book, I get some vivid glimpses of what for me is usually a slow motion, sepia movie. Some smells and sounds and tastes burst forth through Miller’s words.
“With your teeth about gone and your stomach not handling much, I could see how fruit would be on your mind, how a taste of sunshine and breeze might hold you over until you’re wrapped up in blankets, sore from not leaving the bed for so long. When you pass away in the summer, they can bring the summer into you.”
With passages like these, she manages to bring forth the contrast of misery, despair, pain…and the wonderful yet simple gifts that make up our world. More than one thing at the same time…
And the simple things, described in such a way that they shine forth out of the grueling life of the characters that inhabit this book and the small town of Carbon Hill, Alabama, are the strength of this book.
“Leta was a great cook, good as any woman I’ve ever known, but the real mystery was how she knew what should fit together, what mix of foods made the right mouthful. Beans and onion. Squash and tomato. It was the different tastes together, the ones that it didn’t make no sense at all to stick on the same fork, that your tongue really remembered.”
Miller does a good job in detailing very clearly the reality of life in a mine town, population 3000, in the 1930s. Life was a battle fought each and every day. As Fannie Flagg mentions in her introduction to this book – “The Moores have no safety net, no protection against the worst other than Albert Moore’s good health and paycheck.” I felt that throughout the book. The incredibly long hours of backbreaking work, the fear that each and every day, not only the mine but life itself might come tumbling down…but there are those gleaming moments that these characters appreciate and hoard, and that serve as the bright spots in dark times.
“We sank into the mattress, with the weight of two bodies and all the tiredness and the work and the bills to be paid. Usually he’d squeeze my leg and I’d nuzzle his neck and we’d fall into sleep without saying a word. All the words and the moving and all the thinking were used up by dark.”
The voices of the different characters, Tess and Virgie, Jack, Albert and Leta, took a while to build in volume. I kept having to turn back to see who was talking. About midway through, I also started hearing the voices of Scout and Atticus Finch. And while I certainly see that two books written about small towns in Alabama in the 1930s would have some similar themes…this seemed a bit much.
One very jarring note occurs when suddenly the reader is jerked forward into present day. This felt very disruptive to the flow of the book and although I understand the contrast that was being made, I wish these random journeys out of the timeline of the book hadn’t been there.
But I will finish, then, with the first line of the book. “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.” A mystery woman throws a baby in a well. That is the start of the book – but in the end – that mystery plays a minor roll. I kept forgetting about that (which given the importance one would think an event like that would hold, felt odd) and the book would only go back to it every now and again. What starts out seeming to be a story about a shocking event in the life of a small town, ends up being about a small town world where shocking events sometimes get buried under the dirt and sweat and tears of life.
georgemay's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75