smbla's review against another edition
4.0
This book is haunting and touching and stays with you well after you have read the last page. I read it in one sitting and wished it were a little longer. Time has not put enough distance between the characters and today's society.
jhahn's review against another edition
4.0
Very quick read. It was hard to like many of the characters because of how many thought during this time. The ones I did like I really cared about. Another book that reminds us that this country has treated human beings so badly for so long.
christiek's review against another edition
3.0
The multiple of points of view was done well. Other than that the book was enjoyable, but not particularly remarkable.
apetruce's review against another edition
3.0
This was a quick read on a sad and depressing topic -- racism. The gritty details of how blacks were really treated in sharecropper days are more than ugly. This story makes you identify with every character, black and white, except Pappy, maybe, and really feel their pain. It's a quick read -- a page-turner even though pretty much nothing good ever happens to anyone in the story.
kdtoverbooked's review against another edition
4.0
I can’t believe you don’t hear more about this book. I purchased it way back in 2013 with good intentions but then it got out off. In my goal to clear more books from my shelves, I made it a priority this month. It is a somewhat common theme of racism in the south, but I loved the way I heard the story from so many different characters. There are several stories that suck you in. If you like historical fiction, this would be a good one to pick up.
kmarieemerson's review against another edition
5.0
Probably one of my favorite books. It brought forth lots of emotion about our country's past that connects strongly with fears people have about today's world.
pharmdad2007's review against another edition
3.0
Like so many books set in the Jim Crow South, this book brings up a lot of heartbreaking issues and made me remember that though our current society is far from perfect when it comes to dealing with race and equality, we definitely have made some huge strides.
lazygal's review against another edition
4.0
I was loaned this book as a follow-up to having read The Help (and after I'd recommended The Queen of Palmyra and Wench) and this is definitely a more memorable, more sickening book than the first. Told from six different points of view, some male, some female, some white, some black, but all genuine, this story of what life in the 40s in Mississippi was like.
Laura's life was one of gentle rearing - it's not clear that she has any real racial animosity, but there's a casual class/racist attitude in her - and her late (past-30!) marriage to Henry isn't one of love and passion but more of companionship. Or so she thinks until he moves her and their two daughters to a mudbound farm miles from "home": no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no telephone, and his racist, mean father living in a lean-to are all part of her new life. She becomes as friendly as one can with Florence, the black midwife whose husband sharecrops on the farm. There's also Hap, Florence's husband; Henry, madly in love with the land and filled with the certainty that because he's white and male, he's right; Ronsel, back from WWII, where even though he was a black soldier he wasn't somehow less than a man; and Jamie, Henry's younger brother, who would have done better to live an academic life but instead ends up a bomber in the War and struggling with the aftershocks of that horror. Their lives intertwine in such a way that you know that nothing good is going to happen, but the actual climax will take you by surprise.
As with the two books I'd recommended, I can see this book being recommended to others for many years; it's a story that many people would like to forget was a part of who we, as a country, were and should not be forgotten.
Laura's life was one of gentle rearing - it's not clear that she has any real racial animosity, but there's a casual class/racist attitude in her - and her late (past-30!) marriage to Henry isn't one of love and passion but more of companionship. Or so she thinks until he moves her and their two daughters to a mudbound farm miles from "home": no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no telephone, and his racist, mean father living in a lean-to are all part of her new life. She becomes as friendly as one can with Florence, the black midwife whose husband sharecrops on the farm. There's also Hap, Florence's husband; Henry, madly in love with the land and filled with the certainty that because he's white and male, he's right; Ronsel, back from WWII, where even though he was a black soldier he wasn't somehow less than a man; and Jamie, Henry's younger brother, who would have done better to live an academic life but instead ends up a bomber in the War and struggling with the aftershocks of that horror. Their lives intertwine in such a way that you know that nothing good is going to happen, but the actual climax will take you by surprise.
As with the two books I'd recommended, I can see this book being recommended to others for many years; it's a story that many people would like to forget was a part of who we, as a country, were and should not be forgotten.
nickie184's review against another edition
4.0
Read this one for bookclub. It starts out very strong, uses multiple first person narrators, excellent dialogue and descriptive passages. The characters are, by and large, believable. I had trouble at the end, I think this is where the "first novel" inexperience showed itself. But we had a great discussion, this group is fascinated with relationships, and how people get into and out of difficult life situations.