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stevienlcf's review
3.0
Debut novelist, whose grandfather was a Christian missionary in China, creates a missionary couple who are placed in China's far west near the Gobi Desert in the early 1900s. The husband is so highly regarded by his colleagues that even his pregnant wife refers to him as "Reverend," and he has earned the respect of the Chinese by building roads and schools. His wife Grace, who "followed a man in whom she sensed greatness into the desert halfway around the world," dotes on their little boy, Wesley, while being apprehensive about her pregnancy after having suffered several miscarriages. In the opening pages of the novel, Wesley is kidnapped by bandits, but the kidnapping is not a random act of barbarism. As the Reverend sets out in the rugged, corrupt countryside with his dedicated Chinese servant Ancho, his Christian beliefs are tested. A journey that is mysterious, exotic and a bit creepy.
pminkler's review against another edition
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
cmarie1665's review
1.0
I found the Chinese characters two dimensional. I think they needed to be fleshed out more. The narrator felt omniscient, not 3rd person limited, so it wasn't right that we only saw Mai Lin and Ahcho from Grace's eyes. However, it was an interesting setting and window into history.
bwolfe718's review
4.0
You can read my full review (and my interview with Virginia Pye) at my blog about literary fiction by female authors, ReadHerLikeAnOpenBook.wordpress.com. Here's the link: http://wp.me/p3EtWm-df
atschakfoert's review
2.0
I got about halfway through and couldn't finish this novel. It just felt like it was going nowhere slowly...very, very slowly...so I flipped to the last page and determined that, yeah, it wasn't going to improve. Interesting subject but not well executed in my opinion.
spennock's review
4.0
River of Dust is set in northwestern China in 1910 about a decade after the Boxer Rebellion. The novel tells of the soul-numbing tragedies that befall a young American missionary couple and their struggle to cope with the sorrow in the framework of their Christian faith. As other reviewers have mentioned, there is a pervasive sadness about the book and you can almost feel the layer of yellow dust settling over the "Reverend" and his wife, Grace as they struggle on. The sadness of the story is somewhat tempered by the mystical quality of the prose and the fact that the novel is based in part on the real life experiences of the author's grandfather.
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