ryannreads's review against another edition
4.0
Every time someone caught me reading this book, I would read them a paragraph because it was so great. I savored it and every page.
sharonfalduto's review against another edition
A gothic novel (I guess; one of these days I'll find out what that means), about a little town in the Midwest that is withering on the vine, and also there's a girl who is either missing or might never have existed, and furthermore there's an addictive book series that is being printed in the little towns printing press, so there's all kinds of plots going on in this slim tome. The author had a nice eye for detail.
And now a minor rant on the subject of books within books--I've always thought this was sort of an easy way out for authors; "hey, I've got this great idea for a book, but I don't want to write it, I'll just write that Kilgore Trout wrote a book with such-and-such a plot!"
And now a minor rant on the subject of books within books--I've always thought this was sort of an easy way out for authors; "hey, I've got this great idea for a book, but I don't want to write it, I'll just write that Kilgore Trout wrote a book with such-and-such a plot!"
jennyshank's review against another edition
5.0
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20110527-book-review-the-coffins-of-little-hope-by-timothy-schaffert.ece
The Coffins of Little Hope
by Timothy Schaffert
(Unbridled Books, $24.95)
Timothy Schaffert's fourth novel, The Coffins of Little Hope, is a the droll, gleefully morbid, and smart, droll and gleefully morbid story of an unsolved small-town mystery.
delivered by an The irresistible narrator is Essie Myles, a gimlet-eyed 83-year-old obituary writer who is the for the Nebraska town's newspaper, The County Paragraph. Essie is the who Essie counts herself among the Nebraska town's “death merchants” (along with the undertaker, organist, florist, and cemetery caretaker), and she is also the beloved matriarch of an unconventional family. Her Essie's husband died young, as did her son and his wife; her grandson, Doc, took over as publisher of the Nebraska town’s newspaper, The County Paragraph, from his father, and he also took over raising his sister Ivy's daughter, Tiff, when Ivy followed a lover to Paris. and stayed there for several years.
Essie, Tiff and Doc find themselves at the center of a series of strange eventsin their town. One day, when the town's misfit, Daisy, reports that her lover Elvis, a door-to-door aerial photography salesman, and her daughter, a child no one knew existed, have vanished. The missing girl, like the missing sweetheart in Poe's “The Raven,” is named Lenore. No evidence that any child ever lived in Daisy's farmhouse is found, and Daisy is considered just crazy enough to have made the whole thing up.
But Daisy maintains she's telling the truth, the story captures the country's morbid fascination with missing children, and the County Paragraph's subscription rolls swell as people all over the world clamor to learn more.
Essie develops a following for her obituaries, and one of her fans is the author of an enormously popular 11-book series, that, like Harry Potter, has so imbued the popular culture that even those who resisted reading these books are aware of their contents: “Many otherwise stable men and women well into their forties still feel struck with the heebie-jeebies when they recall the gothic predicaments of the two sisters, Miranda and Desiree, the innocent wards of Rothgutt's Asylum for Misguided Girls.” Essie carries on a secret correspondence with the author, who wrote her a fan letter, even while the County Paragraph's printer turns out top-secret copies of the 11th book in the series. In order to avoid leaks, the book's publisher hired small-town presses to covertly print the novel.
A cult of Lenore enthusiasts, whom Tiff calls “the Lenorians,” emerges and some townspeople make money off “the sad pilgrims who skulked in and out.” This would seem a humorous exaggeration, except that it's not much of a stretcher. In Boulder, Colo., for a time, stores catering to the tourist trade sold purses printed with JonBenet Ramsey's likeness. Indeed, The Coffins of Little Hope seems to have been inspired by JonBenet Ramsey-type incidents, the Harry Potter craze crossed with Lemony Snicket-like gothic subject matter, reality TV, and tabloid journalism, but Schaffert miraculously transforms this heap of contemporary junk culture into durable art.
The Coffins of Little Hope is packed with insights about aging, death, the disappearance of newspapers (“How does a town even know what it is, or who's in it, if there's no newspaper?” Essie says), and contemporary life. Willa Cather enthusiasts who have made the trek to Red Cloud will enjoy Schaffert's bits about the famous dead Nebraska writer Myrna Kingley Fitch, whose foundation has been “saving [her] dying rural town by killing it, inch by inch, and casting it in amber.” The Coffins of Little Hope is warm and wise, demonstrating that Schaffert is a writer who can laugh at and love his characters in equal measure.
Jenny Shank's first novel, “The Ringer,” was published this spring. She is the Books & Writers Editor of NewWest.Net.
[email protected]
“The Coffins of Little Hope,” by Timothy Schaffert is a smart, droll and entertaining small-town mystery. The author takes a mishmash of cultural references — from JonBenet Ramsey to Willa Cather to Harry Potter and even the death of newspapers — and turns it into something solid.
The Coffins of Little Hope
by Timothy Schaffert
(Unbridled Books, $24.95)
Timothy Schaffert's fourth novel, The Coffins of Little Hope, is a the droll, gleefully morbid, and smart, droll and gleefully morbid story of an unsolved small-town mystery.
delivered by an The irresistible narrator is Essie Myles, a gimlet-eyed 83-year-old obituary writer who is the for the Nebraska town's newspaper, The County Paragraph. Essie is the who Essie counts herself among the Nebraska town's “death merchants” (along with the undertaker, organist, florist, and cemetery caretaker), and she is also the beloved matriarch of an unconventional family. Her Essie's husband died young, as did her son and his wife; her grandson, Doc, took over as publisher of the Nebraska town’s newspaper, The County Paragraph, from his father, and he also took over raising his sister Ivy's daughter, Tiff, when Ivy followed a lover to Paris. and stayed there for several years.
Essie, Tiff and Doc find themselves at the center of a series of strange eventsin their town. One day, when the town's misfit, Daisy, reports that her lover Elvis, a door-to-door aerial photography salesman, and her daughter, a child no one knew existed, have vanished. The missing girl, like the missing sweetheart in Poe's “The Raven,” is named Lenore. No evidence that any child ever lived in Daisy's farmhouse is found, and Daisy is considered just crazy enough to have made the whole thing up.
But Daisy maintains she's telling the truth, the story captures the country's morbid fascination with missing children, and the County Paragraph's subscription rolls swell as people all over the world clamor to learn more.
Essie develops a following for her obituaries, and one of her fans is the author of an enormously popular 11-book series, that, like Harry Potter, has so imbued the popular culture that even those who resisted reading these books are aware of their contents: “Many otherwise stable men and women well into their forties still feel struck with the heebie-jeebies when they recall the gothic predicaments of the two sisters, Miranda and Desiree, the innocent wards of Rothgutt's Asylum for Misguided Girls.” Essie carries on a secret correspondence with the author, who wrote her a fan letter, even while the County Paragraph's printer turns out top-secret copies of the 11th book in the series. In order to avoid leaks, the book's publisher hired small-town presses to covertly print the novel.
A cult of Lenore enthusiasts, whom Tiff calls “the Lenorians,” emerges and some townspeople make money off “the sad pilgrims who skulked in and out.” This would seem a humorous exaggeration, except that it's not much of a stretcher. In Boulder, Colo., for a time, stores catering to the tourist trade sold purses printed with JonBenet Ramsey's likeness. Indeed, The Coffins of Little Hope seems to have been inspired by JonBenet Ramsey-type incidents, the Harry Potter craze crossed with Lemony Snicket-like gothic subject matter, reality TV, and tabloid journalism, but Schaffert miraculously transforms this heap of contemporary junk culture into durable art.
The Coffins of Little Hope is packed with insights about aging, death, the disappearance of newspapers (“How does a town even know what it is, or who's in it, if there's no newspaper?” Essie says), and contemporary life. Willa Cather enthusiasts who have made the trek to Red Cloud will enjoy Schaffert's bits about the famous dead Nebraska writer Myrna Kingley Fitch, whose foundation has been “saving [her] dying rural town by killing it, inch by inch, and casting it in amber.” The Coffins of Little Hope is warm and wise, demonstrating that Schaffert is a writer who can laugh at and love his characters in equal measure.
Jenny Shank's first novel, “The Ringer,” was published this spring. She is the Books & Writers Editor of NewWest.Net.
[email protected]
“The Coffins of Little Hope,” by Timothy Schaffert is a smart, droll and entertaining small-town mystery. The author takes a mishmash of cultural references — from JonBenet Ramsey to Willa Cather to Harry Potter and even the death of newspapers — and turns it into something solid.
asealey925's review against another edition
3.0
Originally published at www.apatchworkofbooks.com
When a young girl goes missing in Little Hope, a tiny town populated mainly with the elderly, the entire town is effected in various ways. Most notably, Essie, the town's obituary writer. We follow Essie as she, and the rest of the town, become caught up in the kidnapping and the life of the little girl's mother. Questions begin popping up as to whether the kidnapping was completely made up...the ultimate hoax and Essie tries to figure out what it would mean to the town--and to herself-- if the girl was simply a figment of imagination.
A totally quirky read! I kept saying to myself how strange the story was and how I didn't have any idea what was going on, but it didn't matter. I wanted to keep reading and reading and I was determined to figure out what was truly happening in Little Hope.
Essie was a fantastic character, one that was strong-minded and quick to state her opinion, yet incredibly witty. I loved the inclusion of the young adult series of novels that keep everyone in the town reading (though they too were pretty strange) and wanting more books, and the concept of small town life was spot-on.
I would have to think about who to hand this book to. Definitely not someone looking for a clear-cut story, but rather a reader that likes to think and linger in the pages of their books. It's a great book for discussion, as my book club found out...we chatted for quite awhile about how quirky it was.
When a young girl goes missing in Little Hope, a tiny town populated mainly with the elderly, the entire town is effected in various ways. Most notably, Essie, the town's obituary writer. We follow Essie as she, and the rest of the town, become caught up in the kidnapping and the life of the little girl's mother. Questions begin popping up as to whether the kidnapping was completely made up...the ultimate hoax and Essie tries to figure out what it would mean to the town--and to herself-- if the girl was simply a figment of imagination.
A totally quirky read! I kept saying to myself how strange the story was and how I didn't have any idea what was going on, but it didn't matter. I wanted to keep reading and reading and I was determined to figure out what was truly happening in Little Hope.
Essie was a fantastic character, one that was strong-minded and quick to state her opinion, yet incredibly witty. I loved the inclusion of the young adult series of novels that keep everyone in the town reading (though they too were pretty strange) and wanting more books, and the concept of small town life was spot-on.
I would have to think about who to hand this book to. Definitely not someone looking for a clear-cut story, but rather a reader that likes to think and linger in the pages of their books. It's a great book for discussion, as my book club found out...we chatted for quite awhile about how quirky it was.
bookbrig's review against another edition
1.0
I found this boring. But that could be because it has lots of tangents, and I have zero patience for tangential writing. Also, I think a lot of the characters are irritating. That said, I had to read this for a work thing, and lots of other people love it, so take my review with a grain of salt.
wordnerdy's review against another edition
4.0
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2011/04/2011-book-89.html
sireno8's review against another edition
4.0
An odd but effecting book. The author has a real gift for visual imagery and the characters he's crafty are quirky and endearing without becoming boondocks eccentrics mired in their own folksiness. I appreciated how the main story was told by telling many many side stories-though this penchant for fascinating tangents could occasionally become confusing. Also the story acknowledges and observes its dark places at times but never wallows or exploits them. I finished the book with an odd sense of nostalgia--like having visited a small town in which i had some interesting cousins that I finally got to catch up with.
suzze's review against another edition
2.0
Interesting characters, interesting storylines, and an enjoyable read....until the end. None of the storylines was wrapped up, and I ended up feeling totally unsatisfied.
austen_to_zafon's review against another edition
2.0
I enjoyed this novel, but had a sense as I kept going that the ending was going to be unsatisfying. It has many things going for it, including an 80+ obit writer in a small midwest town who knows a lot about everybody and has a keen & observant eye, a mystery, some family drama, and satire of the Harry Potter and Unfortunate Events franchises. I found each story line compelling in itself. What keeps me from giving more than the two stars that mean "it was okay" is that none of the stories comes to any conclusion. The mystery remains unresolved, as does the family drama. I feel cheated.