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maureenmccombs's review
4.0
4.5 to 4.75 stars if that were possible. This book was wholly satisfying. It was rich in detail and the language was beautiful. The story of the O'Brien family told throughout the years was enthralling and kept my attention rapt throughout. The characters were masterfully developed and came to life fully; I was invested in all of them, cared deeply for them and could not wait to turn the page to see what would happen next. This is a true saga with all of the accompanying joy and sorrow that one would expect. Most excellent read and I highly recommend.
sarahbowman101's review against another edition
3.0
A really well done family saga is hard to find and must be hard to write. This one comes close, but in the end misses the mark. With that said, there is still enough here to make some honest recommendations to historical literary fiction readers.
I've been thinking a lot about characters lately and what makes or breaks a character. It isn't that you want to hang out with them, or that you always identify with them. But there has to be enough meat of the character to sympathize with them and find them believable. A well drawn character should carry you away - Mellas from Matterhorn is a great recent example.
Here the characters were too slippery - I craved more of Joe's story especially in the early years but even later his insight is given up to Iseult and his children.
There are good bits here - the birth of the first child at the railroad camp, the brother's experiences in WWI, and the funeral at then end (just for example - it's a long book) are all well written and moving. Overall it just didn't come together in a completely satisfactory way.
I've been thinking a lot about characters lately and what makes or breaks a character. It isn't that you want to hang out with them, or that you always identify with them. But there has to be enough meat of the character to sympathize with them and find them believable. A well drawn character should carry you away - Mellas from Matterhorn is a great recent example.
Here the characters were too slippery - I craved more of Joe's story especially in the early years but even later his insight is given up to Iseult and his children.
There are good bits here - the birth of the first child at the railroad camp, the brother's experiences in WWI, and the funeral at then end (just for example - it's a long book) are all well written and moving. Overall it just didn't come together in a completely satisfactory way.
marcela1016's review against another edition
4.0
There is so much beautiful writing in this book. I'm not sure if (in the end) the plot comes together in quite the way I wanted it to but the writing is just so strong it kept pulling me back in. Told in a series of episodes through the life of a generation of O'Briens, this book operates more as a series of stories than a novel. Some of the episodes/stories are stronger than others but the writing is compelling throughout.
juliechristinejohnson's review against another edition
5.0
It would seem the greater the sweep of history encompassed by a novel, the more confined the writer. The facts of history are many and easily called out, the settings, characters and dialogue are well-defined by their eras and the more years a story covers, the shallower the characters can become as they are stretched and diluted by time.
It is, therefore, deeply satisfying to read a saga as intimate and profound as The O'Briens. Peter Behrens is a master of the art of storytelling. He understands the fine balance between enchanting prose and compelling facts.
The O'Briens begins deep in the pine forests of northern Quebec in 1887 and ends in a dinghy just off the Cape Breton coast in 1960. It follows the fortunes and tragedies of Joe O'Brien, the eldest of five siblings who lose first their father to the Boer War, then their mother to despair and disease. Joe, although taciturn and moody, is a natural leader with an affinity for numbers and an ambition that he uses to propel himself and his siblings out of Canada's back country when he is barely a teenager. Fans of Peter Behrens will recognize the O'Brien determination from the author's previous novel Law of Dreams, which tells the story of Joe's grandfather, Fergus O'Brien, who escaped the famine in Ireland to immigrate to Canada two generations earlier.
Joe rushes across North America, from the forests of British Columbia to the beaches of Southern California and down to Mexico, building a fortune in railroad construction. In 1912, at a quiet real estate office in Venice Beach, Joe encounters a young French-American woman, Iseult Wilkins. Iseult has just buried her mother and she too is an orphan, as restless as Joe, yet constrained by her gender and limited financial resources.
Passion and recognition of kindred spirits bring Joe and Iseult to an altar within weeks of their first meeting. It is in depicting this marriage, an invisible ribbon that shreds to a breaking point by years of betrayal and grief and is reknotted each time by tenderness and love, that Behrens reveals some of his greatest strengths as a writer. We come to know Joe and Iseult as much as they allow us to, their voices ringing true as they falter and succumb to their own vanities.
Other characters, such as Joe's brother Grattan, his daughters Frankie and Margo and son Mike, are no less vivid for playing secondary roles. Their stories bring us directly into the emotional devastation of the men who fought in World War I and World War II and of the families left behind, waiting for the worst news.
Behrens is an atmospheric writer. His settings are vivid, his characters feel and react with tremendous emotion, his prose is rich and lambent. Yet his pacing is precise and brisk. He has such a great span of time to cover - one with numerous world-changing events - but he selects the most pivotal and delves deeply, showing his characters' development by how they respond to their circumstances.
It was a difficult book to set aside each evening when I knew I had to stock up on sleep; I found myself longing for the free afternoon and early morning late in the week when I could be enfolded by Behrens's story. This is a luminous read.
It is, therefore, deeply satisfying to read a saga as intimate and profound as The O'Briens. Peter Behrens is a master of the art of storytelling. He understands the fine balance between enchanting prose and compelling facts.
The O'Briens begins deep in the pine forests of northern Quebec in 1887 and ends in a dinghy just off the Cape Breton coast in 1960. It follows the fortunes and tragedies of Joe O'Brien, the eldest of five siblings who lose first their father to the Boer War, then their mother to despair and disease. Joe, although taciturn and moody, is a natural leader with an affinity for numbers and an ambition that he uses to propel himself and his siblings out of Canada's back country when he is barely a teenager. Fans of Peter Behrens will recognize the O'Brien determination from the author's previous novel Law of Dreams, which tells the story of Joe's grandfather, Fergus O'Brien, who escaped the famine in Ireland to immigrate to Canada two generations earlier.
Joe rushes across North America, from the forests of British Columbia to the beaches of Southern California and down to Mexico, building a fortune in railroad construction. In 1912, at a quiet real estate office in Venice Beach, Joe encounters a young French-American woman, Iseult Wilkins. Iseult has just buried her mother and she too is an orphan, as restless as Joe, yet constrained by her gender and limited financial resources.
Passion and recognition of kindred spirits bring Joe and Iseult to an altar within weeks of their first meeting. It is in depicting this marriage, an invisible ribbon that shreds to a breaking point by years of betrayal and grief and is reknotted each time by tenderness and love, that Behrens reveals some of his greatest strengths as a writer. We come to know Joe and Iseult as much as they allow us to, their voices ringing true as they falter and succumb to their own vanities.
Other characters, such as Joe's brother Grattan, his daughters Frankie and Margo and son Mike, are no less vivid for playing secondary roles. Their stories bring us directly into the emotional devastation of the men who fought in World War I and World War II and of the families left behind, waiting for the worst news.
Behrens is an atmospheric writer. His settings are vivid, his characters feel and react with tremendous emotion, his prose is rich and lambent. Yet his pacing is precise and brisk. He has such a great span of time to cover - one with numerous world-changing events - but he selects the most pivotal and delves deeply, showing his characters' development by how they respond to their circumstances.
It was a difficult book to set aside each evening when I knew I had to stock up on sleep; I found myself longing for the free afternoon and early morning late in the week when I could be enfolded by Behrens's story. This is a luminous read.
canadianbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
This is the saga of Joe O'Brien and his family. It starts in the Pontiac region along the Ottawa River, but ranges across North America to the Canadian Rockies, to Venice Beach, California and back again.
Joe spends most of his married life in Montreal, as does one of his brothers. We see the strong feelings around families here with Joe's support for his siblings and theirs for him and his family. We see marital difficulties, influences of war, and the more mundane everyday aspects of life.
Joe is involved in the Canadian railway boom, the military industry of the World Wars, and construction of many infrastructure projects. He dreams big and yet sometimes doesn't know what he really wants. We see how people love each other, but don't always understand each other.
This is an engaging book, with characters that captured the imagination. I sat up late to finish it to a satisfying ending.
Joe spends most of his married life in Montreal, as does one of his brothers. We see the strong feelings around families here with Joe's support for his siblings and theirs for him and his family. We see marital difficulties, influences of war, and the more mundane everyday aspects of life.
Joe is involved in the Canadian railway boom, the military industry of the World Wars, and construction of many infrastructure projects. He dreams big and yet sometimes doesn't know what he really wants. We see how people love each other, but don't always understand each other.
This is an engaging book, with characters that captured the imagination. I sat up late to finish it to a satisfying ending.