Summary
Jake's little brother Edward is one special kid. He can make anyone smile. He's the only one around who can throw a perfect knuckleball. He loves fireworks and music and singing and he loves his little sister, Sabine, almost more anyone else in the whole world. He loves to hold her and sing to her.
And then, tragedy strikes.
What I liked.
I liked the characters. They're a pretty neat family of crazies. They made me want to have children.
Patricia MacLachlan's writing is of the best quality, as ever.
Patricia MacLachlan's writing is of the best quality, as ever.
What I didn't like.
The title and the jacket summary totally gave away the whole plot.
Also, it was really hard to figure out who the characters were at first. It took me a while to figure out that Albert Groom was an old man. Maybe it's just because I'm slow. By the end of the story, I still didn't know what his connection to the family was. (I mean, aside from his obviously being a family friend.)
The writing was a little jumpy and loose and jumbly. The story goes back and forth between the past and the present, without really establishing when the present is, except that it's after the events of the past. (Janelle disagrees, she says it seemed very smooth to her. In any case the story doesn't suffer much.)
Also, I didn't like all the talk of signs. It was weird. The characters would point to events and coincidences and say "It's a sign!" But they wouldn't really say what the sign was supposed to indicate. Except once when a bird flew over the baseball game and someone said, "It's a sign!" And then Edward hit the ball that he hadn't been able to hit before (or something like that.) Anyway, it all just seemed a little unnecessary to me.
Also, I didn't like all the talk of signs. It was weird. The characters would point to events and coincidences and say "It's a sign!" But they wouldn't really say what the sign was supposed to indicate. Except once when a bird flew over the baseball game and someone said, "It's a sign!" And then Edward hit the ball that he hadn't been able to hit before (or something like that.) Anyway, it all just seemed a little unnecessary to me.
Conclusion
It's a good story and it's short. So I'll give it a rating of 3/5 knuckle balls. It's worth the time it takes to read it.
i'm disagreeing with you about a book for the first time in forever.
ReplyDeletei loved this book. i found it flowy and the past/present view wasn't disruptive when i read it.
also, i liked the fact that i knew what it was about. this made it less plot-driven and more just about enjoying a soft-lens look at some really tender moments in a family.
i like how patricia maclachlan looks at every character in the most loving way possible.
the only thing that jarred with me was the kids calling their parents by their first names. not because i think its morally wrong or anything, it just seemed out of place. the weight of tenderness that names like "mama" and "papa" carry would seem to fit this family - in my opinion.
xox
about your last thing... it seemed to fit in that the children called their parents by their first names, because the children didn't seem to relate to their parents as proper parents because the younger children were more or less cared for by the older children. for example, jake raised edward, edward raised sabine.
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