Most of the major characters in the novel are female, yet the author is male. How successful was he in writing from the perspective of women?

I think he does a great job, but then, I'm a man as well so how would I know. Seriously, i think all of the characters were very well written. I found all of them believable and they seemed to stay true to themselves throughout the course of the book.

I am an 80 yr. old female and as I read the book, my thoughts often wandered to where I was impressed by the author's ability to present his female characters so realistically. I wondered if he has lived with many females during his life, worked with them, gone to school with them.............just how was he able to portray his characters in such a realistic fashion? Regardless as to how he was able to do so, do so he did and it made his novel move more realistically and smoothly.

Very successful. If you told me a woman wrote it I would have believed you. I did not find any difference.

I thought he wrote the women characters very insightfully

I thought Henkin did a wonderful job of portraying women characters. Too often it seems that male authors get hung up on the sexuality of their female characters, but in this book the women have feelings that feal incredibly true. I too, would have believed this to have been written by a woman because of the understanding of women's emotions that are portrayed.

I agree with all of the others that he did a really great job of writing about the women. He also handled the male roles very nicely. I just think he is a very effective writer and obviously has great powers of observation as well as empathy for his characters.

He does a great job. I loved this book!

I so agree with the previous writers--he has a rare insight.

All good writers are able to write from perspectives different from their own--women write from men's perspectives, men write from women's perspectives, women and men write from the perspective of other animals, aliens, inanimate objects. It's what writers do. The better the writer, the less note-worthy it is because readers don't even notice that the writer is writing from a perspective that isn't their own. On that note, Henkin does a fine job of writing from both men's and women's perspectives.

I think he did an excellent job writing from a female perspective. I would have believed it had been written by a woman if I didn't know otherwise.

This is the first book I've read by Henkin, and I am impressed by his writing style. All of the characters are fully developed and understandable to the reader. I enjoyed his writing style wherby the details about the family and their individual relationships gradually unfold. I believed the characters and could relate to them.

I think this is one of the amazing attributes about this book. I had to remind myself that this was a man writing this story. I think he has a lot of insight into the female psyche.

I agree with jknapp

I thoroughly enjoyed Joshua Henkin's writing style and agree with others that if you didn't know it was a male author you would never suspect. He knows female characters for sure.

I think he was amazingly successful at presenting a realistic female view. Had I not known better, I would not have known I was not reading a book by a female author.

I agree with LReads. Henkin is amazingly successful at writing from a woman's perspective. He must be a really good observer of the women around him, to be able to so believably write from that perspective.

Kudos to the author for making me forget his gender. His voice disappears into the dialogue and plot line. I found his style seamless and easy to read.

I thought he did a great job. It is a well written book and I will recommend it to others.

I actually think he was great at writing from the perspective of women. The women seem to be more fleshed out characters then the men. That was actually a thought that struck me as I was writing. I thought he captured the feeling of siblings, ( 3 sisters close in age, and the little brother they doted on) perfectly.