Review
Bloodroot presents a range of voices by weaving together narratives from Myra Lamb's family. Author Amy Greene prevents the narratives from sprawling like kudzu by organizing them into paired sections, allowing characters to alternate speaking in groups of two. The result is a dynamic, layered effect that allows the reader to sink progressively deeper into the Lamb family, as opposed to the traditional approach of going forward through a linear plot progression.
Bloodroot still contains a careful, precise plot, but that structure does not become fully apparent until the final pages of the novel.
Greene opens her stories quietly, depicting her characters in moments of reflection and pause, asking her readers to wait for the action that promises to be delivered at a later time. For the first half of the novel Greene asks for a great deal of patience from the...
Beyond the Book
William Wordsworth
Characters in Bloodroot rely on William
Wordsworth's poetry as a source of comfort and inspiration, but echoes of
his literary philosophy and poetic interests can also be found in the
pages of Amy Greene's novel.
Just as Bloodroot relies on memory to tell its stories, much of Wordsworth's poetry focuses on capturing moments of memory and recollection. He developed a philosophy of "two consciousnesses": himself in the present and himself in the past, and a lot of his poetry sought to identify the discrepancy between these two. Whereas Marcel Proust, in his exhausting account, In Search of Lost...
