Rated of 5
by Suri F. (Durham, NC) To much telling, not enough showing
It can be no coincidence that this book appears on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I think it is meant to ponder the way we've coped with our losses in the intervening time. A worthy topic.
The problem is that Perotta rarely gives us the opportunity to stand beside the characters as they explore their new world. Instead, he jump cuts from on character to another as they recollect an event that took place outside our view. When he allows us to actually witness the action, it can be powerful. He just doesn't do it often enough.
Rated of 5
by Jill S. (Chicago, IL) Into Thin Air
What if -- whoosh! -- with no explanation, millions of us simply vanished? And what if there were no rhyme or reason to WHO disappears (John Mellencamp and J.Lo, Vladmir Putin and the Pope). What happens in the aftermath to those who are leftovers?
No one knows and Tom Perrotta doesn't even speculate. He wisely leaves it to the imagination of the reader. His focus is not on the apocalyptic event but on how one particular family zigzags forward. It's an ambitious theme: how diminished we are when something vital is subtracted from our lives. Maybe a little too ambitious. The grandness of the so-called Rapture is always lurking in the background, making the players who strut and fret their last hours on stage seem rather meaningless. But maybe that is, indeed the point. Still, at the end of the day, I wanted to know MORE about "the end of the day."
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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of 5
by Suri F. (Durham, NC) 
of 5
by Jill S. (Chicago, IL) 
