A first person narrative. After reading two or three of these Oprah book selections, I got bored to death.
Oh yeah, the protagonist is a selfish ass. My subconscious has been constantly praying for her untimely demise!

Women who lives in the South in the mid to later 1900's and is very traditional. She has a load of kids and her last one is mentally disabled. It's mainly about her and her relationship with the child and how the family deals. They move out to Los Angeles, against the husbands wishes and everyone thrives out there. About 15 years later, the husband wants to move back to the South and for some reason, the wife doesn't put up much of a fight, which pissed me off so much. All her children were grown up and all but one were living in Los Angeles and he wants to go back to their old crappy life? It made no sense. Luckily, it didn't last long and they soon moved back to Los Angeles and he died within a few years, but you didn't care because he was kind of an ass anyway. But this family was super old fashion and getting a divorce was like the end all and be all of life, so they didn't. There was a lot of internal dialogue with the women and how she acted toward her child. An interesting read and for some reason, this book took me forever to finish!

Grade: C

This took forever and I remember not liking it much.

I'm wavering between 2 stars and 3. I'm rounding up because I'm in a good mood right now.

Several years ago, a friend of mine gave me a stack of books she’d been collecting based on Oprah’s book list recommendations and wanted to pass them on (not because they were great or anything, she assured me, but because she doesn’t like to keep books). I laughed at her but accepted the books because I was a recent college graduate with a crappy job and a debt to income ratio that would make anybody cringe and I couldn’t afford to buy books. Plus I’ve always been conscious of the fact that beggars can’t be choosers so I accepted them. In the spring of 2004, I randomly picked this book up and started to read it. I never finished it, which is highly unusual for me because I always finish books. Always.

So when I came across the book sitting on a shelf in my book case recently, I was struck with the realization that I had read half the book but clearly never finished because the bookmark was still inside. I skimmed a few pages and realized the first half of the book was familiar but the second half was not. So then I wracked my brain trying to figure out what had made me put the book down. I realized that I’d been reading this book right smack dab in the middle of a major life changing event for me and must have forgotten the book in the shuffle of an out of state move, a major job change and a raging mid-20’s crisis.

It never even occurred to me that I may actually have put the book down because it was boring and that at the time I was reading it, I was a fabulous young person with a fantastic social life and a hot ass and I had so many more interesting things to do than read a boring book. Obviously that isn’t the case now because I’ve finally finished the book and can’t wait to rid it’s presence from my bookshelf.

As a major bonus, I read this book for a book challenge set forth by The Next Best Book Club (an extremely active group here on Good Reads). For 25 points, the challenge was to read a book you started but never finished. Jewel, here I come again!

In short, the book is about how a rural Mississippi family coped with the birth of a Downs Syndrome child in the 1940’s. The book talks about the difficulties they faced in Mississippi. In the 1950’s, the family moves to California hoping to find more advanced learning opportunities for their mentally handicapped daughter. The author’s writing style is conversational in what I can only imagine is a rural Mississippi dialect. And being truthful to the era that the novel took place in, the author doesn’t shy away from freely and frequently using words like “retarded”, “nigger”, “cracker” and “colored” for both descriptions and titles for people. Now, the intent of using words like this was probably to pull the reader into the story and make it feel like you were really there and experiencing life next to these people (there are some books that do this successfully). Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect on me and every time I came across one of these words, it would miraculously fly off the page and slap me viciously upside the head, which jarred me from the story and made me cringe. So yes, I clearly grew up PC in the 90’s.

Overall, I’d say that the premise of the book sounded much more interesting than it actually was. That’s not to say it was horribly bad, but since nothing really seemed to happen, the biggest strength of the book was in dealing with the emotions felt by members of the family. I have the feeling that if someone in my family had Downs Syndrome, I may have liked this book more because I may have identified with the characters. But since I don’t, I approached the book hoping to learn something or be entertained or perhaps find something new to think about, but that wasn’t the case. And so it bored me.

This book was picked by my old book club as their read for this month. I already had the book and decided to read it. I'm sure glad that I did. What a good book! Most of the book takes place in Mississippi in the early 40's. A little before my time, yet still I was shocked at how backward people were in that age in that area. I was surprised the author used the word nigger so often. But that was how it was in Mississippi during that time period. And speaking of the author, I was surprised to learn Bret was a male. I thought the author was female and had a strange spelling for her name. Bret Lott does a great job of writing about female feelings, especially childbirth. Good job Bret! The book was well written and the author enabled me to smell, see, hear and even taste the swamps and the forests of Mississippi and then the fog and waves clear across the country to Los Angeles California. I fell in love with Jewel and her family. Good book!!

The story was just too long. It could have been edited down some. Lots of unnecessary details and flashbacks. Toward the end I was skipping pages of descriptions. It seemed like the story should have ended after Billie Jean came out to California, Brenda Kay was making some friends and progress, Dad has a good job, and everyone in the family is settled. That would have been a good place for a natural ending. But there is a totally strange move back to the swamps. Then back to CA in not as nice of a home with not as nice of a job. Then we are told that Leston died as a matter of fact like we are discussing the weather. It was like the author didn't know where or how to end the story.

I plan to write a review once the story settles in my mind. But I have a Big problem bi do not understand the ending, ie, the epilogue. Anybody out there who can and will help me??

I will surely read this one again. Some novels are so beautiful in their settings and their characterization that many pages expressions that beg to be underlined. Reading Jewel was a game of hurry, underline, see-what's-next, and SLOW DOWN to make this book last. Much the same pacing as the Hilburn family lives by, with their Mississippi roots and their vibrant Los Angeles years. Lott is certainly one of the rare male writers who inhabits his characters fully -- male and female, children, elderly, black and white -- and brings them to the page with remarkable realism. He handles the teenage girl's perspective as she nears her new home in LA, the adult woman's perspective as she raises her children and makes a life for her family despite the odds, and her boys' viewpoints as they begin families of their own, and her cigarette-smoking husband Leston. With simple gestures, Lott uses Leston's cigarette to stand for the dialogue he is unable to speak. He twirls the brim of his hat by a hospital bed, and no dialogue is needed. Like many wives, Jewel knows how to read her husband's silent gestures and the reader understands their simple and undeniable love.
Fact is I met this author at a conference in Geneva -- was fortunate to take a workshop with him, but for some reason I had not read this stunning novel until now. His inscription says he hopes I'll enjoy this tale of a mother's love. Indeed I did. And if I am lucky enough to meet him again, I'll suggest he add to that inscription -- a mother's, a daughter's, a wife's love, and in fact a city's love for its people and reluctant but certain progress a place like LA is known for. This novel made me proud of California and its public education, despite its many challenges, even now. I'd put Lott in the same camp with Stegner, in his importance among California writers. And that's just a bonus.

I almost quit this book at least 3 different times but I kept on reading. I had to struggle just to read the last 10 pages as well.

First the good points: The topic interested me greatly when I read the back cover. I like to read about stories set in the South that involve family relationships. Additionally, what made this book unique was it revolved around the challenges in raising Brenda Key, a Down Syndrome girl, in the South during the 50's and 60's. Also, there are a few touching moments between Brenda Kay and her other siblings. They treated her so well with such maturity I was amazed.

Now the not so good points: It was extremely slow moving. For such an emotionally charged topic, I felt little emotion reading the book. No kinds of tugs on my heart strings, no tears, no contemplation, etc. I did not feel much emotion towards any of the characters, even Jewel. She kept getting on my nerves how pushy she was about everything. I did not understand Leston or their marriage. I was touched with a few scenes with Brenda Kay and her siblings (one of my good points), yet the siblings seemed so fake. Having a mother give all of her energy to one sibling, no matter the circumstances, should have involved some instance of jealously and then guilt for feeling jealous. Especially considering the family became so poor caring for Brenda Kay. Never once did any of the siblings display any of those feelings that I would consider understandable. And lastly, what was up with all the typos?

Jewel is the first-person story of the life (the entire life) of a woman raised in the deep south in the early part of the 20th century. The book moves along through Jewel's life from childhood through to the end of her life, intermittently moving back and forth from present to past, to tell the details of her experiences. Jewel has many tough times, but the book primarily focuses on how her life changes when her sixth child is born with Down's Syndrome. The characters in the book are engaging, and I applaud the male author for so thoroughly exploring the emotions of the female lead. However, the book is long, and given the time and place where it is set, repeatedly uses words that make you cringe to read (the "n" word, retarded, etc.). All-in, however, an interesting novel.

An absolutely wonderful, moving story about family. The love, loyalty, sacrifices that they make for each other. I would recommend this book to everyone.

I read this book the month Oprah picked it for her book club. My now 9-year-old daughter was just a baby at the time, and she has Down syndrome. I knew that it would be something I could read and even get on the show for talking about. And sure enough, I almost did! I got a call from a producer from the show and discussed the book for half an hour before I sent off a picture of myself to him. I was quite disappointed when I got beat out for appearing on the show by a woman who had GIVEN UP HER BEAUTIFUL DS BABY FOR ADOPTION! I was appalled. It just sickened me that the show took almost the entire discussion time focusing on this one woman, the exception to most mothers, who decided that even after trying so hard to get pregnant, that she simply couldn't mother an "imperfect" child. I sent a letter to Bret Lott telling him how sorry I was that that had happened to him. I got a postcard back from him later. I met him recently at a book reading he did at our local university and caught up with him. I was amused to read an essay he had written about the whole frustrating experience he had on the Oprah show. I had to say, I somewhat understood!!
In terms of the book, it was beautifully written and a tribute to a determined grandmother who raised a child with Down syndrome in a time when it just wasn't done at home.