The first warning, of course, is the pre-printed "O" proudly gazing from the upper right hand corner of Bret Lott's novel Jewel: the significant stamp of Oprah, a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League.

Jewel, which suffers from the same florid prose employed by Janet Fitch (author of White Oleander, another Oprah Pick Of Death), is the "epic" story of a woman from rural Mississippi who gives birth to a girl with Down's Syndrome. We follow Jewel through every quiet and inconsequential moment of her life, each of which is laden with Important Symbolism that inspires to make the reader feel moved to tears, but instead inspires boredom with its mawkish, sentimental tone.

The book ostensibly follows the titular character as she struggles with the highs and lows that accompany raising her developmentally disabled daughter, Brenda Kay, a character who never quite transcends the nascent, cloying vignettes given to her. Her interactions with siblings are saccharine sweet and not even remotely believable: everyone has the patience of a saint around Brenda Kay and, in a sweeping, Lifetime Made For TV Movie manner, all learn the true meaning of family and compassion through their little sister. Gag.

Lott's writing is so predictably bland, so sentimental, that it often comes very close to being a parody of good writing. Every detail of Jewel's life is rendered in painful detail, her every thought captured in a hazy but overly-analyzed snapshot. At the "climax" (a term I will use very, very loosely here) of the book, she is among the sheets of wash hanging in her backyard, a location she chooses to have a pithy recollection of her deceased father and to scrutinize the actions of her stalwart husband. As she ruminates, she touches the sheets and gazes into a middle distance, both of which are supposed to be Significant but come off as Irrelevant and Obvious.

These pretentious strokes would be made more tolerable if Lott's favorite artistic flourish wasn't stringing multiple verbs together after a single subject and/or creating a list of actions that devolves the story into minutia:

"Her eyes were still closed, her lips still quivering, and I snuggled her close, my nipple hard and ready, a drop of clear wet poised at the tip, and then my baby took me in, started life, taking from me what I was glad to give." (p. 55-56)

WHAT?! That sentence is worthless.

Even worse is the snail's pace at which the book meanders. Nearly 100 pages pass before Brenda Kay's disability is revealed, purely because Lott feels the need to complicate the story with background information about Jewel, none of which provides much more insight into her character. It is simply a device used to pad out a story so basic it could have been a charming and potentially powerful novella.

So why am I giving Jewel two stars instead of one? The sequence of vignettes that makes up the family's time in California is actually incredibly interesting. Here the essence of the story is captured and some of the characters become slightly more sympathetic.

Then it tumbles back into hogwash.

Jewel is a story of one woman's life. An ordinary story of the day to day life of Jewel, a daughter, granddaughter, wife, and mother, who starts life in the backwoods of Mississippi. She has 5 healthy children and then her 6th child is born and all is not right. She is a Downs Syndrome child. Her devotion to her child who is both her burden and God's singular way of smiling on her is the just of this story. I found it beautiful but sad, uplifting but defeating. It is the story of how quickly one's life can change. How an unforeseen event can set us on a course without reason. A very good story!!

Jewel, from the backwoods of Mississippi, is a force of nature, and nothing is going to get in the way of her God-ordained salvation in the form of her mission and trial to transform her youngest child's life by moving her entire family from the rank swamps of the bayou to sunny California. This is a story of the fierceness of maternal love and fidelity. Leston, the husband and father, as well as the other children are, to one extent or another, collateral damage in this epic, decades-long war in which Jewel sees either complete victory or utter defeat as the only options. The story is heart-rending, but the writing sometimes was disjointed and the flashbacks oddly placed which hurt the pace and pathos of the narrative.

This guy can flat-out write! I found myself rereading many paragraphs simply to savor their beauty. He has a lot to say about motherhood, parenting, family, and ultimately, life. Although it bogged down some in the middle, it earned the elusive 5th star from this reader. Poignant yet powerful.

I really enjoyed the beginning and end to this book- the middle for me was extremely slow and I kinda just powered through it. Like most people say, Lott’s writing is beautiful and he’s very skilled in weaving different themes throughout the whole story.

"I wanted to know again what it felt like to be a child, the life you planned for yourself lined up and ready to be played out in whatever way you wanted, perfect joy in the belief your life was in your own hands." pg. 277
*
I never planned to read this book actually. One day, my lil bro brought it to my home from his school and i thought, maybe i should give it a chance--only to see how good the story was.
*
The pace was a bit slow in the beginning of the story. I didn't really like the flashback of Jewel's life as a child, it just gave me bored and yawns most of the time. But i kept reading though and found the story more and more interesting.
*
The struggle, the battle that Jewel did for her down's syndrome daughter has warm my heart, brought tears to my eyes sometimes. I was feeling blue everytime i finished each part of it. You know it was a good book when you learned new perspective from the story the author gave. And i got mine from this.
*

This is one of my very favorite books of all time. I LOVED it after the first page because of the shear brilliance and flow of the writing. It's pure poetry. Some author's have a God-given talent and I think Mr. Lott is one of them. The main character is a strong, determined woman, not without flaws. She's made all the more amazing when you keep thinking that a man wrote this story from a woman's perspective. I'm always amazed when a man can truly capture the spirt, heart and feelings of a woman so accurately. This is a story that touched my heart and takes place in the deep South and later in California in the 1960s. It is raw and powerful at times and deeply touched my heart.

I liked this book. I *really* like the prose style of the author. I just didn't much like the story line, hence the 3 stars, rather than more. If I could, I'd give the author 5 stars for writing style, and 2 stars for story line. It just didn't much go anywhere. I kept reading because I felt like there was going to be a point made, somewhere along the line, but it never made it.

What really bugged me was a male author, writing from the first person perspective of a woman. I don't know why this should matter, but it really got on my nerves. The story would have been interesting from the first person perspective of the father, too. Why didn't he write it this way?

I didn't get this book at all. What I *did* get is how very much this author hates Mississippi! That came through, loud and clear.

I stayed up a little later than usual to finish reading Jewel last night. Not that the ending was so riveting but I was just so close to it, I wanted to finish. There were two important plot lines running here. The main story told of Jewels sixth and final child being born into a family that welcomed her despite the tough times in 1940's Mississippi. Jewel herself, having been orphaned at age eleven, lived for her family.

The second and more sensitive storyline had to do with what I'm going to call word usage. It's a part of the book I'd like to gloss over or ignore, but it really can't be ignored in this book. I do know I was shocked and slightly offended by the repeated usage of a word that at that time was acceptable. Over the course of my years, I'd heard the terms change several times myself and to this day, I'm not sure what the correct or preferred term is and I don't need a term or word to describe any nationality. I think of people as people first and make note of their nationality only in passing. Oprah is Oprah, Tyra, Tyra and Dr. Phil is Dr. Phil. I think most people are proud of their heritage and their history should never be forgotten. Just like we don't forget the sacrifices of the veterans and their families, we shouldn't forget the hardships of our ancestors in getting us to where we are today. I think the many blended families will go a long way in creating even more unity in America but those are only my thoughts and what, really do I know?

Pretty sensitive stuff for a book review, it made me wonder what Oprah thought. Maybe I'll check the other reviews out later, these being only honest thoughts from my small realm of experience. So that is the theme that ran under the story of Brenda Kay and Jewel. Interesting enough, Jewel would not have her baby daughter called Mongolian Idiot and would not allow that word spoken in her presence.

Yes, Brenda Kay, Jewel's final baby had Down Syndrome. It was predicted by her long time friend Cathedral that this baby would be her trial in life. Instead, Jewel devoted the rest of her life to Brenda Kay, everyone else in the family taking a back seat. They all seemed to understand though and even when Jewel decided she needed to move the family to California so Brenda Kay could get the help she needed in a special school, her husband finally gave in and went.

A story of slow sacrifice, devotion, enlightenment and neglect, it showed at the very end, the pride and satisfaction of a 'special needs child' is in the simple joy of daily routine and small achievements. I still don't know if any of the terms I use are correct.

2.5

I started this book years ago during my "Read every single book from Oprah's book club" stage. Looking back now I realize that I really enjoyed some of them but I didn't finish quite a few of them. I picked this one up a few weeks ago, skimming through it to refresh my memory as best I could and then finished reading it.

This book takes placed in Mississippi in 1943. Jewel who already has five children finds herself pregnant with her sixth child. The baby, Brenda Kay is born with Down's Syndrome. The family is devastated but Jewel is determined to do whatever she can to make Brenda Kay's life easier.

I've gone back and forth rating this one. I just had a really hard time connecting with Jewel. I admired her in some ways but really had an issue with some of her decisions. That being said I respected the fact that she wanted the best for her child and would do anything to make that happen.

I'm glad I went back and finally finished this one but in the end I just felt like something was missing and I couldn't get past many of Jewel's actions and her ego.

Thank goodness that I now have Goodreads to find new books to read.

I finished this book a week ago and have had a hard time deciding my review. A a mother of a special need child I found to hard to understand Jewel' s decisions she made in raising her daughter. Yes indeed it is very difficult when raising a special needs child but you have to put aside your feeling and do what is right for the child with professionals. With Jewel I didn't get that from this book at all. The decisions were based on what she wanted, like getting out of Mississippi, and not considering her husband and other children. Overall I thought it was a dark and ad book. Another question I had was regarding the author.

This was a great book about the growing relationship of a mother to a special child. I enjoyed this.