This is one of my all-time favorite books. It's a book that changes one's perspective on people and walking a mile in other's shoes before judging. Did your school have one or two or maybe more kids that were just "off" -- easy targets for bullies and even kids who usually seemed nice? In this book the main character's name isn't even mentioned until the end because she's someone who is constantly minimized ... or even worse, unnoticed.

Dit is echt een donker boek.
Ruth vertelt haar levensverhaal. Ze woont in een klein dorpje in de staat Illinois, met haar moeder May, haar vader Elmer en haar broer Matt.
Ze heeft geen gelukkig leven. Ze zijn nogal arm, en Ruth krijgt niet veel kansen in haar leven. Haar broer Matt echter, die een wiskundig genie is, wordt door iedereen geholpen om vooruit te komen in het leven.
Er zijn veel spanningen in het gezin, mede doordat met steeds gebrek lijdt. Ruth krijgt totaal geen opleiding, wordt op school steeds in de laagste klassen gezet etc. Ze is niet dom, maar heeft totaal geen educatie gehad.
Als Ruth 8 is, verlaat Elmer het gezin, en moeten May en de kinderen het alleen zien te redden.
Als na een tijd Matt de kans krijgt om aan een universiteit te gaan studeren met een beurs, blijven alleen May en Ruth achter in Honey Creek. Eigenlijk is het enige leuke in Ruth's leven het contact met haar tante Sid, met wie ze regelmatig correspondeert.
Ruth ontmoet Ruby, een nietsnut van een jonge kerel, die al heel wat op zijn kerfstok heeft en te lui is om te werken. Maar Ruth is blind voor zijn tekortkomingen.
Na enkele maanden verkering trouwen ze, en omdat ze weinig middelen van bestaan hebben, blijven ze bij May inwonen. Ruth en May werken in een stomerij.
Tussen May en Ruby botert het totaal niet.
Als Ruth zwanger wordt, betert de situatie een beetje, maar als Justy geboren is, wordt het eigenlijk alleen maar erger. May eist het kind helemaal voor zich op, en vooral Ruby krijgt nauwelijks de kans om iets met zijn zoon te doen, May scheldt hem herhaaldellijk uit dat hij niet in staat is om voor een kind te zorgen of het te onderhouden.
Enkele jaren kabbelt het leventje van deze personen zo verder, tot er een dramatische uitbarsting volgt....

Het boek leest vlot, is simpel geschreven, eigenlijjk net zoals een dagboek van Ruth er zou kunnen uitzien. Ruth kan scherp de karakters van de mensen in haar omgeving beschrijven, waaruit blijkt dat ze niet dom is. Ik vind dit eigenlijk op een prachtige manier weergegeven.
Toch kan ik het boek maar 3 sterren geven, vooral omdat het nogal traag loopt, en er weinig spanning in zit, tot op het einde. Alhoewel dat het verhaal wel realistisch maakt natuurlijk, het leven van mensen die in zo'n situatie zitten is meestal niet spannend, maar ontzettend saai.

I first read Hamilton's The Excellent Lombards several years ago and really enjoyed it. I had the pleasure of meeting the author and discussing her talent for creating characters that come alive off the page.

This book is her first novel, and it showcases the foundation of her talent. Tragic, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

Noir par excellence.

The book just lost me, despite the picturesque, but dark dragging and dragging and dragging and dragging and dragging prose. No oomph. No spirit.

The first third of the book had me excited. The next third had me counting the pages. The last third was just more of the monotonous same. How long should we wait before the paint will dry on this wall of misery?

So Ruth was born in misery, which means Ruth will die in misery. The end. Just like that. And the pity party will remain in full swing, because she wants it to.

Not for me. Maybe Erskine Caldwell spoiled me as a reader. There's sadly no comparison. Between the beginning and end some masterful prose got wasted.

And that's it.

the ending just scarred me for life and im not surprised, it was going to happen anyway. this novel will forever be close to my heart. a mother daughter relationship is so complex it hurts to see ruth go down a path that i knew as a reader will not go well but hamilton makes me feel that theres just no other choice and that as a reader i could only hope that ruth can pick herself again for the nth time :(

Gritty. But so is life. I ponder if I'd have handled my life any better if born into that setting. Probably not. We, who are born into a life of privilege and high functioning, assume that those who aren't somehow "deserved" it and can climb out if they wanted to. A quote I heard haunts me, "He was born on third base but thought he hit a triple." May I extend more kindness and grace to the Ruths I meet.

This is Jane Hamilton's first novel and it is a whopper. It's the story of a small-town girl and her struggles with growing up with a mother who's lost any compassion or sweetness and a brother she can't relate to. This girl, Ruth, despite an intelligence that she's unaware of and so is everyone else, ends up marrying a dangerous, drug-riddled fellow. Throughout the story, which lags at times in Ruth's simple cadence, there are bits of foreshadowing of some life-changing, terrible day. So you keep reading through 300 pages and the book's nearly finished and then it's there, and you're suprised and shocked and saddened even though you knew this terrible day was coming. It doesn't exactly sneak up on you, this moment, but it does kind of knock you out.

Hamilton, as with later books including A Map of The World, is good at writing about terrible things, trials of the soul. A drowned child in that case. I won't spoil this one for you.

It's worth a read because it takes you into a life you'd probably never experience or imagine, and the language is beautiful.

I gave this book four stars, but I can't say I actually enjoyed it. I turned the pages out of a compulsive voyeurism, the way one might stick one's ear against the wall to eavesdrop on the dysfunctional family next door. It's not that you enjoy hearing the domestic violence break out--the screams, the profanity, the smashing of hurled glassware. You just can't bring yourself to turn away, let alone turn up your own radio to drown it out. Shhh. Quiet! They're at it again!

I agree with some of the other commentators here that none of the characters was particularly likable. Not even Ruth herself, whom I would have respected if she didn't have such appalling taste in men. I found myself pleading with her. "He's bad news, Ruth! He's a loser! You can do better!

She didn't listen. They never do.

What most impressed me about the book was the voice of the narrator. The author pulled off an exceedingly difficult trick: she wrote from the first person perspective of a character far less educated than she herself is, and yet it was both a) totally believable and b) not a painful literary abortion.

She pulled this off so smoothly that it's almost unnoticeable. It's so easy to believe that you are hearing the story directly from this poor uneducated young woman, without reflecting on the fact that she managed to write a book, something most privileged college-educated upper middle class academics will never accomplish in spite of their misplaced belief that they could do so easily.

If you are looking for something entertaining and uplifting, I'm afraid I couldn't recommend this, because if you don't find it depressing and disturbing, I think there is something seriously wrong with you. But as far as a lesson on the craft of storytelling, you could easily teach an entire course around it. Hamilton is a masterful craftswoman and I learned a lot from reading it, but I didn't exactly enjoy the experience. Then again, I didn't enjoy quite a lot of classes I've taken in my life, and I didn't learn as much in most of them.

I only read this book for a Book Club....and I ended up not even going to the meeting cause I couldn't finish the book. It was just sooooo painstaking to read about such respressed people and their depressing lives. I almost convinced myself to quit, but since I always finish a book I start I mustered the energy to find out what happens to Ruth. Which I found to be absolutely exasperating because nothing worth reading ever happens to her!

Now, put all of that above aside for a moment....I will give Ms. Hamilton some credit about her construction of the characters, because I did get a deep sense of their individual make up. By the end I sympathized with the character's dispositions. Ruth, her mother and Ruby are very similar in so many ways....it felt like their lives were a vicious cycle of deficiency and resentment.

I do not recommend this book if you are already feeling depressed!

I am really surprised by all of the negative reviews of this book. I think it is so strange that the characters are discounted as "white trash", their story thus, uninteresting or too dreary. While the story is by no means a happy one it is highly engrossing and worth telling. Hamilton's narrator Ruth is by turns despairing and joyful of life and Hamilton's writing manages to be lyrical and poetic, blunt and simple at the same time. I personally like to connect with other people, to imagine what it would be like to live in their skin, to know what forces shaped them into being who they are. This includes "white trash". The story is very realistic and you come away feeling like you have read truths, if not about fictional characters then real people somewhere out there who are experiencing very similar lives. If you are the type of person who is only happy reading stories that end happily-ever-after then steer clear of this book. But if you are like me and can also find beauty and meaning in even the most tragic tales then I highly recommend it.

My Original Notes (1997):

Very, very good! I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, so much so that I bought her second book, A Map of the World.

The novel wasn't very uplifting and kind of depressing at times. However, it was so well written, I could't put it down.

Disturbing and beautiful.

My Current Thoughts:

I have no recollection of this book, which is a shame since it's one I apparently enjoyed.

After all last month in the company of, how can I put this delicately, white trash (with the insupportable Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom) I got my hands on this, another American Family tragedy. As much as I loathe Norman Rockwell portraits, inversely I adore AmFamTs. Andre Dubus III, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth…they are ALWAYS welcomed in my bookshelf. This, a “first novel,” seems like a breeze to read since its protagonist is, according to those that surround her, “slow.” Theme & form are the same, & maybe that is too much of a cop out. Lazy writing, just because the main character is slow, make the associations stark, and interesting more often than not. I’ve read stuff like this before (She’s Come Undone, The Patron St. of Liars, White Oleander… more…)

The ending seems a long way coming. The mystery of why the narrative is even told takes a while to simmer, finally boiling over in a scene that is 10% Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics,” 20% Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures" & 70% John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” So: good enough.