I’ve read this a couple times years ago and simply loved it.

Perusing her other titles just makes me long for this one again—it’s been too long! I’ll be curious to see if I love it as much nowadays…

Growing up poor. I am reading this book for the second time. I read it a long time ago. This book goes deep into the heart and mind of a young woman growing up poor. Ruth writes of her trip through life. She is not retarded though her mother taunts her, telling her how stupid she is. Her father, Elmer, cared about her, Mother, Mary, drove him away with her constant complaining and criticizing. When a teenager, Ruth throws is at her about running her father off.

Ruth is a fascinating person, especially during her childhood. She tells of the world around her, she loves nature,beautiful glimpses of the beautify of the countryside around. As she becomes a teenager and adult she becomes somewhat bitter and disillusioned about life. The store is set in a small town in northern Illinois.

She writes of her mother's anger at life. The oldest child of eight and a girl, she grew up having to be the little mother, laundry, childcare. When grown she met the love of her life. He went to war in 1942, killed, May a widow. Then Elmer, Ruth's father who she married, that's what women did in those days. After Ruth, then Matt, her favorite who turned out to be a mathematical genius, who won a full scholarship and left never to return. Ruth is just Ruth, nobody special. May preferred boys.

Ruth begins to love good literature when as a teen, she sets up talking books and tapes for elderly, blind Mrs Finch who loved these books and turned Ruth onto them. Ruth is close to Aunt Sid, a gifted music teacher who lived a distance away. Possible if Aunt Sid, has she been more into Ruth's life she might never been thought retarded.

As I kept reading the book, May's constant complaining about life was tiresome and boring.

Ruth grows up and marries the first man who showed her and love and affection. She has no self confidence. Ruby is fun for Ruth like a big playful kid. He won't work, drinks too much, uses drugs and loves Ruth and Justy, his little boy. Ruth has a baby. May loves Justy, worries about, him, spoils him. Ruth feels if her mother had cared as much for her as she does for Justy, she might have turned out better. Mom loves boys better. Ruth has to become head of her small family, Ruby can't take charge, won't grow up, won't give up his bad habits. Ruby and May fight constantly. Matt and Aunt Sid were smart to run away from the small town, this family, this way of life.

Ruby goes to a counselor, a young woman, he has had so much trouble, caused so many problems in his life. The young lady tells him he should move his family out of his mother-in-law's home. He depends too much on her for food and shelter. He will not work, he cannot hold down a job, she pays the bills from her small paycheck as does Ruth. Ruth's best friend is Daisy, a good hearted tramp.

Ruth is not stupid, she hasn't had a break in life and needs to get as far away from these people and their lifestyles. She is quite intelligent and needs to give herself more credit.

This book was a journey through the life of Ruth Grey. There is a beginning, middle and an end of the book, but not her life. Almost, but not quite.

The journey allows us to see Ruth's family and her situation through her words. Who the people were, what happened to them, what happened to her - all are detailed and told in her own words. How she felt and what she thought comes through clearly and is beautifully written, even when she was not quite truthful to others. She idolized her Aunt Sid and although she wrote letters to her, starting in 3rd grade, she never told her the truth. Her truth was too painful to put into words.

Much of Ruth's painful journey through life with her mother brother and later, her husband was very sad, but some of it was very moving and funny. I loved how she described nature and things around her. Many times it was very quirky and unexpected.

She described her Aunt Marion as having "soft brown eyes almost as tender as a dead mouse's in a trap..."

Her mother was hard. She felt that she had a hard life and she was hard on her children, especially Ruth. She verbally abused Ruth and had seemed to have no love or use for her.

Ruth was teased and bullied in school her whole life, but she was not dumb or retarted as they all said and thought. She was very sensitive and kept her mouth shut, except to her special friend and neighbor, Mrs. Finch. Mrs. Finch was blind and Ruth used to go to her house every afternoon to load the tapes for the audio books that she listened to. Ruth listened too and the books and Mrs. Finch saved her from being completely isolated and uneducated. The books and her letters from her Aunt Sid kept her grounded and interested in learning although she seldom let on and was always in remedial classes in school.

After high school, Ruth went to work at the Fit 'N Trim Dry Cleaners and later was married and had a baby. What I really liked, was that Ruby had a reason for telling her story. She very carefully guided the reader along to make us aware of what she called warning signs. She felt that what happened to her should not have to happen again, so she wanted everyone to know.

I am glad she wrote her story and I am especially glad that I decided to read it.

To my subconscious:
We do not need to read this book again. Once was enough. I don't know why you decided to pull me toward it for a second go-round, but it stops here. Pick something nice next time.

Thanks ever so,
Cara

To my memory:
Exactly how did we manage to forget ever having read a book with such a grisly ending, for the entire book right up to the page before said grisly ending? Try to do better next time.

Most sincerely.

Not my cup of tea. This book is about the very hard life of a girl as she grows into a woman, and about how her immediate family and most of the world hated her, and mistreated her. "Retarded" is one of the nicer things her mother calls her. There are a very few people who treat her well: her Aunt, who she sees but once a year, a blind neighbor, a teacher. The writing is very well done, Ruth has an interesting voice, that grows as she does. In fact her literary voice is possibly the only "pretty" thing about Ruth. Unfortunately, I don't really like Ruth either. I don't care about her journey. I read about half the book, then read some Goodreads reviews when I added the book to my shelves here. I kept thinking that things would get better, there would be an uplifiting ending, a sense of growth, a real journey in Ruth's life. Apparently not. There was mention of a surprsingy dark event that happens near the end of the, with no real purpose, and again no subsequent growth. So I skipped ahead to that point and finished the book. I wish I had picked another book off the shelf of the home I am house sitting at, to read. This was a dissapointment.

I can't believe this was published in 1988 and I never read it! While sad and often depressing, this became a unique insight into Ruth's world. A completely disconnected mother, an aloof and distant brother she could not relate to, and a sad case for a husband makes for quite the family dynamic. Life is a continual struggle for Ruth and she sees no way out of it. The smallest things gave her the most happiness. We should take nothing for granted.

I was able to read this all the way through. Unfortunately, this wasn't for me. It didn't appeal to me. Sorry!

I shelved this book in 2007 when I bought it at a library booksale, and then spent the next 11 years carrying it around with me. Needless to say, it was past time for me to read it. I basically read it concurrently with The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, so a few of the plot details of the two books run together in my head, but I can easily and definitively say that I enjoyed this one the most out of the two books.

First, I really liked the writing style. Even when I wasn't feeling drawn in by the story, even when I was feeling reluctant to read it because of the darkness and sadness of it all, the writing would draw me in. Ruth's voice is fantastic. She felt so real to me, and I found a lot to admire in her. She had her dark moments, but she still spent so much of her time loving people and trying to understand them, even when they were cruel to her. Needless to say, I liked her a lot.

The story also made me think a lot about things. Not generally happy things, but important ones, like how much being poor can hurt you, like how important love is to children, like how little understanding we often have of those who are in different circumstances from ourselves. I won't say that I don't generally think of these things, but I don't usually read things that make me think of them in such a reality-based context, being primarily into fantasy. So, that was a novel experience for me.

However, I did have some quibbles. For one thing, the author makes heavy use of a trope that I honestly hate. In the very first chapter, she straight-out tells us that everything is going to go wrong, that terrible things are going to happen. Seriously, I hate when authors do that. It makes me instantly erect a defensive wall between myself and the characters, which is not what I want from my reading. Also, I did feel like the book was a little drawn out. I think that some of the build-up toward the end could have been cut out, and the book would have been just as powerful.

Still, this is one that I'm glad that I read. I'll admit, I have no desire to pick it up and go through the whole experience again, but I don't regret the time spent.

Hands down probably one of the most disturbing books I have ever read in my life. At the unexpected climax of the novel, I got physically sick reading the description and almost fainted. Fun. But that's one of the reasons this book is so special; Ms. Hamilton does not even hesitate in her honesty.

The characters in this novel are unforgettable. I would like Jane Hamilton to write six more books as sequels: Book of May, Book of Ruby, Book of Justy, Book of Aunt Sid, Book of Matt, Book of Daisy, you name it. Any of them would be just as fascinating, disturbing, dark, and honest as Book of Ruth.

Ruth is one of the most tragic characters I have ever read about. Her connections with nature and beautiful, complex metaphors show off her observation skills, and it's devastating to realize that she had just as much intellectual potential as her brother, except she didn't receive the right nurture and education. She is naive, and the reader sees everything through her eyes. I loved Ruby because Ruth loved Ruby, I pitied May because Ruth pitied May. There are so many interesting aspects to all the characters I feel the need to read the book again, as soon as I know I can stomach the ending.

It was well-written and psychologically astute. Painfully insightful about the characters and human nature. However, I usually gloss over 'challenging' books in favor of fluff. My life and work are challenging enough. By the end of the day, I'm ready to sit down with a book and let my mind roam while talking animals adventure with irreverent wizards.

The only time I end up tackling thoughtful modern literature is when I'm sick in bed; too sick to make it to the public library, with the kind of sinus congestion that makes reading downloaded books on my iphone unworkable. Then I turn to the stack of books on my nightstand that have been so moving that my friends and relatives have felt compelled to give me copies.

I lay, feverish and read these devastating critiques of human nature.

Sometimes I wonder if friends give me these books because they were so disturbed by the content that they needed to share the burden and thus diminish it.

It was a good book, well written. The plot and characters well executed. I will think about it for a long time. Now will someone pass me the tissues, the Nyquill, and something less dark and challenging?

The paperback edition has sat on my book shelf since its publication, yet anytime I picked it up to read the font size was too small for me to read comfortably. So I always put it back on the shelf. Today I checked out the audible version from Overdrive and listened to the story with such great appreciation not only for the writing, but the story, and of course, the narration, which was also fabulous.

Wonderful book, timeless treasure.

I admit that I purchased this book on a whim as I liked the title. The reviews also looked good and I could see that it was the winner of the Pen/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. I also thought that perhaps it was a modern day version of Ruth from the bible, which, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful Books there. However, that soon proved not to be the case.

Initially I thought the book was rather good. It had a rather humorous, odd and yet self-effacing way about it. However, after a while I just couldn't take this in at all; characters such as May, Matt, Ruby, etc. soon became very annoying.

I then skim read looking for something that I had perhaps missed in the book (as obviously so many people had liked it), and then sailed on to the end as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, I couldn't send it up into my Kindle "cloud" as I had purchased the paperback.

I personally found this rather non-linear book was all over the place. My poor just brain couldn't handle it unfortunately.

I'm looking at the cover now. I liked the cover photograph by Barry Marcus, and the cover design by Kathy Kikkert. So that's a blessing, of sorts.