I don't really know what to say about this book now. Will I remember it a year from now? Not sure. But it did keep me reading. Throughout the story, Alice and Howard were both given their own voices, but were also spoken about by each other. It surprised me that seeing Alice from inside her head was much different from seeing her through Howard's eyes. He saw her self-assurance and strength of personality, her unique individuality, while she saw her klutziness and inability to get things right. She saw him as being steady, reliable, consistent, whereas from inside he viewed himself as weak, full of doubts. You wouldn't have known Alice's version of Howard from his own... or vice versa.
Apart from the tragedy that stirs the plot, it was a good study of perspectives. At times I could feel the tenderness and love this couple had for each other - at times I was disappointed at how limited their knowledge and understanding of each other really was. It made me question how well it is really possible for us to know others. Do we ever get the full picture, or do we only get a bare skeleton of qualities, behaviors, communicated thoughts? Is what we see the true image or the caricature? Who sees us better: ourselves from inside, or others from outside? Was Howard's version of Alice more or less correct than her own self image?

Several years ago I noticed a copy of Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World and stuffed it into my bulging bag to purchase. I recognized it as having been a big seller and remembered hearing of Hamilton as a wonderful literary writer. Then the book sat on my shelf until recently when I had time between review books to explore a little. I hadn't noticed it was also an Oprah pick or I might not have bought it to begin with. I haven't had much luck with her book club choices.

As I opened the cover a couple weeks ago, I discovered a previous reader had left a post-it note: "An awful lot of introspective and retrospective in the beginning. Heats up a bit when trial and jail episodes are told." It was signed with the reader's initials. If that note hadn't been there, I think I would have given up on the story before I had gotten very far, but thanks to it I persevered.

To say I liked A Map of the World would be going too far. However, the story with all that introspection and retrospection made me think. I did get involved with the characters and the concept of how we have a tenuous grasp at best on our own lives, and in the blink of an eye it can all come spiraling out of control. A farm couple, Howard and Alice, struggling to make their living and working hard have two small daughters. They are friends with a couple who also have two daughters and one day while all four girls are at the farm, the friends' youngest daughter wanders away and drowns in their pond. Alice has a breakdown.

Alice has been working part-time as the elementary school nurse. A boy she dislikes who has been abused at home makes some accusations out of spite, and now the whole world has gone crazy in Alice's mind. Meanwhile, sensible, calm Howard can't seem to make sense of the world either.

This is no happily-ever-after story. In fact, I found it depressing reading at a time when I should have been reading cheerful stories. It's definitely food for thought though and I'm not sorry I stuck with it to the end. The quality of Hamilton's writing cannot be denied and I think my literary education is better for having read this book.

Alice and Howard live on the last family run dairy farm in Prairie Center, WI. Though the cookie cutter subdivisions are fast encroaching, the couple is content in raising their daughters in peace. Only Alice feels the watchful, judgmental stares of the townspeople. The book begins from Alice’s point of view. She is self conscious, always questioning her ability, her patience, and her will to be a mother. About 50 pages in her best friend’ daughter drowns in her pond under Alice’s supervision. What would normally be the main conflict of a story, here is just the beginning. It’s a spark that starts something oddly more traumatic than the death of a 2 year old girl. This is an engaging lesson on how misplaced guilt can destroy innocents, of how families can change over the course of suffering, of how the guilty are not always guilty, the innocent not always innocent, and about the long road of forgiveness.
tFlipping between perspectives of Alice and Howard, Hamilton creates a couple who are deeply connected, dependent on each other, in Love even, and yet unable to share their feelings and on the brink of loosing their marriage. After reading a slew of romance novels, their relationship seemed painfully realistic.

There is hardly anything more depressing than this story. I just couldn't face it in the end. Call me wacky, but I just didn't need to wade into a tale about three unhappy people, two of whom are having an affair, another of whom accidentally allows the other's child to drown in her creek and then goes to prison for it. Bleak? Just slightly. I understand that Sigourney Weaver played the prison woman in the film of the book. Appropriate. Her pinched, gaunt appearance was perfect for the way this book feels. Why is it that depressing tomes like this always get the acclaim? I suppose it deals with moral ambiguity. But don't people get enough of horrendous events in their real lives? Do they really need to soak in fictional misery as well? I dunno... Perhaps I've just had my fill of pointless, horrifying events that happen to regular folk. If you're going to paint me a desolate portrait, give it two heads and a donkey offspring or something. kthnxbye.

This one gets shelved under “rubber-necking.”

It is a horribly tragic story, that you cannot tear your eyes away from. It seems almost cruel, in a way, for the author to make us consider these poor people; the accidental death of a small child, followed by a legal crisis which threatens to tear a family apart, and then have to watch them pick up the pieces and limp onward. But as much as you criticize other people for doing it, you find yourself rubber-necking anyway.

Still, it is quite a good book. The writing is exquisite, and that is part of the allure. There is something to linger over on every page. And yet, due to the subject matter, it is unsettling. On the whole, it is as engrossing as it is excruciating.

This was a re-read for me, which is exceedingly rare. I read it back in the late 90s, and now almost 20 years later. I’ve had it on my shelf all these years, never tossing it during any of my shelf-purges because it has always held the undisputed status of “keeper.”

I’m glad I re-read it. I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago; for one thing I’ve become a mother in that time, so my reaction to the story is simply different than it ever could have been back then. I've changed as a reader; my copy is underlined in spots, and I kept thinking that I would have underlined entirely different passages this time around. While I still feel the book is quite good, I’d remembered it as being pitch-perfect, as not having wasted one word. This time I admit there were passages in the second half I felt were needlessly meandering. (But that’s a minor point.)

Also, I'll add here, it showed its age in the way Oprah Winfrey and her dopey talk show were used as a device. (Also a minor point, but let that be a lesson, budding writers.)

Most importantly, I remember now why I always eyed it cautiously sitting there on my shelf. The lasting impression was that, as good as it was, it left me feeling kind of hollow. And I found that to be true this time around as well.

Read at your own risk.

I finished this book only becuase I had started it. I am not going to pass this on to anyone as I would not recommend it.
Although I liked the story I did not like the writing style. I found the narrative wordy and found myself skipping over paragraphs that didn't advance the story.
Also, the story was a bit harsh - the people on the subdivision were made out to be mindless drones, "everyone" was against Alice - too black and white.

When I finished the book I read the paragraph about the author and wasn't surprised to see that it is from the same author as The Book of Ruth - another book I didn't care for. I have to stop picking up books just because they have Oprah's Book Club writtin on the cover.

Whether you love this book or not will depend upon a couple of things, one of them being whether you can tolerate being emotionally consumed by the plot and characters, even when the subject matter of each is heartwrenching. This is a painful book to read, but I give it five stars because I think the writer did a beautiful job of telling this painful story,and it happens to be a story that resonates with some of my worst fears. I suppose for me it fell into a category of book that lets me experience some of my worst fears realized through fiction, which will a) either dispel my fears by having lived through the vicarious experience, or b) through the vicarious experience better prepare me for any reality in which my worst fears might be realized.

I felt love for all of the characters, though I didn't always agree with their actions or responses. I think in this the book was unique as well. It forced me to consider the perspective of each of the main characters, and to put myself into their shoes, which in turn made me more accepting and less judgmental. I think this is a great value to the book as well. It was a reminder to me that people are often struggling with something beneath the surface, and that if we were to remember this truth we might be more loving and tender in our approach and assessment of people in general. I loved this book.

n  “I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident.”n

U međuvremenu sam saznala da već postoji film zasnovan na ovom romanu sa Sigurni Viver i Džulijen Mur, ali verujte mi, zovite Malika. Ko je gledao njegove filmove, razumeće zašto ga povezujem sa letom, farmom i ljudima koji, živeći svoju idilu, ipak duboko pate i sve im se menja iz korena nakon neočekivane tragedije, a kao što znamo, nesreća ne dolazi sama, te glavnu junakinju Alis optužuju za stvari koje nije počinila.
Džejn Hamilton mi je ovim romanom potvrdila da nije u stanju da donese lagane priče i ne treba jer zaista ima talenta da prenese ljudske emocije i psihu. Kao i u "Knjizi o Rut", i ovde su majčinska osećanja i spone sa decom centralna tema, mada se u svom drugom romanu ipak više fokusirala na gubitak i pokušaj da se dobije oproštaj, da se pronađe mir. Zapravo jako teško štivo koje ostavlja gorak ukus, ali koje nosi sa sobom mnogo ljubavi i neku neopisivu lepotu, jer je Džejnin stil u srži jednostavan i pitak, a nakon pročitane rečenice ipak ostanemo zatečeni i nije nam jasno kako je uspela da kaže nešto.

I suspect it may not survive the test of time that would call it literature, but it is a compelling read. It is told in the first person in three parts; first by Alice, then by her husband Howard, and then again by Alice. It is a story told from memory.

I once thought that memory was naturally coupled with understanding – with perspective. I have found that not to be the case. Despite the distance I can’t say now I have a clear sense of what happened last summer. I don’t know, either, if you can compare one thing to another, if a specific thing is actually like any other thing. The summer had been a test of some sort.

The Library of Congress catalogs it with several fiction descriptions:

Dairy Farms-Middle West
Farm Life- Middle West
Children-Death
Drowning

The drowning of a child happens in the first 20 pages, so that is not a spoiler. It is not the saddest story I have ever read, but most of it ranks somewhere in the upper part of such a list.

I have read Jane Hamilton before with her The Book of Ruth, but it was too many years ago that I don’t recall enough about it to know whether it was also filled with sadness. I sort of think it was. What I remember is that I was more than willing to read her again, and I can say that again now. Perhaps not soon, though.

I picked up A Map Of The World mainly due to the rave reviews posted on the cover and opening pages, several from prestigious media critics. I should have realized that this was also the case with The Memory Keeper's Daughter, another highly lauded book that I grew extremely depressed reading.

A Map Of The World is a story of a quick tempered, impetuous Alice Goodwin, mother of two girls, wife of a dedicated farmer, part time school nurses, who grows distracted for a few minutes one tragic morning while babysitting her friend's daughters. The loss of her best friend's daughter heralds not only pity and anger from the surrounding community, but a loss of a precious friendship for Alice, the fall from grace in the eyes of her husband and her family and a lawsuit accusing Alice of inappropriate behaviour with school children.

The pace of the novel is somewhat confusing. In the first chapter alone we are introduced to the protagonist and her family, the surrounding area and general life style, and we read about the unfortunate events that lead up to the death of a little girl. Despite the quick pace of the first chapter, I found the rest of the novel dragged. There was much smaller amounts of conversation compared to the descriptive nature of the writing. In that way I can compare this writing style to The Memory Keeper's Daughter, as both were extremely wordy; reading the scattered thoughts tumbling around in one's head does not necessarily make for a well written or interesting book.

So ultimately A Map Of The World commits the crime that I have suffered through with many other books: pretentious writing. I don't understand the writer's need to pen random sentences that aren't connected to anything else, then expect the reader to understand what is being put forward to them. In the end, I simply wished that Jane Hamilton had written more about the plot and the unspoken conversations that had occurred between the characters.

What kept me reading through to the last page was the premise of the novel: a clever plot that was simply not executed well. When dealing with legal matters of the courtroom, the discussions between the social workers and the aid society, the workings of the system and the response of people to each other in dire circumstances, heavy handed descriptions are nowhere nearly as useful as well constructed conversations that keep us aware of what exactly is going on.

Would I recommend this novel to anyone else? No, probably not. Even though, as I said, the premise itself was interesting, I simply didn't find the tempo of the novel satisfactory. What could have been a compelling read became a task. From now on, I will attempt to avoid picking up novels based on shining reviews from People.

Onvan : A Map of the World - Nevisande : Jane Hamilton - ISBN : 385720106 - ISBN13 : 9780385720106 - Dar 400 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 1992

This book follows a woman named Alice who grew up a bit lost, unbalanced and in need of a compass in life. Having lost her own mother at a young age and brought up by a friend of the family, Alice has difficulties making connections between actions and consequences, thinking that few things in her life have or will ever make sense. She marries Howard, her opposite, who is calm, stable and quiet, a dairy farmer. Alice finds that she is at her happiest living in the farm house with her husband and two children. However, under the surface she hasn't made peace with her past, and as events in her life eventually unravel, she comes to the point where she can't pretend any longer.

This book explores how people change under pressure, when their lives spiral out of control. It also explores forgiveness of self and others. In the end, a twist in the story occurs, allowing Alice a means of absolving her guilt. However, the story is not predictable, easy or moralistic. It is raw and believable, and Hamilton peels back the layers slowly so the reader can make their own connections. I would reccomend this book because of its honesty and grittiness.