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This author's work I have read quite out of order. But I liked this one much better than "Road Ends". It's 4.5 star level in its characterizations all around. Yes, my favorite of this Northern Ontario locale of hers that I have read. We know 3 or 4 families well at Crow Lake this time, but we know the narrator's family the most deeply. Smart people, and some like Matt are still their own worst enemies in the anxiety their smarts seem to inflame about their future.
Kate is not my favorite class of narrator/protagonist (rather a whiner and selfish to the bone core), but we are lead to an understanding of what it looks like from her perspective. Luke was drawn so well, and Bo was captured in words just superbly.
This isn't a happy tale, and there are multiple types of dysfunction and suffering. And yet this book was not a downer over all. There were two or three people that kept it from being far more than just a conceited tale of "how I made good while the others blew it" junket that you get all the time now in the moderns. As if financial success and educational superiority tips all the scales for self-satisfaction.
I loved the way this one ended, with some realizations to rock the insular reserve. There was much to think about after reading this book. Especially about what neighbors mean to people in different places and different time periods. I would like to discuss this one in a book group with Returning Adult program college students with a medium age of 48-52, or in that category of schooling, even if not in the older bunches. Because there are some assumptions about schooling and intellect and intelligent pursuits here, from that time or any time period, that are realistically way off.
Kate is not my favorite class of narrator/protagonist (rather a whiner and selfish to the bone core), but we are lead to an understanding of what it looks like from her perspective. Luke was drawn so well, and Bo was captured in words just superbly.
This isn't a happy tale, and there are multiple types of dysfunction and suffering. And yet this book was not a downer over all. There were two or three people that kept it from being far more than just a conceited tale of "how I made good while the others blew it" junket that you get all the time now in the moderns. As if financial success and educational superiority tips all the scales for self-satisfaction.
I loved the way this one ended, with some realizations to rock the insular reserve. There was much to think about after reading this book. Especially about what neighbors mean to people in different places and different time periods. I would like to discuss this one in a book group with Returning Adult program college students with a medium age of 48-52, or in that category of schooling, even if not in the older bunches. Because there are some assumptions about schooling and intellect and intelligent pursuits here, from that time or any time period, that are realistically way off.
