This beautiful novel (highly recommended by my wife) is narrated by a precocious 11-year-old girl, a lover of words, stories, and books who lives with her single mother in upstate New York, near Utica. She befriends an "old man," an illiterate immigrant metalworker who lives in a trailer court. He is in nearly every way her opposite: illiterate, a man of few words, but a keen observer of the beautiful and practical. She comes to admire him and sees herself as his apprentice in understanding the world. She herself understands her world through stories, and when she doesn't understand something, she makes up a story to make sense of it. Her mother refuses to tell her anything about her father, her grandfather (who was driving her mother to the hospital for her birth when they got caught in a blizzard and turned over the truck in a ditch), or the twin sister who was stillborn at the time. She is obsessed with all of that and creates stories that she comes to see as the truth. I'm pretty sure that there's much more here than I was able to discern, but it's a work of beauty.

This book was not for me at this time. I typically enjoy quirky characters and books that require reading each word, but I was looking for a quick read this time. McGhee did a good job setting a scene and creating solid characters. This is not a book for readers looking for a happy ending. There are answers provided for questions being asked but this is not a sunny, cheery book.

Again this author is incredibly talented with her writing style. The characters are revealed with such descriptions that you become deeply involved.. this story is sweet, heartbreaking and one to remember.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The narrator is supposed to be twelve years old, looking back to a year earlier. She's an odd, precocious child obsessed with her unknown father and grandfather and her twin sister, who died when she was born (her mother, who seems until the very end cold and unemotional, refuses to tell her anything). I bought some of the dialogue and characterization, but some of it went just too far to believe. I know smart, precocious, odd children with difficult family backgrounds, but they're still kids. This one sounded too much like an adult trying to be a kid. Her obsessions were also a little boring to read about when they were repeated over and over.

beautiful storytelling, i fell in love with clara winter and all her stories. i would love this to be a film much like the little prince

This story is told from the perspective of an 11 year old girl, so it is often hard to get past some of the "elementary" language the author uses. I don't know many 11 year olds who speak like Claire does, but then again, the child is a strange one. The story itself is interesting enough to follow and the relationship Claire has with the "old man" is very touching. Claire's mother keeps a lot of secrets from her daughter, which is the whole basis for the story. All in all, not a bad book, the Today Show picked it as on if its book club books. I just sometimes had a hard time with the choices the author made for the language of an 11 year old.

Difficult to read as it's literally written from the perspective of a child whose thoughts repeat themselves throughout the chapter and book. Glad I finished it only for the sake of finishing what I started. I guess the lesson from this book is to tell the truth to a child and don't hide secrets because the child is wrought to know to the point of becoming obsessed and will develop unique ways in coping. Secrets just don't work. Mom should've just told her daughter all about her twin sister that died during delivery in a vehicle in the middle of a snowstorm thanks to the poor judgment of her father who Mom is bitterly estranged from. The fact the daughter befriends an old man and touches him in a way so the weekly visits are both symbiotic and mutual is sweet. Of course it has to end in some heroic way with the old man dying due to the girl's rashness.

I actually couldn't even finish this book. I tried hard to keep myself interested but I eventually gave up and moved on to something else. The writing isn't necessarily bad as much as it is unimaginative. The common theme rests in the over used sentence from the book (not a verbatim quote, but the gist is) 'you might think someone my age doesn't know blah blah blah but I do.' That got old pretty quickly. So, if you've got the patience to read a book written by, and apparently about, someone that thinks she's much more special than she is - by all means pick this one up. If however, you find that sort of thing irritating, go ahead and pass it by.

This was a very enjoyable, engaging read. The protagonist is an eleven-year-old girl named Clara winter (she prefers to give her last name a small w, and she has her reasons), who is extremely clever, and a bit of a word freak. You will like her, I promise. She does not have many people in her life, a fact she endeavors to understand, but she has many imaginative theories. In fact, Clara's creative mind gives birth to a multitude of stories about everyone and everything around her. Her persistence and enthusiasm is adorable, charming, and, it turns out, precipitates what she needs to move on and grow up to be the amazing person she will be.

Incredibly well-written, interesting writing. Too bad this engaging, descriptive narrative is wasted on an incessantly annoying main character and a circuitous, repetitive story that takes the reader on a journey to nowhere.

The last third of the book is well written, finally getting to the point. Unfortunately, the first two-thirds, in an attempt to build up to the "climax" of sorts, is repetitive and painful to read. While I understand what the author was trying to do, the book leaves you wishing it was all as thoughtfully put together as the final third.

On a whim, I picked up this book at a library book sale. Not my usual choice in books so I was leary when I started it, and even more so when I read what other's thought of it. After a few chapters in I was hooked. I loved the main character Clare winter. Clare, an eleven-year-old way beyond her years was a breath of fresh air. I know there were others who felt the character was not a believable child character, however I found it to be quite refreshing and reminicent of characters in earlier literature. Her passion to learn of Georg the elderly immigrant in the town and the relationship that they developed warms the heart and encourages the reader to not take anything for granted. I was quite shocked as the story developed to find there was a mother/daughter undertone to this book which blossomed nicely at the end. It is a lovely coming of age story of a girl who is looking for answers so she doesn't have to make so many up on her own.