The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Simply stunning. I can’t even find the words to explain why I loved every element of this book – but I did. I loved every character, especially the banter between George and Mehmet. I loved the two stories told together, I loved how they came together, and how they ended together.
Absolutely brilliant.
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’d give this 3.5 if I could.
It was hard getting used to the writing style, I find it incredibly pretentious to decide to not use quotation marks when characters are speaking. It’s also really annoying over a whole paragraph – so that in itself was enough to make me feel not as kindly towards this book as I could have.
However, the story was told so simply and beautifully that I managed to forget about the punctuation and enjoy the tale. It had a lovely pace, and was told in such a way that I felt those characters – like I knew them, because they were so close to how my grandparents behaved.
Having said that, the incredibly old-fashioned views asserted in the book really grated on me. Even for a small town, I couldn’t imagine that much gossip in a bad way. Also, Gene’s attitude was astounding and horrible to read. I ended up feeling for Jamie, and in a way understand Addie’s decision.
Louis was a wonderful character, and his role so underplayed by Gene, and even by Addie.
That’s what made this hard for me to like, the ending was so unsatisfactory on so many different levels. And I couldn’t really make sense of the rush at the end to have it that way – there was no build up for it and I just couldn’t get beyond that.
Beautifully written, but let down by a terrible story-arc in my opinion.
Ally Jane 