Rita Leganski

I enjoyed reading about Bonaventure and his extraordinary gift but the heavy moralizing in this really weighed things down. The magical realism I expected was more like the mysteries of the rosary and the portrayal of the evangelical grandmother was unnecessarily mean. Also, I found the timeline hard to follow. The allusions to characters and events that weren’t revealed until later in the story were confusing and they made me think I’d missed something earlier in the book. At the end the author explains how this grew from a short story she wrote in graduate school - it shows. This has barely a short story's worth of plot and way too much back-and-forth filler.… (altro)

Reading this book was like tasting an exotic food I've never had before. You have that split second where your taste buds are indecisive, where it could go either way. But this book was rich and delicious. Lush and lyrical. Sometimes the lyrical prose was a little overpowering, trying too hard, and over-the-top, yet other times I read and reread a line because it was so beautiful. I highly recommend this story. Characters are well thought out and well drawn. It's a different kind of story. Magical in a believable way. It beckons you to lay aside your cynicism and believe in good magic, pulls you in. Heartwarming and heartbreaking at times. Great read for summer on the porch with the cicadas buzzing.… (altro)