Mary Beth Keane

This story swells with intensity—the setting, the characters, the plot—it is both hauntingly familiar and foreign. Reading it was like looking through a family’s Polaroids—different snapshots, different moments—and then rewinding the VCR tape to discover how each particular tableau came to be.

The NY-Irish-1970s atmosphere set the stage, but it’s the relationships that really birth all the epic emotions you experience while reading this book that spans 4-5 decades of life. Oh, the relationships in this book—they broke my heart, they mended my heart, again and again. Francis and Lena, Francis and Katie, Kate and Peter, George and Peter, Peter and Anne, Francis and Brian. I just love them all. In this sweeping drama, so much happens: Childhood innocence gives way to harsh life trajectory changes. Unforgivable actions give way to merciful forgiveness. Abandonment happens. Addiction is suffered. Atonement is sought. But in the end, this is a story about family and love and forgiveness; it’s an answer to the question:“What gets more weight? The good or the bad?” (311)… (altro)

The is the first book that Mary Beth Keane book wrote. I have read the last 2 which were excellent so I thought I would read this one. You can see her growth as a novelist when you compare this book to her later ones. The story is an interesting one. It is about a family living in an isolated part of Western Ireland. It also brings into the story the travelers who are itinerant people like the gypsies. Greta and Johanna are sisters who live a hard life in a village with. just 2 remaining families. Michael is part of the Traveler community that comes into their lives. Keane spends a large part of the book developing the story while they are all in Ireland. I thought that this part moved very slowly. Eventually, the three of them go to United States. This is taking place in 1963 but the book moves back and forth in time. Once they all get to New York the story moves at a better pace, but Keane still gets bogged down in too much detail. It is a worthwhile story of Irish immigration and the positive and negatives aspect of family. It also makes you feel better about your own life when you see what people who struggle every day have to deal with. This is a book you might want to read after you have read her most recent ones which I think are much better. Glad I read it because I learned something and it allowed me to see an author that I really like in the beginning of her career.… (altro)