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Punainen Puutarha (2012)

by Alice Hoffman(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Gummerus Kustannus Oy

review 1: The red Garden by Alice HoffmanI enjoyed the way Ms Hoffman chose to tell the facinating history of a small old town in Massachusetts, first called Bearsville and then Blackwell. Telling the story through the generations that lived there and how they connected with a special garden with red soil. The people’s lives we read about in the town give only a small glimps into the town as a whole but their stories are compelling. The only reason I gave the The Red Garden a 4 star rating was that it was difficult to leave the characters of the present generation and move on to reading about the next without having a complete resolution to the stories of the characters I was currently reading about. There are often clues and snippets of knowldege gleened from the stor... moreies that take place later but not enough for my nosey nature!
review 2: I'm very conflicted about this book. At times I really liked it, and at times I really hated it. If I could be more specific with my star rating, it would be 2.5 for this reason. I loved the overall voice of the book. The writing was beautiful. I found myself getting lost (in a good way!) in some of the chapters. What I hated about this book was how confusing the relationships were from chapter to chapter. Each chapter intertwined with others. The main character of one chapter may be the deceased grandmother of the next. It's an interesting concept, but very difficult to keep track of on one's own. I was reading it on a Kindle, so I found myself trying to reference backwards to remind myself...that was not worth the clicking! I eventually gave up on trying to draw all of the connections together and instead just took each chapter for what it was, knowing that the families all tied back to the founder's of the city. One other frustration in the book was the weird cameos. Johnny Appleseed took a chapter then Emily Dickenson had one. These weren't needed, and if anything, I feel like they distracted from the overall story. So at this point, it sounds like I hated it, which I didn't, there were just a few things that the author could have changed to make the overall reading experience better. less

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