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Bound On Earth (2008)

by Angela Hallstrom(Favorite Author)

3.8 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0961496096 (ISBN13: 9780961496098)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Bentley Enterprises

review 1: I used to read more LDS fiction over a decade ago, but with full-time work and two small kids, I drifted away from it for a while. I was delighted to see Hallstrom make make many choices away from cookie-cutter characters and plot. First, she fragments the narrative by shifting time frames multiple times. This is actually more "natural" than a straight chronology. We learn about other people in the present as they unfold stories about their past to us. Also, she doesn't use an omniscient narrator or a single narrator. Multiple characters take turns telling the story of intersecting lives from their own point of view. Also, Hallstrom does a fairly good job of "showing" and not "telling." The midlife parents Nathan and Alicia do get a little preachy some times, but that's ... morethe nature of their character more than the novel's own attempt at moralizing. The novel works the best for me when I read about tensions in marriages and heartbreak over fertility and parenting. It's a little strained when Hallstrom takes on the voices of inactive or nonmember characters and when she adopts the voice of the matron of the clan -- an octogenarian widow. And the ending is a little too sentimental and dramatic for me, especially after the novel did so well to embrace understatement and subtlety otherwise. Nevertheless, I was glad to see a novel where things are much more muddled for LDS characters. These characters know that they love each other, but how to enact that love is a very unsure proposition. And the real power of this novel are the scenes where they struggle to find a way to embody that love.
review 2: So fun to read this book knowing that the author was my friend and neighbor! After getting over my awe that this was Angela's book, I fell into this story and thoroughly enjoyed it. This piece of fiction reads differently than most with short vignettes jumping around from perspective to perspective in different times and places. I felt the writing is clear and I never felt lost or confused, even though that could have easily happened with this style. The story is not complicated, but the writing tool of developing the characters the way she did was so profound that it moved me in a way I wasn't expecting and kept me thinking about the story for days. It is a heartwarming, beautiful and honest piece of writing about how families really are -- full of flaws and disappointments, but more importantly, very full of love. less

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