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Il Cassetto Dei Ricordi Segreti (2000)

by Lynda Rutledge(Favorite Author)

3.4 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

review 1: I purchased the book up at our local Half Price Books store this past spring as the title and synopsis sounded interesting. I found the pace of the novel often drags - - the entire book covers the events of one day. The short chapters allowed me to easily put it down for weeks at a time and pick it up without having to reread more than a few sentences to come back to it. It took me several months to finish reading the book simply because the story wasn't captivating, the characters were dull and uninteresting, and the story didn't keep my interest. The ending was just as lackluster and left me feeling 'meh'.
review 2: Not the quirky southern novel with a sassy character that I was expecting. Faith Bass Darling, richest woman in the small town of Bass, Texas r... moreeceived a message from God to sell all her possessions on the eve of the new millennium. People flock from all over to buy her beautiful Tiffany lamps, antique roll top desk, porcelain figurines, etc. at yard sale prices while the town's antique dealer, Bobbie Blankenship can only watch with horror. No amount of reasoning or pleading with the recluse can make her see reason.Faith lost her 17 year old son, Mike, to a tragic accident and then her husband just a few days later. It was then that Faith shut down and seemed to forget that she had a 15 year old daughter who still needed her. After two years of trying to be mothered, daughter Claudia storms out of the house, jumps on a motorcycle with her boyfriend, and vows never to return. Now, 20 years later, Claudia has come home to claim what is rightfully hers and finds instead a monstrous yard sale in the front yard and a mother who sees dead people and hears God talking to her.The story is slow-paced, irritatingly so. There is a huge mystery surrounding the death of her son and the injury to his football buddy while the two of them were working the oil rigs for Mike's rough and tough father. There is a mystery surrounding the death of Mike's father. There is a mystery surrounding the family heirloom that was promised to Claudia years ago. There are flashbacks from various characters that, rather than fill in the gaps, just confused me. At times I thought: Just tell me, please! Then I could understand and maybe feel sympathy for the various characters involved. The ending, when it came, was rather flat and I still felt no sympathy.The book did touch upon the heart-break of Alzheimer's Disease and how frightening it must be for the victim--as Faith put it, she didn't want to die before she was dead and that did touch me. How awful it would be to be locked inside one's own mind, to stop being able to live in the moment. The book also brought up a good question about material possessions--do we possess them or do they possess us--and are they as necessary and valuable as we might think? Are the memories behind those possessions valid, or are they memories we make up to validate their presence in our lives?With those two issues, it almost made sense for Faith Bass Darling to rid herself of the clutter of her life. If only the secrets had been revealed earlier and in a more emotional reveal, I might have enjoyed the book more. It didn't have to be the funny, quirky story that I thought it might be, but it did have to some real emotion packed into it. And, for me, that wasn't there. less

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