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Jim Cobb said:
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I get why some reviewers were disappointed with the crime/mystery dimension of this novel--involving the unsolved, long-ago murder of the nine-year old stepbrother of the main character, which is indeed not nearly so pronounced as it was advertised tI get why some reviewers were disappointed with the crime/mystery dimension of this novel--involving the unsolved, long-ago murder of the nine-year old stepbrother of the main character, which is indeed not nearly so pronounced as it was advertised to be. This should not detract, however, from the job Ms. Howorth has done in capturing the angst, sadness and guilt and that the multifaceted demands of love--parental, spousal, filial, physical and emotional--can generate in a single character, her protagonist, Mary Byrd Thornton. Mary Byrd is an egregiously messy bundle of contradictory feelings and actions, given to emotional paralysis on the one hand and spontaneous, willfully risky behavior on the other. Every single one of her relationships is complicated and fraught, from "Teever," the marginalized Vietnam vet scrounging to survive, and maybe even "get over," day-by-day, and the egregiously over-the-top "Ernest," too dangerous to himself and others not to strike Mary Byrd's fancy a little more than he should. Along with Mary Byrd, these and a number of other compelling figures who pop up along the way make this novel a worthy example for creative writing teachers seeking to illustrate character development at its best. It may well seem that Mary Byrd's final arrival at the facts of her brother's killing is mostly an afterthought to the stories behind and within her many complicated and entertwined personal relationships, but like those relationships, though the guilty party is identified, the final outcome and meaning of the murder itself remains unresolved. Readers obviously come to books with different expectations, but I found nothing whatsoever to disappoint me in this novel, which, as the author's first, stands all the more impressive to me....more
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