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spinstah's review against another edition
4.0
This was a really quick read, and quite enjoyable. I particularly liked that I started to recognize things form my own childhood, though I think I was a couple of years older than the oldest sister. I struggled to get into it at first, because nothing much was happening, but I pretty quickly grew interested in the women (three sisters and mom - there's a dad, too, but he's more of a peripheral figure) and from there things sailed along. Looking forward to the next installment.
bibliophile8117's review against another edition
5.0
I've been a fan of Nicole Dieker's writing on The Billfold for a long time, and this book doesn't disappoint. If you ever read her series "How Wizards Do Money" (https://www.thebillfold.com/2017/06/how-wizards-do-money/), this book reminds me of that in the best way possible. It's honest about the joys and sorrows of small town life. It's honest about money and how our relationship with it and our parent's relationship with it impacts us in big and small ways. And, I think most importantly for me, it's honest about the ways that art, literature, and friendship all play into how we see each other and how we see the world. I enjoyed spending time with the Grubers in this book, and I can't wait to get the next one when it comes out!
storytold's review against another edition
3.0
Unusually I wrote this review while I was in the process of reading the book. There were some things that I liked. Its influences were clear. The book is poignant; it is built exclusively around a sense of nostalgia for a certain white, Christian, small-town kind of childhood. (This perspective is gently challenged by occasional POV snippets from Daniel, whose family is Indian, but the story is primarily about the Grubers' white Christian experience.) And you do get that palpable nostalgia: Sundays feel like Sundays, Christmas feels like Christmas.
But for me, the book doesn't function quite as a novel. As a series of character vignettes, it’s pretty good! But there isn’t a strong sense of plot, nor is there a strong sense of thematic unity beyond “nostalgia.” This handicapped the book’s first half significantly, but the second half began to grow beyond these limitations.
This book wants to be Little Women, which it namedrops early, often, and tellingly. Dieker writes about small-town Midwestern life perhaps in a way meant to invoke how her influences write about the prairie. But in contrast to its influences, the setting was not prominent enough to provide a strong sense of environmental narrative to the story. We could have been anywhere—perhaps the point is that it is so ordinary as to be largely unremarkable. Some rendered elements of childhood in the midwest are amusing and do propel the reader to continue: comments about how everyone is quite casual and insular, how things are discussed. But little small-town snippets like these are few and effectively the limits of the setting’s depth.
The lack of thematic strength (beyond “nostalgia”) also made this book feel not much like a novel. “It’s about a family in the midwest” is neither a plot nor an especially strong narrative. Similarly, the unifying thread of nostalgia is expressed so ardently that there is often not much subtlety to be found beyond it. Nostalgia is what brings these vignettes together, even when it’s being troubled; it is both text and subtext. Nostalgia takes the place of plot and setting, and it sometimes cloys character growth (especially in the first half)—it becomes the narrative in its entirety.
Accordingly, nostalgia also becomes the book’s only source of structure—to a fault. I much enjoyed the book's second half, after the time jump... but I can't tell why that time jump was there. Why did she choose there? Did she have fewer vignettes from these years? What storytelling purpose did it serve to put the time jump precisely there? The answer, it seems to me, is to preserve the sense of nostalgia again. It's nostalgia for two things: early childhood and then the act of outgrowing the town, but nostalgia can't dictate a book's structure.
Dieker opens and closes the book with a note that this is not from her life—but it may be of her life, and that is abundantly apparent. In the first half of the book, scenes are prolonged which have no overarching point except to accentuate this nostalgia: a scene that reminds us what it felt like to go swimming as a child builds toward nothing else. It’s very poignant, but ultimately pointless; a loose thread of nostalgic reflection. I had this impression often. In frustration, I began skimming a scene where the girls are playing with paper dolls because I could not understand what it was doing there. Another scene followed it where a list of movies and their importance to Meredith is described. Each scene is carefully crafted to contribute only to nostalgia—neither to place nor to plot, and not apparently to structure.
I suspect a lot of the tonal similarity between characters is partly to evoke this nostalgia for a certain experience of childhood/adolescence as well: consistency in tone, like childhood often has. While possibly intentional—much of what I’ve perceived as shortcomings seem possibly intentional—this tonal similarity is also one of the book’s weaker elements to me. “___ likes” is a common sentence opener for both children and adults; in fact, 80% of sentence begin with a name or a pronoun. The lack of variety becomes very obvious about halfway through. In making the voices so indistinguishable in all of word choice, cadence, and subject matter, all of the characters become the nostalgia rather than fully-formed, distinct personae. The author emphasizes interiority to a fault, and with not enough variety, at the expense of strong character engagement with the setting—and in some cases at the expense of independent development of characters in general.
But, I’ll admit: the sense of nostalgia is maintained. All this may be intentional to this end, which would mean I’ve simply not appreciated the point of the book. As a set of character arcs meant to invoke a certain feeling and harken to biographic styles of writing, it does succeed, and I reiterate that I became more engaged with the book again after the time jump, when the girls are teenagers.
I rounded to 3 stars because respect Dieker’s self-publishing effort, and I respect the dedication and nostalgic unity of the book. A stronger lede, theme, plot, structure, and/or narrative might have given the impression of a more complete novel. The writing is competent and I’m glad I read it, but the book needed depth in the setting, a subtext for the reader to really sink into, and more variety in sentence cadence to rise above.
The simple existence of a family does not quite a novel make. But this book does speak to the existence of a family, so maybe that's mission accomplished.
But for me, the book doesn't function quite as a novel. As a series of character vignettes, it’s pretty good! But there isn’t a strong sense of plot, nor is there a strong sense of thematic unity beyond “nostalgia.” This handicapped the book’s first half significantly, but the second half began to grow beyond these limitations.
This book wants to be Little Women, which it namedrops early, often, and tellingly. Dieker writes about small-town Midwestern life perhaps in a way meant to invoke how her influences write about the prairie. But in contrast to its influences, the setting was not prominent enough to provide a strong sense of environmental narrative to the story. We could have been anywhere—perhaps the point is that it is so ordinary as to be largely unremarkable. Some rendered elements of childhood in the midwest are amusing and do propel the reader to continue: comments about how everyone is quite casual and insular, how things are discussed. But little small-town snippets like these are few and effectively the limits of the setting’s depth.
The lack of thematic strength (beyond “nostalgia”) also made this book feel not much like a novel. “It’s about a family in the midwest” is neither a plot nor an especially strong narrative. Similarly, the unifying thread of nostalgia is expressed so ardently that there is often not much subtlety to be found beyond it. Nostalgia is what brings these vignettes together, even when it’s being troubled; it is both text and subtext. Nostalgia takes the place of plot and setting, and it sometimes cloys character growth (especially in the first half)—it becomes the narrative in its entirety.
Accordingly, nostalgia also becomes the book’s only source of structure—to a fault. I much enjoyed the book's second half, after the time jump... but I can't tell why that time jump was there. Why did she choose there? Did she have fewer vignettes from these years? What storytelling purpose did it serve to put the time jump precisely there? The answer, it seems to me, is to preserve the sense of nostalgia again. It's nostalgia for two things: early childhood and then the act of outgrowing the town, but nostalgia can't dictate a book's structure.
Dieker opens and closes the book with a note that this is not from her life—but it may be of her life, and that is abundantly apparent. In the first half of the book, scenes are prolonged which have no overarching point except to accentuate this nostalgia: a scene that reminds us what it felt like to go swimming as a child builds toward nothing else. It’s very poignant, but ultimately pointless; a loose thread of nostalgic reflection. I had this impression often. In frustration, I began skimming a scene where the girls are playing with paper dolls because I could not understand what it was doing there. Another scene followed it where a list of movies and their importance to Meredith is described. Each scene is carefully crafted to contribute only to nostalgia—neither to place nor to plot, and not apparently to structure.
I suspect a lot of the tonal similarity between characters is partly to evoke this nostalgia for a certain experience of childhood/adolescence as well: consistency in tone, like childhood often has. While possibly intentional—much of what I’ve perceived as shortcomings seem possibly intentional—this tonal similarity is also one of the book’s weaker elements to me. “___ likes” is a common sentence opener for both children and adults; in fact, 80% of sentence begin with a name or a pronoun. The lack of variety becomes very obvious about halfway through. In making the voices so indistinguishable in all of word choice, cadence, and subject matter, all of the characters become the nostalgia rather than fully-formed, distinct personae. The author emphasizes interiority to a fault, and with not enough variety, at the expense of strong character engagement with the setting—and in some cases at the expense of independent development of characters in general.
But, I’ll admit: the sense of nostalgia is maintained. All this may be intentional to this end, which would mean I’ve simply not appreciated the point of the book. As a set of character arcs meant to invoke a certain feeling and harken to biographic styles of writing, it does succeed, and I reiterate that I became more engaged with the book again after the time jump, when the girls are teenagers.
I rounded to 3 stars because respect Dieker’s self-publishing effort, and I respect the dedication and nostalgic unity of the book. A stronger lede, theme, plot, structure, and/or narrative might have given the impression of a more complete novel. The writing is competent and I’m glad I read it, but the book needed depth in the setting, a subtext for the reader to really sink into, and more variety in sentence cadence to rise above.
The simple existence of a family does not quite a novel make. But this book does speak to the existence of a family, so maybe that's mission accomplished.
kellylizbeth's review against another edition
4.0
I very much appreciated this book as a quiet, thoughtful portrait of growing up at a time that wasn't so long ago, but that already feels so much gentler and more innocent than the world we live in now.
extemporalli's review against another edition
5.0
I thoroughly enjoyed this slow-paced, stately novel about growing up in 1990s rural Missouri, and I definitely can't wait for Volume II, which comes out next year. Certainly reminiscent of Little Women, the novel follows the Gruber family: parents Jack and Rosemary, and daughters Meredith, Natalie and Jackie through a period of some twelve years as they attend school, go to work, join band, and (especially for the children) grow into themselves. I have to say that the characters I was most intrigued by were Rosemary and Meredith, who certainly seemed most well-developed and most similar in the sense of being related by blood - Dieker suggests their repression and their determination are one and the same, although it made me feel sad when that repression made them unable to access things or emotions that otherwise could have been theirs (I did find it particularly jarring when Rosemary's mother passed away and Rosemary noted very little emotion, but a sense of things done and things to do, to come). Wonderfully understated.
cannonsr's review against another edition
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
geriatricgretch's review against another edition
3.0
I did quite like this - I tore through it, but I also often felt a little frustrated with how pat the characters were. Everyone felt a little too self-satisfied, which is perhaps not very fair. I think this quality is what part of what I loved so much about Little House, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, etc, but maybe that's an obviousness that I needed and loved while reading at a younger age, but perhaps not so much now. I think part of my frustration too was that everything in the book was a little *too* familiar (I'm the oldest of three sisters, all of our personalities kind of shake out along these lines, our parents were also similarly more strict than our friends' parents, etc.) and at many points I felt like I just didn't need to keep reading because I had already lived this part out and it was making me anxious to relive especially those parts that are so frustrating about being a child with no independence.
All that said, my annoyance with this book almost disappeared when I read the teaser chapter for Volume 2 and Meredith's discussion of wanting to read about non-famous artists. I don't know how this could have been integrated into the text more in Volume 1, but it made things click into place. I read the ebook, so maybe if this had been a physical book and on the back cover text that would have helped? I don't know.
And all my rambling thoughts aside, I did enjoy the experience of reading. I was definitely sucked in and finished it in about a day, and just kept wanting to read it instead of doing other stuff around the house. I'm interested to read Volume 2.
All that said, my annoyance with this book almost disappeared when I read the teaser chapter for Volume 2 and Meredith's discussion of wanting to read about non-famous artists. I don't know how this could have been integrated into the text more in Volume 1, but it made things click into place. I read the ebook, so maybe if this had been a physical book and on the back cover text that would have helped? I don't know.
And all my rambling thoughts aside, I did enjoy the experience of reading. I was definitely sucked in and finished it in about a day, and just kept wanting to read it instead of doing other stuff around the house. I'm interested to read Volume 2.
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