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Reviews
Mossy Creek by Sandra Chastain, Donna Ball, Nancy Knight, Debra Dixon, Virginia Ellis, Deborah Smith
bookph1le's review against another edition
4.0
Though I didn't love every story in the book, there were a couple that I found extremely touching, particularly Casey at the Bat and the story about Jayne Austin. More detailed review to follow.
Complete review:
Mossy Creek's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The book is really a collection of short stories, each one told from the point of view of one of the residents of Mossy Creek. The strength in this lies in the fact that the reader gets a real feel for the town and the colorful characters who define it. The weakness is that some characters' stories are stronger than others, resulting in a book that has some weak moments. Some spoilers to follow.
First off, I don't feel I can really do a well-rounded review without commenting on the formatting of this book. It was very hard to define sections at times, so when I first encountered the letters that form a bridge between one story and another, I was very confused about what was going on. I don't normally pay much attention to a book's formatting, but in this case it was very problematic because it created a clarity issue for me. The book would really benefit from page breaks before and after each letter by Katie, so that there are clearly defined breaks between stories.
That aside, I don't normally tend to read books in this genre, so I was kind of uncertain of it at first. However, I really warmed up to some of the stories as I went. While I enjoyed the quirkiness of some of the characters and thought the opening story of the mayor's fight against the new town sign was quite funny, what I really liked about the book were the touching stories of Casey, Jayne, and the town's resident who played Santa Claus. All of these stories were so suffused with genuine human emotion that they brought tears to my eyes. Casey's gradual emergence from her sense of sadness and loss to her understanding of and adaptation of a new purpose in life was really wonderful. I also very much enjoyed the dynamic between Jayne and Ingrid, as these two women come to a new understanding about one another. And the touching story of a man who loses his lust for life as his wife slips away was so wonderfully realized.
On the flip side, I didn't much enjoy stories like that of the darts competition between Mossy Creek and Bigelow. I know the humor was meant to be a bit over the top, but I found myself thinking of the residents as simply mean. In fact, I didn't much like the portrayal of the residents of Bigelow at all. While I appreciated the presentation of the character of Mossy Creek as people who felt fiercely loyal to their town and to one another, and who resisted some of the dehumanizing aspects of modern civilization, I felt the book did a real disservice to itself by portraying the residents of Bigelow in such a cartoonish way. It would have been interesting to have the point of view of at least one Bieglow resident, which would have lent the book more nuance when it came to the question of the old versus the new. For a book that showed such wonderful depth in exploring issues like love and loss, it was incredibly shallow in this regard.
Despite these flaws, I was ultimately won over by the charm that suffuses so many of the other stories in the book. The characters the reader encounters are so vivid and have such unique voices that I really felt like I had insight into what made Mossy Creek tick. I could picture the look of the town, with the Naked Bean and Ingrid's bakery, and I finished the book wishing I could pay it a visit.
Complete review:
Mossy Creek's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The book is really a collection of short stories, each one told from the point of view of one of the residents of Mossy Creek. The strength in this lies in the fact that the reader gets a real feel for the town and the colorful characters who define it. The weakness is that some characters' stories are stronger than others, resulting in a book that has some weak moments. Some spoilers to follow.
First off, I don't feel I can really do a well-rounded review without commenting on the formatting of this book. It was very hard to define sections at times, so when I first encountered the letters that form a bridge between one story and another, I was very confused about what was going on. I don't normally pay much attention to a book's formatting, but in this case it was very problematic because it created a clarity issue for me. The book would really benefit from page breaks before and after each letter by Katie, so that there are clearly defined breaks between stories.
That aside, I don't normally tend to read books in this genre, so I was kind of uncertain of it at first. However, I really warmed up to some of the stories as I went. While I enjoyed the quirkiness of some of the characters and thought the opening story of the mayor's fight against the new town sign was quite funny, what I really liked about the book were the touching stories of Casey, Jayne, and the town's resident who played Santa Claus. All of these stories were so suffused with genuine human emotion that they brought tears to my eyes. Casey's gradual emergence from her sense of sadness and loss to her understanding of and adaptation of a new purpose in life was really wonderful. I also very much enjoyed the dynamic between Jayne and Ingrid, as these two women come to a new understanding about one another. And the touching story of a man who loses his lust for life as his wife slips away was so wonderfully realized.
On the flip side, I didn't much enjoy stories like that of the darts competition between Mossy Creek and Bigelow. I know the humor was meant to be a bit over the top, but I found myself thinking of the residents as simply mean. In fact, I didn't much like the portrayal of the residents of Bigelow at all. While I appreciated the presentation of the character of Mossy Creek as people who felt fiercely loyal to their town and to one another, and who resisted some of the dehumanizing aspects of modern civilization, I felt the book did a real disservice to itself by portraying the residents of Bigelow in such a cartoonish way. It would have been interesting to have the point of view of at least one Bieglow resident, which would have lent the book more nuance when it came to the question of the old versus the new. For a book that showed such wonderful depth in exploring issues like love and loss, it was incredibly shallow in this regard.
Despite these flaws, I was ultimately won over by the charm that suffuses so many of the other stories in the book. The characters the reader encounters are so vivid and have such unique voices that I really felt like I had insight into what made Mossy Creek tick. I could picture the look of the town, with the Naked Bean and Ingrid's bakery, and I finished the book wishing I could pay it a visit.
dharma130's review against another edition
1.0
This book was just okay. I gave it only 20-some pages, and it didn't capture my attention and started to annoy me.
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