Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
This is one of those books that you *could* keep reading, and you might enjoy it eventually, but I skimmed ahead when I realized I was watching pointless television instead of reading because I was so bored with this book, and I don't think it has anything special. The cover is pretty, but Sally is so flighty that it's very hard to care about her.
The book opens up with a guy jumping off a bridge.. and then we meet Sally the younger who decides to write the story that her grandmother, also Sally, told her to never write. I found myself getting lost in the family saga that began with Sally Werner/Sally Mole/Sally Bliss and reaches the granddaughter Sally.. Sally Werner is a teenager in 1947 when her life takes a left turn as she gets pregnant and ends up walking away from her newborn son. The aptly titled "Follow Me" has us following Sally as she meanders through her turbulent life. She has no real goals, she hops on buses or bumps into people and then lives off of the good-will of others. Eventually, we read about Sally falling in love, getting older, making strange choices and just getting used to life where she finally settles in some imaginative town in New York. The characters she meets are pretty much one dimensional and predictable yet the descriptions of what Sally sees and endures are easily rendered through the author's imaginative writing technique, which you could either love it or leave it. This is her life story for all its worth, and the fact that there is a lot of drama and issues that Sally endures is what keeps it going, however incredulous some events may seem.
The narrative is told with a concurrent storyline by the granddaughter of Sally, with the focus switching back and forth between the granddaughter and the grandmother. I am not a big fan of this, especially when we are talking about bouncing between 20+ years. Once the story gets going with the elder Sally, it feels like you are chugging along on a train and then the whistle blows and the brakes are squealing and STOP you are smack back into 20 years later again listening to the younger Sally. I think the author was trying to go for suspense, since she always squealed the brakes right when we reach a climax to Sally's storyline. But we don't see the younger Sally for too long of a period during the middle, it gets back into the elder Sally's life pretty quickly so it's a minimal complaint. Towards the end of the book there is even another way the book reads, as we are hearing word for word the contents of a recorded tape.
The writing itself is again in a league of its own, with one liners or phrases that are streamed together as if to show the subconscious thoughts of Sally. One can only take so much of the chatter (at some points it seems to be paragraphs of mumbles, questioning) although again I think the author is pulling for a sense of whimsy. And Sally the elder is definitely an impulsive one; she gets herself settled after one hardship, then she is off again running. The author at one point used an analogy of a theme park ride, going around in circles and no matter how much Sally ran she always came back to whatever it was she was running from. How logical and believable it can all be is an entirely new ball of wax..
And yet, even with these few criticisms of the book, I enjoyed the pace of the novel and the fact that I was always eager to pick up the book to see what foolishness Sally would get herself into next, no matter how mad she made me sometimes. I found myself caring for Sally and her legacy, and hoping she would for once make a sound decision. The viewpoint is unique due to the nature of the younger Sally discovering the wonders of her parents' union through the journey that the elder Sally had told her. And then it all finally ties back to the original guy jumping off the bridge, hence the notion that the choices Sally Werner made in her crazy life affected a lot of people.
The book teaches us about the bonds of the family, the strength of love and what the outcomes are when people are selfish with their love. Putting the book together with all of the writing techniques and Sally's idiosyncrasies, this is a book to be enjoyed for the package deal. The saga of Sally Werner, along with the wide array of people she meets is actually overall a page-turner and I do recommend it for those interested in feeling better about their own dysfunctional families.
The narrative is told with a concurrent storyline by the granddaughter of Sally, with the focus switching back and forth between the granddaughter and the grandmother. I am not a big fan of this, especially when we are talking about bouncing between 20+ years. Once the story gets going with the elder Sally, it feels like you are chugging along on a train and then the whistle blows and the brakes are squealing and STOP you are smack back into 20 years later again listening to the younger Sally. I think the author was trying to go for suspense, since she always squealed the brakes right when we reach a climax to Sally's storyline. But we don't see the younger Sally for too long of a period during the middle, it gets back into the elder Sally's life pretty quickly so it's a minimal complaint. Towards the end of the book there is even another way the book reads, as we are hearing word for word the contents of a recorded tape.
The writing itself is again in a league of its own, with one liners or phrases that are streamed together as if to show the subconscious thoughts of Sally. One can only take so much of the chatter (at some points it seems to be paragraphs of mumbles, questioning) although again I think the author is pulling for a sense of whimsy. And Sally the elder is definitely an impulsive one; she gets herself settled after one hardship, then she is off again running. The author at one point used an analogy of a theme park ride, going around in circles and no matter how much Sally ran she always came back to whatever it was she was running from. How logical and believable it can all be is an entirely new ball of wax..
And yet, even with these few criticisms of the book, I enjoyed the pace of the novel and the fact that I was always eager to pick up the book to see what foolishness Sally would get herself into next, no matter how mad she made me sometimes. I found myself caring for Sally and her legacy, and hoping she would for once make a sound decision. The viewpoint is unique due to the nature of the younger Sally discovering the wonders of her parents' union through the journey that the elder Sally had told her. And then it all finally ties back to the original guy jumping off the bridge, hence the notion that the choices Sally Werner made in her crazy life affected a lot of people.
The book teaches us about the bonds of the family, the strength of love and what the outcomes are when people are selfish with their love. Putting the book together with all of the writing techniques and Sally's idiosyncrasies, this is a book to be enjoyed for the package deal. The saga of Sally Werner, along with the wide array of people she meets is actually overall a page-turner and I do recommend it for those interested in feeling better about their own dysfunctional families.
I am less than 100 pages from finishing this book. Very disappointed that the plot took the expected turns. And I've found the device used to lead up to the conclusion (the younger Sally's father's introduction/confessional tapes to her) awkward, as if the author knew the story had already gone on too long so she tried to wrap it up quickly...but not too quickly, as the tangents and dream sequence descriptions also tend to run a bit long. Wouldn't really recommend this, as there seems to be no payoff for a rather intensive investment of time in reading over 400 pages.
...Now finished with the book and was rather disappointed. There were some strange political rants that seemed to come from nowhere, the story took too many sudden shifts toward the end, and the style was just a bit too haphazard. There were some out-of-place lyrical riffs toward the beginning that didn't continue throughout the story. I don't know if the author just didn't want to keep using that tactic or why the change in style, but I found it odd. I couldn't nail down any real reason to be drawn into the characters, story, or style, so this one will be donated to the local flea market.
I would have given this book 5 stars but the ending bored me so much I couldn't even bear to finish the last 40-50 pages. The beginning, middle, and almost-end were an amazing story.
Follow Me is a beautifully written book. It is slow starting and difficult to get into, but at times the writing is almost lyrical and vivid. I've had a difficult time putting my finger on why I didn't love it, when I know that so many people did.
In 1947, 16-year old Sally Werner runs away from home, leaving her newborn son in a basket on her parent's kitchen table. Running away is what Sally does best. She runs away, lands on her feet and when things get difficult, runs away again. Fortunately, each time she runs away from a difficult situation, she finds good, caring people who help her.
The words, saga, tragic and secret come to mind when describing this novel. Sally's story is a saga full of tragic family secrets that destroy relationships.
The story is told by Sally's namesake granddaughter as Sally shared it with her. Sally's story is vivid and interesting and as soon as you get into it, the modern day granddaughter steps in, dropping hints of what is to come. Towards the end, the narration changes to become the granddaughter's father telling her his version of what happened between himself and Sally's daughter.
Occasional, unnecessary, and graphic profanity, which is the main reason it didn't get 3 stars.
Thanks to Miriam Parker at Hatchette Books and the Early Bird Blog Tour for the opportunity to review this book.
In 1947, 16-year old Sally Werner runs away from home, leaving her newborn son in a basket on her parent's kitchen table. Running away is what Sally does best. She runs away, lands on her feet and when things get difficult, runs away again. Fortunately, each time she runs away from a difficult situation, she finds good, caring people who help her.
The words, saga, tragic and secret come to mind when describing this novel. Sally's story is a saga full of tragic family secrets that destroy relationships.
The story is told by Sally's namesake granddaughter as Sally shared it with her. Sally's story is vivid and interesting and as soon as you get into it, the modern day granddaughter steps in, dropping hints of what is to come. Towards the end, the narration changes to become the granddaughter's father telling her his version of what happened between himself and Sally's daughter.
Occasional, unnecessary, and graphic profanity, which is the main reason it didn't get 3 stars.
Thanks to Miriam Parker at Hatchette Books and the Early Bird Blog Tour for the opportunity to review this book.
When Sally Werner was 16, she had a baby boy by her cousin, Daniel. Two days later, she left the baby on her parent’s kitchen table and ran. This is a pattern Sally followed for years - she ran when someone from her old town recognized her, she ran when she found out she was pregnant, and she ran after an old boyfriend found her and assaulted her.
Sally finally settled into life in a small town and raised her daughter, Penelope, on her own. When Penelope’s father showed up, she decided to allow him into her daughter’s life. He and his mother do their best to win Penelope over by buying her gifts. Sally found a job at a law firm and was able to earn enough money to send some home to the son she abandoned years ago. She also began an affair with one of the lawyer’s in the firm. Feeling neglected, Penelope decided to move in with her father. She came home to her mother’s after he became abusive.
When Penelope was in college, she fell in love and became pregnant. She and her boyfriend, Abraham, are devoted to each other and decided they would share a life together. That is, until Sally tells Abraham a secret from her past that caused him to run away.
FOLLOW ME by Joanna Scott is a wonderful character driven story. At first, I was a little frustrated with Sally because her solution to every problem seemed to be to run away. After I read this,
"It was all so confusing. She had always intended to live a righteous life. In the midst of any decision, she’d always thought she was doing what was justified and necessary. But how could she know, how did anyone know what the repercussions would be?"
I realized that Sally is just like most people, doing the best they can in life. This story really captivated me, and I found that I flew through the book (especially the second half) even though it’s over 400 pages long. If you love character driven novels or family stories, you will love this book.
Sally finally settled into life in a small town and raised her daughter, Penelope, on her own. When Penelope’s father showed up, she decided to allow him into her daughter’s life. He and his mother do their best to win Penelope over by buying her gifts. Sally found a job at a law firm and was able to earn enough money to send some home to the son she abandoned years ago. She also began an affair with one of the lawyer’s in the firm. Feeling neglected, Penelope decided to move in with her father. She came home to her mother’s after he became abusive.
When Penelope was in college, she fell in love and became pregnant. She and her boyfriend, Abraham, are devoted to each other and decided they would share a life together. That is, until Sally tells Abraham a secret from her past that caused him to run away.
FOLLOW ME by Joanna Scott is a wonderful character driven story. At first, I was a little frustrated with Sally because her solution to every problem seemed to be to run away. After I read this,
"It was all so confusing. She had always intended to live a righteous life. In the midst of any decision, she’d always thought she was doing what was justified and necessary. But how could she know, how did anyone know what the repercussions would be?"
I realized that Sally is just like most people, doing the best they can in life. This story really captivated me, and I found that I flew through the book (especially the second half) even though it’s over 400 pages long. If you love character driven novels or family stories, you will love this book.
(Disclaimer: Joanna Scott was one of my English professors in college.)
A sure sign of literary skill is the ability to gain the reader's sympathy for a potentially irritating protagonist. (My mother actually abandoned this book around page 100.) Sally Werner/Angel/Mole/Bliss, as her litany of names implies, is an homage to America's celebration of continuous renewal and grand tradition of reinvention. (Salman Rushdie, however, in his novel Fury, asserts that this is actually a more general "human capacity for automorphosis, the transformation of the self," but we Americans like to claim as our own because we are "always labeling things with the American logo: American dream, American Buffalo, American Graffiti, American Psycho, American Tune.") Yet what this also comes down to is that Sally is forever running and hiding. In other words, taking the easy way out only to find herself in even more trouble because she simply never dealt with whatever she fled from in the first place. Sally is highly self-reliant (another prized American virtue), sure, but there are times the reader just wants her to grow up and start taking some responsibility. The whole cycle, after all - develop a problem, run away from said problem, said problem follows, another problem arises, run from that, while somewhere a snowball is charging down a hill - begins when Sally Werner, age sixteen and hailing from a deeply religious family, leaves her newborn baby on the kitchen table and abruptly takes off.
Scott's beautiful writing and ability to evoke time and place nevertheless transform the tale of a woman who constantly messes up into a vivid portrait of mid-century small-town Pennsylvania. Scott takes a neutral stance towards Sally and never tries to defend her actions or depict her as particularly admirable. Follow Me is basically a character study and portrait of a time and place. One's behavior is always influenced by one's surroundings, and it is this interconnectedness of things that informs the novel's plotline. As Americans, we treasure individualism, and yet no one person exists in a vacuum. At the core of Follow Me, in all its Americanness, is this contradiction between self and other. True, we applaud personal independence but in reality, we live in an external matrix of people, ideas, customs, and events that both influence what we do and are profoundly affected by it. The full force of Sally's tumultuous past is not felt until near the end, when a daughter sits listening to tapes made by a father she's never met. He is a kindhearted man, a teacher, who poignantly digresses into science trivia. The chapter is a true emotional tour-de-force. You want to live life only for yourself and bolt every time other people get in your way? Well, you can't.
Although it does drag in places and the ending felt drawn-out (probably because I was too infuriated with Sally's #1 screw-up to have any more patience for her), I enjoyed reading Follow Me and found the characters to be well drawn and the suspense positively nail-biting at times. I wish my mother would pick it up again and try seeing the story for the art rather than the annoying protagonist, but alas. Of course, some may also find they can't stand Sally, but I would encourage my fellow readers to look at the bigger picture and see a time as it was and humans as they are.
Original Review
A sure sign of literary skill is the ability to gain the reader's sympathy for a potentially irritating protagonist. (My mother actually abandoned this book around page 100.) Sally Werner/Angel/Mole/Bliss, as her litany of names implies, is an homage to America's celebration of continuous renewal and grand tradition of reinvention. (Salman Rushdie, however, in his novel Fury, asserts that this is actually a more general "human capacity for automorphosis, the transformation of the self," but we Americans like to claim as our own because we are "always labeling things with the American logo: American dream, American Buffalo, American Graffiti, American Psycho, American Tune.") Yet what this also comes down to is that Sally is forever running and hiding. In other words, taking the easy way out only to find herself in even more trouble because she simply never dealt with whatever she fled from in the first place. Sally is highly self-reliant (another prized American virtue), sure, but there are times the reader just wants her to grow up and start taking some responsibility. The whole cycle, after all - develop a problem, run away from said problem, said problem follows, another problem arises, run from that, while somewhere a snowball is charging down a hill - begins when Sally Werner, age sixteen and hailing from a deeply religious family, leaves her newborn baby on the kitchen table and abruptly takes off.
Scott's beautiful writing and ability to evoke time and place nevertheless transform the tale of a woman who constantly messes up into a vivid portrait of mid-century small-town Pennsylvania. Scott takes a neutral stance towards Sally and never tries to defend her actions or depict her as particularly admirable. Follow Me is basically a character study and portrait of a time and place. One's behavior is always influenced by one's surroundings, and it is this interconnectedness of things that informs the novel's plotline. As Americans, we treasure individualism, and yet no one person exists in a vacuum. At the core of Follow Me, in all its Americanness, is this contradiction between self and other. True, we applaud personal independence but in reality, we live in an external matrix of people, ideas, customs, and events that both influence what we do and are profoundly affected by it. The full force of Sally's tumultuous past is not felt until near the end, when a daughter sits listening to tapes made by a father she's never met. He is a kindhearted man, a teacher, who poignantly digresses into science trivia. The chapter is a true emotional tour-de-force. You want to live life only for yourself and bolt every time other people get in your way? Well, you can't.
Although it does drag in places and the ending felt drawn-out (probably because I was too infuriated with Sally's #1 screw-up to have any more patience for her), I enjoyed reading Follow Me and found the characters to be well drawn and the suspense positively nail-biting at times. I wish my mother would pick it up again and try seeing the story for the art rather than the annoying protagonist, but alas. Of course, some may also find they can't stand Sally, but I would encourage my fellow readers to look at the bigger picture and see a time as it was and humans as they are.
Original Review
This is a very lyrical story of the choices made by the main character, Sally Werner, and how we can mislead ourselves in so many ways.
"She thought the direction of her life was as inevitable as the direction of the river shed' followed" Then later, "She didn't consider she was framing the questions to produce the only asnwer she was prepared to accept."
"She thought the direction of her life was as inevitable as the direction of the river shed' followed" Then later, "She didn't consider she was framing the questions to produce the only asnwer she was prepared to accept."
really interesting/weaving storyline. could have been written in 1/2 the amount of pages, though. too drawn out and long. lovely writing, however.
Sally Werner is not quite my type of gal. She's flighty. Makes rash decisions. Runs away from her problems. But Joanna Scott's writing drew me into Sally's story, and I could not stop reading. I felt horrible when she left home, going away and not looking back. I was happy for her when she landed on her feet. Proud when she sang and others listened, admiring her voice. Sad when she left, again. Resigned when it seems as though Sally's doomed to repeat her mistakes, in yet another town. Run, Sally, run!
This is not just a story. It is a story that tugs you along emotionally on its journey. Sally doesn't always make the best decisions, but she manages to get along just fine regardless. She finally stops floating, only to confront the fear of her daughter repeating her mistake. Not all of them, just the big one. And finally, to bring it all together, is the voice of Sally's granddaughter, her namesake. Who pieces together her grandmother's story, and finds out once and for all the truth behind it.
What a beautiful piece from Joanna Scott this is!
This is not just a story. It is a story that tugs you along emotionally on its journey. Sally doesn't always make the best decisions, but she manages to get along just fine regardless. She finally stops floating, only to confront the fear of her daughter repeating her mistake. Not all of them, just the big one. And finally, to bring it all together, is the voice of Sally's granddaughter, her namesake. Who pieces together her grandmother's story, and finds out once and for all the truth behind it.
What a beautiful piece from Joanna Scott this is!