being generous and rounding up - more a 2.5. it's an interesting story with some great ideas and imagery - accomplished woman estranged from her midwestern family returns when her younger brother becomes permanently stuck in a drug flashback, and the multigenerational family tragedies of various dimensions are slowly revealed - but it definitely comes too close to being twee in places, and the one aspect that really needs good prose in order to not be a cliche, well. the prose itself is full of cliches; it's not terrible, just (for the most part) firmly mediocre. this could have benefited from a stricter editorial process.2 s Jonna299 2

Wonderful tale of three strong women and how their lives are interconnected. 2 s Beth725 23

Stunning, eminently readable, superior fiction!! I will continue to read every Mary Morris book I can get my hands on.fiction2 s Deidre116 37

You know, I wanted to give this book four stars, but it wasn't QUITE there. If I had to really be more accurate, I'd give it three and a half.

Which is actually somewhat disappointing to me, since I wanted to the book. Really, I d the author's style; she has a lyrical, poetic way of writing, and every word and sentence is carefully crafted and chosen. She has a complex storyline, with very sharp characters, and I found myself intrigued and appreciating the depth hidden within the characters.

However, I never could seem to get a full picture of the storyline, the characters, and the underlying messages. The women and their characters were drawn well, but they were almost separate entities from the world around them; in it, but not a part of it. Perhaps that was the author's point, but I couldn't entirely get a sense of the characters within the setting, and it felt a bit disorienting.

In many ways, I feel the author had some great concepts, the characters, the settings, and the storylines, but couldn't get them to entirely mesh, so they stood alone, rather than being a part of one another to illustrate a larger idea.

Still, I the author, and I appreciate her style. 1 Tim Bull22

In that all are subjective, this is one of the best of the many, many 'contemporary fiction about life' genre books I enjoy most. Mary paints such an evocative picture of her hometown in Wisconsin that I want to visit it and weaves together a fascinating plot from diverse characters. It contains so many paragraphs/statements about getting through life's vicissitudes that I absolutely identify and agree with. her, it is inevitable that in the autumn of my life i often think about the town and people where I grew up but I too shy away from visiting it. Is this a normal symptom of ageing and knowing one can't go back and change things? Probably. Margo Andrews286

This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for years. I always loved looking at the picture on the jacket and just assumed I had read it long ago. Seems that I never did, as the words and story were completely new to me.
Interesting tale of a family. The focus was on the three generations of women, their past and current loves and the influence of their families on how they lived their lives. Karen390 3

Hours of reading painfully detailed descriptions of people struggling through life with no big reveal, no dark secret. What a disappointment! To me this was just a rambling, confusing narrative of some not very interesting lives!?! Robin91

Actually reread 2020, still very good, but confusing in many parts. Denise336 8

Morris's early book Nothing to Declare is an all-time favorite of mine.

This novel is OK; well-written, of course. But kind of a downer overall; and the MidWest is not my favorite locale to read about. Ginger460 3

I bought this book in error. I love the author Mary McGarry Morris and purchased this one from Amazon.com thinking it was one that I hadn't read by Ms. Morris. When the book arrived I realized it was authored by Mary Morris, not Mary McGarry Morris!! However I was not disappointed! This is a very good book. Three generations of women, Grandmother who emigrated from Russia and married a man she never loved, Mother who's husband went to WWII and came back a very different person, and Daughter who is now a doctor trying to save her brother who went to Canada to avoid Vietnam and destroyed his mind with drugs. Very well written. I will read more by this author. Sonya12 3

This novel is about a woman in her early 30's, Zoe, coming back to her hometown in WI to see her brother, who is in the psychiatric ward after a drug overdose. She had driven him to the border of Canada during the Vietnam draft and he scorched his brain on drugs there. The novel also tells the stories of Zoe's mother and grandmother - the captivating, tragic and bizarre stories about the men they had loved. Andrea10 3

I really d this story a lot, but the book wasn't that well-written. At all. I wish I could edit it. But it was still a great book! and the story was great. It was one of those intergenerational stories, which I love. Vivienne StraussAuthor 1 book27

I read this book the year it was published and loved it. I had forgotten the title and author over the years but remembered the cover so I was thrilled to run across it again last year and enjoyed reading it the second time just as much as the first. Tobreth Hansen283 6

kind of a waste of my time Peggy80 1 follower

At first I wasn't sure I would this book because the beginning seemed a bit disjointed. After the first couple of chapters, I was hooked by the story and the author's beautiful language. jess?60 4

3.5 Joann168 6

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