Rating: 
Summary: This story didn't need to be told in over 700 pages.
Review: The reading group I belong to chose this book and most of us really disliked it. The characters are not interesting enough to merit 700+ pages. The ending was disappointing - it ended because at some point it had to. Lame. Negative story without interesting characters. We all agreed - why? A waste of paper in my opinion. Lisa in Philly
Rating: 
Summary: What does the title mean?
Review: I am still not quite sure if I enjoyed this book. I agree with the comment that the first half of the book seems long. The end really makes you wonder... I feel up in the air still.If you like lots of descriptions and good character development then I think you'd like this book. But what does the title have to do with the story?
Rating:
Summary: Worst Book I've Read
Review: This was the longest, least redeaming book I've ever read. I couldn't believe Oprah liked it and recommended it. It made me question ever reading another of her suggestions. Don't bother is my best advice. I also believe in finishing a book and had high hopes it would get better. It didn't.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing!
Review: Though it was a long read, the intricacies of this distraught family's day to day life intirgued me. I could barely put it down! Marie's struggle, her new found confidence in Omar, Norm and Alice's hatreed and mistrust of Omar and Benjy's need for Omar to make his mother happy again, as well as the other characters kept me coming back for more. The side stories of different characters all wind in together so that the story centers on the Fermoyles but every other charcater and side-plot is careful weaved into it. I would recommend this book to everyone ti was fantastic!
Rating:
Summary: if you can get through the first half
Review: If you can get through the first half of this book, the second half is your reward. The closer this book gets to the end, the better it gets. The first half lacks plot entirely and is almost entirely about the characters and all their misery, suffering, etc. Generally a book needs a plot to be interesting, unfortunately it is not until the second half of this book that this happens. Read Vanished by this same author--now there is a 5* book.
Rating: 
Summary: Knowing the setting isn't everything
Review: A friend who lives in nearby Rutland, Vermont, loaned me this book because she had loved it. I should trust her taste. I guess I'm a snob because knowing it was an "Oprah Book" and that its setting was Rutland, Vermont (thinly disguised as "Atkinson, VT") slowed down my beginning to read it; I'd had it for a year before guilt set me going once my friend had asked so much whether I'd started it yet. I loved it! It is not a layered piece of philosophic artistry, but the characters are so true and the honest striving of so many of them is so palpable that I'll buy a copy for my classroom library. These people are flawed, for sure, but most of them are striving mightily to live a good, moral life, especially Marie Fermoyle, whose kids probably see her as mean. But the novelist's keen and unflinching sympathies let us see a woman in a hard place trying to do right even if she does not always succeed. I found many scenes very profound emotionally, especially the scene where Benjy wants to drown [285--6] and the scene in which Benjy tells his brother Norm the truth [438]. Many of my favorite scenes involved Benjy, the youngest Fermoyle who just wants his mother to be happy, but who carries the load of so many secrets. I also loved occasional descriptions such as this: "Her perfume smelled of roses and wrinkled dollar bills." [502] The language does not often call attention to itself, but the characters are unfailingly well-observed and believable. There are enough psychologically complex but accessible characterizations to fill a family's social circle in a small city like Rutland. The book also unfolds slowly enough that a reader can really get the sense of the passage of time in the summer of 1960. I moved to Rutland ten years later in 1970, but it was still essentially the town from whose Catholic high school Morris had graduated in 1957. Knowing the geography, however, is not the main pleasure of the novel; its compassionate and accurate reach goes well beyond merely regional items.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The action and intrigue in this book, like the words of its evil character Omar Duvall, are just promises. The reader is set up again and again expecting a worthwhile resolution and continuously disappointed. As such, after spending weeks with these miserable, self-denying townsfolk, the "happy" ending offered in not believable - it is incongruous with the author's 700 pages of character development. Skip this book and avoid the feelings of disappointment so well illustrated through the characters in Songs in Ordinary Time.
Rating:
Summary: Long, Long, Long
Review: I have a policy to always finish a book once I start it. This book was almost enough to make me break my policy. After 800 odd pages I could not have cared less what happened to any one of these characters. The book was not at all gripping at any point and I plodded through each page. Another book like this and I will seriously reconsider my book reading policy as this one never came up with one redeeming quality.
Rating:
Summary: SNORE
Review: Too many words saying not very much
Rating:
Summary: read something worth while
Review: The saddest part of this book was that it could have been a pretty good story if the writer just stuck with the Fermoyle clan. Although they were pathetic enough, I think their lives and struggles were pretty realistic. I wish the writer would have elaborated more on them, and then skipped the other stupid, boring, pointless characters and storylines. The ending left too many loose ends and too little resolve. Besides that, the book was incredibly boring and hard to follow. Again, this was due to too many irrelevant sub plots and characters. The end brought no resolve and no happiness for anyone. The main character just seemed even more victimized, in a self-inflicted way, and bitchy.. Save your time and money. No one needs "downers" like this.
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