Moon Tiger

Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: This was an excellent book but I thought the writing was a little self-conscious. The narrator kept explaining, "I am writing a history of my life," "I am writing about different periods of my life and splicing them together into one narrative," "I am interested in history," etc. Aside from this flaw, the book was very entertaining and an excellent character study. The narrator, Claudia, is feisty and memorable; she is a colorful, competitive person. Her usual toughness and snide sense of humor makes the core of the book -- an affair that drew her deepest emotions to the surface and made her vulnerable --even more striking.

Rating:
Summary: Never became engaged
Review: Unfortunately, try as I might, I could never connect with any character in this bood. Ultimately I never cared enough about any character to even make it through to the end.

Rating:
Summary: A "Personal" History
Review: Where does one begin with such a triumph for contemporary fiction? Lively has created a history of the world--Claudia's "personal" world history with selected historical events viewed in relation to situations in her own life. Taking a kaleidoscopic view, and doing away with chronology Lively writes the same way humankind thinks--constantly jumping from thought to thought. This unconventional style of prose in tandem with the confidence and ease with which Lively writes "kaleidoscopicly," the reader is likely to find him/her self being seduced into thinking in the same original manner Lively writes. A must read, and an inspiration to all women.