Rating: 
Summary: Not for everyone!
Review: I just finished reading this book. I enjoyed reading
it. The writing style was not like The Color Purple.
I think Alice Walker stretched her creativity by leaping
into creating a somewhat existentialist and poetic work of art.
Tapesty comes to mind when I think of this book. An
intersting, well written read.
Rating: 
Summary: Alice challenged her style and won!
Review: I just finished reading this book. I enjoyed reading
it. The writing style was not like The Color Purple.
I think Alice Walker stretched her creativity by leaping
into creating a somewhat existentialist and poetic work of art.
Tapesty comes to mind when I think of this book. An
intersting, well written read.
Rating: 
Summary: By the light of my father's voyeurism
Review: I'll confess my disappointment in Alice Walker's the Color Purple which I found to be a movie "treatment" to be shopped around Hollywood. So I was unwilling to go back to her works until a friend insisted that I read this book. Well, her male narrator's voice certainly sounded like a woman and probably the author. Its not an authentic male voice. Maybe dead men sound like this but I hope not. She has set forth an agenda that contains spiritualism and philosophy. From the sparseness of the CoP to the extra words of this piece. I have the impression that she had a Thesaurus in her PC working overtime to place an extra adjective in every sentence. She has confirmed my suspicion that she is a mediocre writer at the same time she has convinced me that she is not a good storyteller either. The novel has its moments but they are isolated oases amid a desert of a half baked spirtitualism. The three stars are for effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Will put you to sleep better than a glass of warm milk.
Review: It is important to read a book like this every once in a while so that you have something to compare good literature against. Having never read any other books by the author this one certainly does nothing to encourage me to view her previous works. I found the writing amaturish at best, and irritating for the most part. I found it neither thought provoking nor interesting but mostly just boring. Spare me from writers who try so hard to instill an air of self importance that they forget to tell their story well or make their characters even a little bit believable.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Passion and Poetry
Review: My third Alice Walker book, and I was surprised by how much I loved it. Better than Temple of My Familiar and as engrossing as The Color Purple, I found myself on a sensual journey, guided by pained characters who became enlightened along the journey as well. Walker writes with poetic fluidity. Her talent is admirable, to say the least, and I finish the book with a desire to read more of her works.
Rating: 
Summary: For Die-hard Walker Fans Only
Review: One reviewer was correct in pointing out that BY THE LIGHT OF MY FATHER'S SMILE reads more like a parable that a story. While I enjoyed reading this book because of Walker's ability to weave sensuality and compassion into her storylines, I was ultimately disappointed by the lack of concrete character development and complexity especially where it concerns to two sisters in the book. This story, which is told from the different perspectives of the family, gives the reader only a superficial insight into how the characters developed as they did (with the exception of the younger sister). For example the older sister's life changes because of a certain "unforgiveable act" in her early teens, but the next time we encounter her in the book, she is an obsese and bitter college professor. I desperately wanted to know the how's/why's of her life in those missing twenty years. Walker is clearly more obsessed with New Age spirituality than good old fashioned story-telling. Hers is the genre of empowerment and while many readers respond positively to this, it doesn't move me personally.
Rating:
Summary: For Die-hard Walker Fans Only
Review: One reviewer was correct in pointing out that BY THE LIGHT OF MY FATHER'S SMILE reads more like a parable that a story. While I enjoyed reading this book because of Walker's ability to weave sensuality and compassion into her storylines, I was ultimately disappointed by the lack of concrete character development and complexity especially where it concerns to two sisters in the book. This story, which is told from the different perspectives of the family, gives the reader only a superficial insight into how the characters developed as they did (with the exception of the younger sister). For example the older sister's life changes because of a certain "unforgiveable act" in her early teens, but the next time we encounter her in the book, she is an obsese and bitter college professor. I desperately wanted to know the how's/why's of her life in those missing twenty years. Walker is clearly more obsessed with New Age spirituality than good old fashioned story-telling. Hers is the genre of empowerment and while many readers respond positively to this, it doesn't move me personally.
Rating:
Summary: Bravely done and extremely needed but ...
Review: This book gathers up so much of women's history and experience, all previously ignored or misrepresented and takes this history/experience as an important given, uses it to explain our human quest to seek sexual and spiritual fulfillment, to know ourselves. Speaking so honestly about female sexual hurt, female sexual maiming, female sexual shaming within the family, within the father/daughter relationship and imagining a way to heal this experience was powerfully brave of Walker. I felt like I was is a long darkened and forbidden room now amazingly and lovingly explored, revealed. I felt such relief to read this attempt at restoring female sexuality to an altar of acceptance, respect, love, social esteem. It seemed almost possible to live in a society, a family that really could anticipate female sexuality with joy, freedom and respect on an equal footing with male sexual importance. But my awe and gratitude for the subject and Walker's attempt is still tempered by my real sense, in the reading of it, that it was not entirely successful. I'm not sure why. Some of the sexual imagery, the dominating type sexual play in some scenes seemed artificial, unreal. If it were real, it wouldn't be so undisturbing to the participants, it would raise issues, it would be unsettling, not just accepted as part of their sexual bliss identity. But over all, the story reads like a fable, a fairy tale, really and that is fine with me. We need this new kind of fairy tale and fable.
Rating:
Summary: An Experience for the soul
Review: This book transcends most novels. The raw use of metaphor, the language in which she pulled me into the character's experience, and the gift of letting me see things from many different angles, rather than only one viewpoint, left me full at the end of the reading. Recommendation HIGH
Rating:
Summary: An Experience for the soul
Review: This book transcends most novels. The raw use of metaphor, the language in which she pulled me into the character's experience, and the gift of letting me see things from many different angles, rather than only one viewpoint, left me full at the end of the reading. Recommendation HIGH
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