Rating: 
Summary: A terrible waste of a compelling theme.
Review: Flatulent, pretentious, overwritten, redundant, overblown, self-indulgent, dishonest and dull. What ever happened to the "less is more" notion? The success of 16 pleasures seems to have gone to the author's head.
Rating: 
Summary: A thoroughly rewarding read!
Review: A wonderful account of human life, emotion and the passing of time. The writing style was fantastic and reminded me of Wallace Stegner's supurb story telling. I laughed and cried with this book, and truly did not want it to end.
Rating: 
Summary: Irritating, finally
Review: I started out really looking forward to this book, but was sorely disappointed. The main character, Woody, is self-indulgent and sexually immoral, though a kind father. I found all the characters unlikable to a degree. They are privileged and have no idea how privileged they are. I got bored half-way through and skimmed ahead to the end. I also was really tired of descriptions of Italian food, jazz/blues music, academic life, Italy and ancient things. The graphic sex descriptions were a lot more than was necessary too. By the middle I didn't care about anybody.
Rating:
Summary: The maturing of Hellenga's style
Review: I read Sixteen Pleasures and thought it was a decent book, but I wouldn't reread it, and several years later I barely remember the plot. So I began The Fall of a Sparrow expecting more of the same: a well-written, not terribly memorable story. What a pleasent surprise to find that The Fall of a Sparrow is a rich, complex, deeply human text which addresses difficult questions thoughtfully and carefully. I understand some of the previous reviewers comments about the sex scenes, they are very male, and really, who thinks about Plato during coitus? Woody's conversations with his children about sex are surprisingly and unconvincingly frank. But setting those complaints aside, this is a wonderful portrait of a family deeply damaged by tragedy and struggling to regain control, to love and hope again. I'd highly recommend this book. It's not a page turner, but it is illuminating and rather beautiful, and certainly worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: My God is this book slow!!!!!
Review: I have completed about 150 pages of this book and I just cannot go on. The descriptions of simple, unconsequential occasions go on and on for pages. The first 150 pages could easily have been condensed into 20. Pass on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: LUSCIOUS AND RIVETING!
Review: Please ignore the unpleasant reviews of this book! It was simply and purely delicious. Rich. . . like eating dark chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream. The writing was so sensual. Hellenga appeals to all of your senses. I could feel the air in Italy, taste the exquisite cuisine and smell the sweat in the love scenes. It made me tingle from the top of my head to the tips of my red-painted toenails. The plot was very well executed and kept me reading all night. And the sex was superb!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Should be titled "The Mid-Life Crisis of a Man"
Review: This is one of the few books I have ever stopped reading two-thirds of the way through. I just couldn't take it anymore.The author intends to create a protagonist with whom his readers will sympathize, but instead creates a character who is juvenile, self-centered, and perverse (do men really imagine their daughters in the act of having sex?). The women characters are contrived (the nymphet co-ed, who just happens to be the daughter of his ex-lover; the pathetic older woman--who just happens to be his boss; the ex-wife who becomes a nun. Give me a break! This book should be listed under the category Fantasy, male.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing after 16 Pleasures
Review: I'm about two-thirds of the way through The Fall of a Sparrow and really I am having to force myself to keep going. The characters do not feel real- the author seems to be trying too hard -doesn't seem like he really had the story in him. Too contrived. And why no discussion of why the mother left her children? It is unbelievable that the girls just shrug their shoulders about it and happily go on. I found the endless identification (it wasn't really description) if what the characters were eating, drinking or picking in the garden boring. So many things seem to have been put in the book just so we'd know how "cool" Woody (Hellenga?) is: He plays the blues, is a gourmet cook, is irresistable to women, is hip about the fact that his daughter is having an affair with an older married man, listens to Garrison Keillor, had hot sex with his wife every Sunday morning, the list goes on and on. Spare me.
Rating:
Summary: A literate, passionate account of a bereaved man
Review: This is a beautifully written book about a man's grief over the sudden, tragic death of his daughter. Hellenga takes you deep into the protagonist's troubled character. It's the story about a man, about a family, about love and profound sorrow. I found this to be a much richer and evocative work than Sixteen Pleasures.
Rating:
Summary: LIKE CHEAP SEX WITH AN UNLIKABLE STRANGER
Review: I read it all and afterwards had to take a hot shower to wash it off. I thought maybe, just maybe Woody would become more than a shallow, self-centered bumbling fool, but he never did. However, what bothered me most was that every female character in the book was written to be either cheap or simple. The authors attempts to write from a woman's point of view are as unbelievable and pathetic as a 6'5, beer bellied, hairy transvestite in a pink slip. The continual references to sex in the banal, self-absorbed way they were portrayed became like unexpected flashes of a pervert. When I think about this book, the time spent reading about "Woody" I feel angry, like I have been mislead and taken advantage of. I give it one star because the landscape imagery was well done.
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