Durable Goods

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the read
Review: This is just an extraordinarily written, keenly sensitive book written from the point of view of Katie, a 12 year old girl growing up on a military base in Texas who has lost her mother to cancer and whose father is an Army officer who slaps Katie and her sister around when he feels he cannot control them. The book is all about how Katie copes with her father's unpredictable anger, her impending womanhood, and no mother to nurture her -- and it is excellent. I highly, highly recommend this book. What a pleasure....thank you, Ms. Berg!

Rating:
Summary: A girl's journey to understand life and how to live it
Review: This book exceeded all of my expectations in the greatest way. It is so truthful and heartfelt that you can't help but fall in love with the characters and try to gain an even better understanding of their lives. Durable Goods is well worth the time to read it, the pages will turn one after another because it is impossible to put down for even one second.

Rating:
Summary: What a great little book!!!!
Review: "Durable Goods" was a bit too short for my liking but.... I loved it. Katie and her friend Cherylanne are on the verge of womanhood and are typical teens. Her sister Diane is just about a woman and is breaking away with her boyfriend. I can hardly wait to read Joy School!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Half of my Durable Goods is underlined
Review: I have this habit of underlining, while reading a book, the sentences or phrases or comments or whatever that may be said, which rings this bell in my inner self. This bell awakens my senses, my dreams and brings back to my mind, out from the deep dark corners of my subconscience (there where we throw feelings we try to forget and memories we try to ignore) everything that made me a being, a human. And I say "try" because:"Sometimes it seems to me that the only thing in the world is people just trying...". I used to be so pesimistic and indifferent but this book made me realize that:"Sometimes when I think of heaven, I think all it is is people looking down and missing things..."; now, I really appreciate my life and my existance as a whole. And you know what? Half of Durable Goods is underlined..

Rating:
Summary: One girl's struggle to find the right path in life.
Review: Katie is going through probably the hardest stage of her life...changing into a woman. Diane (her older sister), her father and she live on an army base in Texas, and her father's job takes them all over the country. Katie's mother died when she was younger and ever since then she has tried to find a place to get away from her father's abusive ways, and the painful memories that linger in her mind. She often goes to her friend/nieghbor whom she can talk to and relate to. Whenever she has a question that only mothers can answer, she slides under her bed and talks to her mother. Diane runs away a lot to be with her boyfriend Dickie, while Katie wishes she was in Diane's place. Katie is waiting for a lot of things. She is waiting for someone to fall in love with her, waiting to become a woman, waiting for her father to stop being abusive to them. I really enjoyed this book because it was very realistic and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to her feelings and thoughts. This book is also a lot like the book "Summer of My German Soldier" which was also a very good book. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: violence and love
Review: This book, written by the author of "Talk Before Sleep" skillfully combines the feeling of hope and despair, love and loathing. Through all of the trials of our young protagonist, there is a theme of the friendship of other women, and sisterhood, both literally and figuratively. There is also the subtle message that the perpetrator of violence is as much to be pitied as the victim(s). This book provides delightful characterization of the female set. It will set you up for the next book, "The Joy School". Both books are well worth your time

Rating:
Summary: A prosaic masterpiece on the timeless aspects of growing up.
Review: Elizabeth Berg leads the reader back to childhood, to the endless waiting, to the unending anticipations and frustrations, to the simple joys and all consuming sorrows of youth. As the protagonist lives her ordinary moments, at the eye of the stormy life around her is emerging a young woman with hope and courage. Elizabeth Berg writes with tender humor and vital realism that is sure to make this book a durable good

Rating:
Summary: Brings back childhood!
Review: I didn't have an abusive father but I did have a best friend and could completly relate to the story about growing up. Fighting with your best friend, thinking your in love and kissing your first boy. This story not only tells about growing up but also how kids cope with losing a parent. These kids are left with an abusive father that has limited parenting skills. I was glad Berg didn't dwell on the abuse or keep this story depressing. As much as parts were unsettling it was also a good story of friendship and hope for these sisters. I would recommend this book to my family and friends as a quick read about growing up.

Rating:
Summary: (3.5) Family matters
Review: Berg focuses on a transitional period in the life of a twelve-year old (going on thirteen), Katie Nash. Her mother recently died from cancer and Katie lives with eighteen-year old sister, Diane, in a delicate emotional balance, avoiding the father, who has a volatile temper and frequently hits the girls. The violence is nothing new. Even when their mother was alive, the father took out his aggression on his daughters. Army brats, their lives are constantly in flux, moving whenever the father is posted to another base.

The father's rage is a fact of life for his daughters, the family's constant preoccupation with appeasement common behavior, especially when the mother's death leaves each of them hollow with grief. Katie's best friend lives next door, a girl two years older who guides Katie through feminine mysteries and rituals defined by glossy magazines, endless grooming details that insure success with the opposite sex.

Katie finds solace in her role models, sister and best friend, but has begun a solitary journey of self-discovery that is made more piquant by the inevitable yearning for her mother at this critical time in her young life. The best friend is predictable, but sister Diane is ready to break away from a life controlled by their father's narrow constraints and senseless rules. The sisters make a fateful decision, but it is tempered by Katie's shifting loyalties, her inability to make appropriate choices, given her vulnerability and immaturity. Grasping the familiar, Katie finds a new perspective on letting go and the chimerical nature of loss, that some things stay even when they're gone.

Berg's plain-spoken narrative navigates an adolescent passage into the real world, where even forgiveness is possible and change hovers on the horizon. The simple prose belies the impact of grief and the complications of growing up, the profound juxtaposed with the mundane. If there is a flaw in Durable Goods, it is the dissonance of the father's habitual violence and his passive acceptance of changes wrought by his daughters' actions. That Katie clings to her father is natural enough, but his brutality is a serious issue. The victim returns willingly to her abuser, desperate for any emotional connection in lieu of none at all. Grief is no excuse: is the brute not still a brute? Luan Gaines/2005.




Rating:
Summary: Read Aloud
Review: When I heard the first few words of the audio book I wondered if I could bear to listen to such a dramatic childish voice for hours. After the first few minutes, however, I got used to the voice and actually found the story believable and endearing. It did remind me of times when I was 12 with friends, with siblings, and alone, and made me both happy and sad.