Rating: 
Summary: A story without passion
Review: What I really miss in this book is a sense of the narrator. The story revolves around the young girl Hattie, who tries to come to terms with her mother's mental illness. But instead of getting to know the young girl's emotional distress at having no mother-figure in her life, or the pain caused by being excluded from the small-town society because of her mother's illness, the central space in the novel is occupied by what seems a collage of independent and grotesque stories about the mother's crazy stunts. As a result Hattie never really comes to life, and the reader is left with an odd feeling that Gibbons really doesn't know her own narrator well enough.Originally, when Gibbons turned the novel in to her publisher it was twice the size it is now - half was edited away before being published - and in the end one cannot help but wonder if that other half is really what is missing from the book. It really is a shame because the story could have been very interesting if there hadn't been such a distance between narrator and reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad and Funny
Review: While I could definately feel sadness for the husband and children of this woman who suffered so severely from bi-polar disorder/manic depression, there was a part of this book that made me laugh hysterically. Naturally, a child of an ill mother (whether mental or physical)is a topic which will generate sympathetic conversation. The subsequent loneliness and abandonment leaves a hole in children. At the same time, Kaye Gibbons portrayal of this woman made me laugh out loud. From her justifying hitting a woman with her car because she dared to wear a certain outfit, to her tirade over hearing the spoons click in the bowl, I began to wonder if I weren't a little imbalanced for finding it funny instead of sick. The reactions didn't seem so far fetched to me. That or perhaps I know a whole lot of undiganosed folks out there who I thought were 'normal'.
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