Rating: 
Summary: Too bad, a waste of time
Review: This book was painful to read, not because of the subject matter, but because of the long, drawn-out way in which it was written. In my opinion, this book could have told the same story in perhaps a third of the pages.If you like reading about people who overly agonize and emotionalize, then this is for you. If not, skip it.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging and Agonizing
Review: This well-written book sucked all the positive energy out of me! Still, once fully entrenched in the story I couldn't put it down. Question: Why do readers feel the need to discuss/reveal the plot in their reviews? Please do not simply rehash the story line, your pertinent critical commentary will suffice.
Rating:
Summary: Skillfully written - but is that enough?
Review: There is no doubt that Jane Hamilton can write but that does not necessarily mean she can craft a good novel. We get a brief glimpse of the Goodheart family before disaster strikes - too brief, for me, to sympathise with the characters or realise what makes them as they are. Ther follows a porridge of flashbacks and a colourful bouquet of characters, most of them somewhat hysterical in their behaviour. And a view of a very narrow world, frankly a rather uninteresting world. In fact I had a rather odd feeling while reading this book: that the authoress had a specific reading public and a concrete commercial goal in mind. Which makes it a book for a very limited public indeed. Rather disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Not like I expected it to be..
Review: "A Map of the World" was my first book by Jane Hamilton. And I guess that is why it took me quite some time before I figured out her way of writing. In "A Map of the World", we meet the couple Alice and Howard Goodwin. They have two daughters, and they live on their farm in a town called Prarie Center. Alice works as a nurse on the local school and Howard work on their farm. The Goodwins' are close friends with another family with two girls of similar ages. The Goodwins' have dreams of living a simple life on their family farm, but this dream is shattered by two serious tragedies. The first tragedy, when Alice baby-sits for her friend Theresa, and Theresas' youngest girl drowns, and the second one, when Alice is falsely accused by one of the kids at school of child molestation and she's put in jail. It is very easy to identify with Alice, as what happened to her could happen to anyone. It is quite moving to read about how Howard and the girls cope with having mom in jail, how Howard struggles to keep the farm, and the family together. This is a well-crafted novel, and the author has done a good job of developing her characters as flawed, but on the whole good, respectable people who are able to survive and mature, although their lives have been profoundly altered by some dreadful misfortunes. This novel was not what I thought it would be, and as soon as I accepted that - I found myself enjoying it!
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't get through the constant misery...
Review: Maybe I shouldn't even write a review on this book since I couldn't finish it. But I suppose that in itself says something. While many people have loved this book, I could not bring myself, night after night, to read what seemed to be the same depressing, mundane, dwelling of the main characters issues over and over and over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: An uplifting House of Sand and Fog
Review: A Map of the World reminded me of House of Sand and Fog in that the characters' lives spiral quickly out of control. Both books make you realize how fragile one's security may be, and that this misfortune could even happen to you! However, unlike House of Sand and Fog, this book had a somewhat uplifting ending- thankfully, out of bad comes some good- Alice finally matures , becomes much wiser, and learns to appreciate life, her family, and most importantly, learns to forgive. The only part of this book that disappointed me was that the Alice/Emma dynamic was never developed. We never really understood why Emma was so angry, and in fact, the role of both daughters was very minimal towards the end. It would have been interesting to see how the strained relationship between Alice and Emma evolved. Still, this book was excellent. It was so well written, and Jane Hamilton did an excellent job of fully developing her characters as flawed, yet basically good, decent people who manage to survive and mature, despite the fact that their lives have been profoundly altered by some terrible misfortunes.
Rating:
Summary: SAD AND DEPRESSING
Review: A MAP OF THE WORLD is a depressing story where one woman's uneventful life suffers a sad event, then spirals downward through most of the book. One day, Alice, the main character and an admitted misfit, daydreams for a few minutes while babysitting her neighbor's children, and one of the chidren drowns due to Alice's inattention. Of course, Alice feels responsable, but as her heartache grows, so does the townpeople's anger at her. Working as a nurse at a local school, the parents begin to falsely accuse her of molesting their children. Alice is then arrested, sent to jail to endure a different kind of horror. Meanwhile, her husband, Howard, is forced to sell their dairy farm to pay her legal fees. Eventually, she is released and they move away. My heart was sad for the mother of the child who died and I can only imagine the mental anguish a responsible person would feel, but I don't think this was a really good book. I found the only redeeming quality in A MAP OF THE WORLD to be that Theresa, the mother of the drowned child, was able, after a time, to forgive and move on.
Rating: 
Summary: A map of the world - the saddest book I've ever read
Review: This book is a keeper. You will not want to put it down. How sad can be the death of a friend's child, due to your own negligence. Lots of "what if's" in this novel. What if she hadn't spent time searching for a swimsuit? You never know when that second is going to come, that will change your life.Forever. This is a powerful story, there but for fortune, go you or I.
Rating:
Summary: "A+" for effort, at the very least...
Review: This book tries REALLY hard. I mean, really, REALLY hard. Jane Hamilton takes on the most difficult kinds of subjects, and she really does try to get them across without melodrama, keeping them within the (albeit Oprah-esque) world of everyday life. (Speaking of which, I wonder if all you need to do is mention Oprah in your novel to get her to recommend it? :-)) If you feel like this book is manipulating you, though, it's probably because Ms Hamilton tries TOO hard. She painstakingly sets us up for Alice's fall, providing us with convenient reminiscences about how she's been a "bad girl" in the past. I got the feeling an editor told Ms Hamilton somewhere along the way that these characters are too nice. The book reads like she's toned the characters down a little, make them more human. But by grudgingly showing us the underbelly of the Goodwins' placid farm life, with a couple of cranky preschoolers and the kind of everyday distractions any mother would recognize, she also seems to say that therein are the seeds of the family's destruction. She left me wondering early in the book how this cast of mostly-saintly characters -- who've had a couple of grumpy days -- could possibly deserve the fate that befalls them. What's the message we're to take away? That a parent isn't even allowed to screw up once? That Fate could swoop down on anybody at any time? This book slides down the slippery slope, painfully close to melodrama, but is held back just barely, with great and loving effort. This novel shows its seams just a little too clearly, peeking out from beneath a beautifully crafted story. Its earnestness makes this book difficult reading at times. Yet it's easy to see why Oprah and others are raving over it, dealing as it does with such scary subject matter. Reality isn't like this, my instincts tell me, but my mind, and my fingers, kept me flipping through the pages anyway. Go figure.
Rating:
Summary: individual as opposed to community - a special heroine
Review: i must confess that it took me about 20 pages till i really got gripped in the hold of this book but by the time i finished reading it, i spent quite a few nigths musing over it and experiencing its effect. alice goodwin is a very intriguing person and in spite of the sparse personal information we're offered about her and her background, i came to feel -as the story unfolds - that i was beginning to know her quite well. her character's misjudgement by the community she lived among, the false accusations against her have only enhaced the sympathy i was already begining to feel for her. alice stroke me as a strong woman but at the same time as a troubled one, not quite confident with her role as a mother and wife. i sense that at the roots of this unstability and pshychological turmoil lie events that probably happened in her past, relationships with people who were closest to her, maybe the absence of her mother who died of cancer when alice was only 8. the buds of love that spring between howard and theresa reflect, in my opinion, their unfulfilled need for love and compassion. we realize that maybe these two would be more suitable with each other as mates than with the people they actually choose to marry. i enjoyed this book very much, as i did hamilton's writting style and i am realy anxious to get hold of her other book, "the book of ruth" which i hope will prove to an equally good reading!!
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