Five Fortunes

Rating:
Summary: Read this book, it shows you what women can do!
Review: A very creativly written book with a comedic flair. Very clever and precise. It is written clearly and easy to understand, yet it is hard to remember who all the characters are at times. Other than that it is an excellent read and hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: an easy, fun read
Review: At a spa designed to pamper, slim, and rejuvenate wealthy and overweight or unhappy women, five clients meet and share a week of exercise and body wraps. Over the next year, the women's lives intertwine and change dramatically.

"Five Fortunes" is an enjoyable and lengthy read. It skips rapidly among the characters in short vignettes and successfully interweaves a number of plotlines; however, there are a large number of characters and occasionally they are difficult to keep track of. The tone is lighthearted despite the often-serious subject matter, which allows the story to be entertaining even as it (peripherally) addresses such serious subjects as rape, adultery, drug use and death. The book's shortcomings - lack of deeper resonance and vague ending - are serious literary failures, but they don't stand in the way of its enjoyability.

Rating:
Summary: One of Gutcheon's great reads!!
Review: Despite what some readers wrote for a review this was a great book. Yes the characters had money, which made it even more interesting, can't as adults we still live in a fairy tale world. It's fiction, if you want the facts read a non-fiction book! Great characters that were very loveable and easy to get to know. They did face real problems from rape, random violence, death of a spouse, politics, becoming a 'mother', and the love of friends. Definately recommend this book as well as other Gutcheon books.

Rating:
Summary: Five Fortunes -- a poor read.
Review: Don't waste your money. The plot is really thin or nonexistent.

Rating:
Summary: A slice of fat-free adventures richly iced by five lives.
Review: Five Fortunes is a great read. Gutcheon lets you eavesdrop in wonderful situations among the very best company-- with a few lowlifes thrown in for good measure. Her plot is a pin ball rocketing around from hazard to hazard--a fat farm, the White House even widowhood-- as her heroines involve you in their romances and their politics, family dynamics, searches for self-esteem and a smaller dress-size. Five Fortunes is a who-dunnit, a boy gets girl, even a modern parable. The conversations are bang on and Gutcheon's dry wit is a pleasure to savor as private jets and jalopies careen through the skies and along our cities' streets, and separate lives intertwine to pull off a team victory.

Rating:
Summary: Good escapism, but is it worth the frustration...
Review: Five women meet at the Cloisters, a fictional health spa where guests are pampered, worked out and given very little food. A palm reader tells what their futures hold. And we're supposed to believe they've formed a deep bond in their one week of deprivation.

The book advertises the women are from very different backgrounds, but this isn't really so. They all have money (enough) and educations. It's not exactly a melting pot. And you can pretty much guess by the end of their stay at the Cloisters how their years will go and their lives will merge.

While the book was very predictable the real issues I had with it have to do with characterization and focus. Just when you were getting cozy with one character, boom, you'd be switched to another. And really the characters the author spent the most time on were the least interesting to me. The character at the center of what brings the women together at the end was the most shallowly drawn of all.

And while I felt deprived of enough info on some characters there would be long drawn-out scenes with totally irrelevant characters. There were a lot of people to remember and not enough reason to keep track. It would have been a much better story had there been fewer main characters and more attention given to their inner lives. I wanted MORE with three characters in particular. Their lives were just getting interesting and we don't get hear anything from them again.

I wanted some sense of satisfaction this book did not deliver.

In spite of the above flaws it's a very easy read and a good way to get out of your own head. Something I appreciate. I'd really like to have given it three and a half stars, but it doesn't deserve four in my opinion. I've read one other book of Ms. Gutcheons and I had similar feelings of dissatisfaction. It's a shame since I think she has a really good writing style.

Rating:
Summary: good beach book
Review: Gutcheon's book began with such promise, i.e. the coming together of five emotionally scarred women, but ended up as pretty predictable fare. It's easy to read and would make a great beach book, but I was hoping that there would be more emotions and feelings to explore, rather than trite girl beats guy and everyone lives happily ever after.

Rating:
Summary: This is a moving, upbeat, charming, very of-the-moment story
Review: Gutcheon's book has charm to burn -- in the unwinding of the story, in the framing of the characters, and in every sentence. It has, and don't take this wrongly, some of the appeal of Danielle Steel's work -- a good yarn, sympathetic heroines, a touch of fantasy and glamor. But it is a very literate version of the Steel type of novel, with art and wisdom in every sentence.

Rating:
Summary: Makes me want to read all her other books
Review: I am about halfway through this right now and am really enjoying it. I do find it a little implausable that these women make a connection on vacation and continue it at such great lenghts once back in the real world. But it does make for great storytelling. You are really taken in to these women's lives and can't wait to find out what happens next. You find yourself really pulling for them. Anyone who enjoyed DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD will really enjoy thi.

Rating:
Summary: Beth understands women!
Review: I crawled inside this book and cocooned for the duration. Sooo much understanding of women! I fell in love with baby Flora. Enjoyed being again in the Bay Area, my birthplace, also Idaho, where I later lived for many years. Didn't want the story to end. Would a sequel be possible?