Anywhere but Here

Rating:
Summary: Bad Book, Bad Movie...
Review: "Anywhere But Here", is a novel about a mother and daughter who struggle though life and their relationship.
There are many different settings the book moves throughout; including Bay City, Wisconsin, Egypt, Las Vegas, and California.
The two main characters are Adele, the mother in the story, and Anne the daughter. Other characters found throughout the novel include; Hisham, Anne's father, Lillian, her grandmother, Carol, her aunt and, Ted her stepfather.
The book was an easy read because Mona Simpson uses average sentence structure and colloquial vocabulary. The vocabulary is mainly colloquial because most of the writing is the equivalent to a journal or diary. The only bad part about the book was its long-windedness. Simpson is a very detailed writer and because of that the book is quite lengthy. Simpson divides the book in an unusual manner; each section has a different character speaking about past and present experiences. There are chapters written by Anne, Adele, Lillian, and Carol.
Overall the book was a creatively written masterpiece, but it was just a bit too overwritten for my taste.

Rating:
Summary: Praise for "Anywhere But Here"
Review: I found this to be one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read...Being a kid myself, I found it easy to relate to one of the main characters, Ann August. Throughout the book, the author allows us to see so many perspectives, including: Ann, her aunt Carol, her grandmother Lillian, and even her mother. They all have very different opinions about the nature of others' behaviors, but it is hard not to have an understanding for each and every one of them....whether they include true honesty, hard work, sacrifice, innocence, lying, or even cheating. These are very human characteristics and the Mona Simpson tries show us the hero in everyone. I was sad to finish this book because by the end of it, I felt I had become a part of Ann and Adele's very complicated lives, and even grown to respect everything they had done and gone through...

Rating:
Summary: Anywhere But Here
Review: I had to read a book for English 11 and this was the book I chose. I had a semester to read it and finished it the last week of the semester because it was so hard to read. It wasn't difficult text, it just wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. I expected it to be a lot like the movie, but only little parts of it were. It was an okay book though that's why I gave it a three star rating. I would recommend this book to anyone who hasn't seen the movie, and then they won't be expecting certain things.

Rating:
Summary: memorable mom
Review: I have seen this book around for several years, and for the past two, I actually had it on my shelf unread. I knew I was going to read it, though, because I'm attracted to the Vintage Contemparies, and the title is a flat out winner.

The reason for the delay, I confess, is that the subject of a young girl coming of age in Wisconsin and her relation to her mother just didn't excite the chauvinist in me.

There are very few books where the characters are so well drawn. The mother's actions said it all. I mean, you damn know this woman and can't stand her most of the time but you can relate. Her desperate need to fit in and better herself, keeping that car polished, living beyond her means, her vulnerability with her daughter. Their late night ice cream excursions was female bonding. The daughter's ambivalence, her critical eye, sweetened by her begrudging admiration for this flawed but fascinating creature she called Mom and their life in la la land held me in awe of this author's huge talent.

Rating:
Summary: Kind of wishing I was anywhere but there
Review: In Mona Simpson's "Anywhere But Here", she shows a young girl's life as she grows up with her self-obsessed mother. Simpson fills the book with many short stories that have almost no connection to the rest of the book. The first few pages are a hard read because of the many characters to connect and the many metaphors, similes, and long description paragraphs.Simpson doesn't give enough description of Ann or her her mother, Adele, to get a clear picture of ages, looks, or motives. Although the book is an interesting look at a mother and daughter's roller-coaster ride of a relationship, it is not a book that I would recommend investing in.

Rating:
Summary: Nice, but nothing more
Review: Maybe my expectations were to high about Anywhere But Here, but in the end, I thought the novel was just nice. It is the story about a `crazy' mother, whose teenage daughter has more sense than her. The woman, Adele, thinks her little girl, Ann, can make it big in the television, so they move from Wisconsin to California. There, they have a hard life, but for Adele everything is fine. She spends most of the time trying to get a rich husband while Ann spends most of the time hating her.

It is hard to find a plot in `Anywhere', actually it is a sequence of situations, with ups and downs. Some chapters are narrated by Ann, others by Lillian (Adele's mother), and other's by Carol (Adele's sister). Adele's personal speech is showed only in the last section of the novel, when we are really tired of trying to find out who she really is. I understand Mona Simpson's objective with saving Adele for the end, but I wasn't interested to hear her by that time. I was exhausted.

Adele is completely selfish. Maybe in her own, she thinks she is doing all the for good, but she more hurts Ann tha helps her. Maybe we are induced to believe this because Ann tells most of the story. Ann doesn't seem to care that much about their lives, despite all the fought.

Anyway, the novel has its funny and interesting moments, but if shorter, it would be better. There is a movie based on this book, that is quite good, mainly because of Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman's performances as mother and daughter.

Rating:
Summary: A Plot is Anywhere But Here
Review: Mona Simpson's book, Anywhere But Here is a well written and well crafted fictional novel about a mother and daughter relationship. Adele August, mother of Ann, is a high spirited woman who doesn't fit the profile of a mom. She yearns for a life in California, to roam the easy street among actors and actresses. Adele even wants to have her own daughter become a star as well. She pushes Ann towards a direction she thinks will be great for her, wanting to give her daughter a life she didn't have. She forces Ann to become the adult and to be the one to think logically.
Anywhere but Here is a good novel, but it lacks a solid plot. The flashbacks to the grandmother and the aunt throw off the flow of the story and the memories aren't properly organized. Although the vocabulary and sentence structure are simple, the reader really needs to pay close attention to each word in order to understand what is going on. The scenes change rapidly between past and present, and a lot of the setting switch over from house to car to hotel as well.
I liked the book, but it wasn't the best I have read. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone that likes action or suspense or any kind of a major conflict. Overall, the book needed a more developed plot to help the story flow.

Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: Seems like most of the other posters ought to stick to romance novels. Mona Simpson's first book is packed with rich imagery, irresistible storytelling, and vivid characterizations. In particular, Adele is certainly one of the most appalling mother characters in contemporary fiction. Grandiose, manipulative, and narcissistic, she is a monster for the ages. (Despite what the Amazon blurb says, I think it's easy not to fall in love with her.) Simpson has said in interviews that the book isn't autobiographical, but I can't help but wonder. That's how vivid it is.

Rating:
Summary: Just an "OK" book
Review: Set in modern times, Mona Simpson's fictional book Anywhere But Here takes us through a mother-daughter relationship full of disagreements and misunderstandings. Adele, Anne's mother, pressures Anne to look beautiful and thin so that she can become a notorious movie star in Hollywood. Even though Adele has high aspirations for Anne, she can't quite seem to live teh life that she has in mind. She is consistently trying to find "the perfect father" for Anne but comes up short after many different dates. Adele finally decides to take Anne to California and eagerly searches for movie shoots and jobs for her daughter. This whole ordeal of becoming famous is seen throughout the book but in the end Anne is just a normal child and her mother is left wondering why her idea of Anne becoming famous never was fulfilled. Even though the plot is intriquing, it is quite drawn out. The sentences flow well with one another and are quite poetic and colloquial. But the prolonged story makes the whole readability of the story difficult. While reading through the book, we as readers are left wondering why some scenes are even inserted. Many of the scenes are distracting as well as unnecessary. Mona Simpson's writing style also affects the overall readability of Anywhere But Here. Her chapters jump from character to character, letting us see the different views of each of the characters on specific events. However, most of the chapters are seen through Anne's unemotional viewpoint. Carol, Adele's sister, also plays part in a few of the chapters, describing Adele's past life and attempting to demonstrate to us as readers why Adele acts in the manner in which she does. Adele has one chapter in the end which is, unlike Anne's, full of emotion. As readers we are left confused as to why Simpson doesn't add as much emotion into Anne's character. As Simpson jumps from character to character, she also skips from year to year ignoring chronological order. This makes for a hard-to-understand organization of stories. One minute we think that Anne is an eighteen-year-old woman and the next we find out that she is only a twelve-year-old child. Not only that, sometimes Simpson doesn't even mention the age and we are left trying to decipher Anne's age by Simpson's inferring style. Overall, the book depicted a real-life situation that most everyone can relate to but the storyline was really difficult to follow. I would suggest watching the movie before the story because you may begin the book but find out that you are unable to finish it due to the difficult storyline.

Rating:
Summary: anywhere but here
Review: Told by Ann August, a teenager whose mother lives in a fantasy world of better things and wants those better things for real for her daughter, Anywhere but Here is a great portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship. The book spans more than a decade, and mom Adele never wavers from her delusional vision of reality, past, present, and future. Ann's maturing vision and understanding of, and ultimately her love for her mother makes up the meat of this tale.
...and the movie's pretty good, too...