Jacob Have I Loved

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Summary: Sweet & Significant Coming Of Age Story Set During WW2
Review: This book is about a young woman growing up in a tiny island community who feels she is forever in the shadow of her talented and beautiful sister. The tribulations of adolescence are honestly and yet still wholesomely portrayed, as Louise grows into full personhood, learning to find her own personal magic and purpose. Much deeper than most books for teenager, this book transcends age and is accessible for everyone.

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Summary: A troublesome way to learn someone loves you.
Review: From the time they were born, Caroline had an advantage over Sara Louis. The few moments Sara Louis ever thought of as wonderful were the ones before her twin Caroline was born. Yet once she goes out to conquer her dreams of being a doctor, she finds there was more love for her both in her home and out than she could imagine. She learns that there was always more love for her than for Caroline. Her life becomes what it would have been had Caroline not been born except that she still had Caroline for a sister.

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Summary: I don't get how anyone could hate this book!!
Review: This is one of my all time favorite books! If you hate this book I really don't understand why. It tells of the hardship and betrayal of being a teenager, but at the same time, finds some way to have a happy ending. I am not Christian, and in most books all the bible talk would offend me, but in this book it didn't matter. There is a great moral in this book and everyone should read it!!

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Summary: a girl struggles but succeds to escape her twin's shadow
Review: This book was amazing. It was nice to watch a young good progress into a successful woman, and at the same time face the struggle of having a talented twin always getting the attention. You could feel the jealously and fury that Loiuse felt towards Caroline, and the how she began to step out of her twins shadow and become an individual, whom she and everyone else was proud of. It was also nice to read about the friends that supported Louise through her teeneage years, sych as Captain Hiram Wallace and her best friend and future brother-in-law, Cal. They were the only ones who made Louise feel as though she was important. Loiuse grows up to be a mid~wife in the mountains(she always did want to see the mountains) and that experience changes her life dramatically. She becomes someone who has an effect on other people's lives. She no longer fels hated in the eyes of God, but loved just as much as Caroline ever was.

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Summary: Lousie realizes she must never give up.
Review: Louise lives on an Island with her family. Her best friend is a boy, one-year-older than she. His name is Call. He has no other friends except louise. The 13-year-old girl had been through a lot of stress and anger from her twin sister doing all the things she did not want her to do. All she did was ignore Louise and call her names. Having a flood about once every year did not help with the stress too much either. On the other hand, she had a lot of fun with Call going to get crabs from the water. In this whole book most of her fun times are crab hunting in the water. Maybe it just soothes her. I think it was a great book. It sort of went on and on but that was okay. You could tell it had a good development of plot, and appropiate style.

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Summary: Not "just" for children, parents and teachers!!
Review: Feelings of condescension well up within me as I read the review that repeatedly refers to Jacob Have I Loved as an "excellent children's book". This is a book foreveryone: children, young adults, senior citizens, middle-aged people ... EVERYONE!!! Great literature cannot be pigeonholed for just one age group.

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Summary: * a pearl of understanding *
Review: This is a book for people in every stage of life -- as every great piece of literature should be -- and one of the finest crafted pieces of literature I've ever read. Paterson's work is rich in cyclical themes and in sentences unlike any I've ever read. Her motifs astound me! How often does a protagonist compare herself to an oyster or a sook? I think every person should read this, in order to see their lives and families in a new appreciative light ... especially college students. We have been where "Wheeze" has been; we can see how life comes full circle for her, and dream of how ours will do the same. Sara Louise gives me permission to see my life as art in progress; sometimes I want to have things "full circle" now, but I can see where I am in relation to her life, and know that I can and will feel many of the same emotions as she. As I walk onto my campus this evening, I see all surrounding students in a new light, as if they have all come from their own Rass. Have you lived with the Bradshaws on "Rass"? If not, go read this book!!

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Summary: Shatteringly accurate
Review: I first read this book in fifth grade and was floored by the blatant honesty of it. Although an avid reader, I was accustomed to the moral glossing of Raggedy Anne and Oz. The author's understanding of the adolescent mindset is incredibly real. The world created in which reality matters so much less than perception of reality should appeal to the postmodernists among us -- the issue isn't whether Caroline is a selfish, overprotected person, but that Louise feels she is and that she has been forced over for her entire life. The writing is delicate and sure, and the emotion, anger, humor, and sorrow are convincing. More than anything, I related all to well to the predicament of the lesser sister, the frustration of being trapped in a narrow community, and the potential terror and depression of the teenage years. At seventeen, I still re-read this book all the time.

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Summary: A sometimes heartbreaking tale of a girl longing for love
Review: This book made me laugh and cry. I felt the main character, Sara Louise, to be one of the greates heroines I've ever read about. I found her courage inspiring - and the fact that she never let anything stand in her way was refreshing. Caroline, Sara Louise's twin sister, has always gotten everything. Even Sara Louise's newfound friend, Captain, gives something that she has earned to Caroline. Then, when her only love, Call, goes off to war, he comes back married to Caroline. I felt sorry for her that everything she had ever dreamt was gone. But she didn't give up. She put herself through school and found a profession that she loved. And, in the end, she found the love - given by herself and a new husband - that she had always longed for.

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Summary: What a GREAT author!
Review: This is a fantastic book, not only in the plot, but in the language that the author uses. I found myself underlining sentences that were beyond compare. Read this book!