Wildwood

Rating:
Summary: MALE READER LOVES (& LEARNS FROM) WILDWOOD
Review: Druscilla Campbell, the author of "Wildwood" did it. She made me care about the three characters and best friends, Hannah, Jeanne, and Liz, when I had enough to care about like my family, a baby on the way, job, etc. She hooked me from tbe first page until the last. Druscilla has an uncanny ability to get inside her characters heads and make them real. More than that, she gives each one of her characters a real and distinct voice; one that leaps out at you from the page. These voices push you along, leading you to the end. A good book makes you examine yourself and those around you. Do I have friends that will last 40 years? Could we endure a similar secret of "Bluegang Creek" like Hannah, Jeanne, and Liz? Not only did I love reading this book, but it got me thinking which is the best kind of book.

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Summary: An engrossing literary read-- you won't put it down!!!
Review: I met Drusilla Campbell recently in California and purchased a signed copy of Wildwood. I was surprised after I read her book, that, by her own admission, she experienced difficulty getting published in the literary genre, since her characterization of three very different women is amazing! Apparently publishers didn't want her to jump from the romance market to the literary genre. I, for one, am glad she persevered and found the right agent to market her book. As a struggling novelist myself, I will study her book further, to improve my own mastery of the literary devices she's used, such as metaphor and simile, as well as her original, lyrical descriptive settings of northern California. She's accomplished many tasks masterfully in Wildwood. She moves the plot at a wonderful clip and manages to write from three different characters' points of view, each woman unique in experiencing her own growth and ephiphany.
I read this novel in two days and was sooooo reluctant to leave the three friends, Hannah, Liz, and Jeanne, when the book ended. It's my hope that Drusilla has other quality literary novels like this in the works!

Rating:
Summary: Were we reading the same book???????
Review: I must be really confused. I thought we read Wildwood. Hmmm, all of the reviewers have enjoyed this book. I have to say I thought it extremely dull and boring. It took me 3/4 of the book to even keep apart who each of the characters were and what their life was like. I would of much enjoyed reading the book on what happened in their lives after the accident... and skipped the whole adult part altogether. The only part that I did enjoy was reading about life in Santa Clara, CA. I grew up there and I found myself picturing all of the places I frequented as they were explaining their lives. I pictured Bluegang as our own neighborhood creek that was forbidden for all of the neighborhood children to go. That made it even more appealing and exciting. I found myself wanting to go back there and be in that world again. The author has a definate knowledge of life in the bay area, just by the way she could describe a day by the unique weather. For that reason only I give the book 2 stars. Keep shopping!

Rating:
Summary: a dashing novel
Review: In her dashing novel *Wildwood* Drucilla Campbell weaves an alluring, highly complex tale of three still-young women who find release from a horrible event shared some 30 years past. During the intervening years they've all lived quite different lives--two have remained close to home, the third has lived abroad--and it is she who returns for a visit and provides the ultimate catalyst for dramatic resolutions.

There are many aspects in Ms. Campbell's novel to intrigue us: a curious private school and a tenebrous nature-place of crime are provocative old hometown venues; the maddeningly relentless drought--a seemingly "judgmental" withholding of rain--serves as a puissant metaphor; and then there is the ever-surfacing mystery of a missing piece of intimate clothing, which is a key to their life-changing mystery. And of course there are the relationships between the women themselves--and their men--all inextricably wound together like tangled roots of old trees. These relationships are charged, and psychodynamically layered (especially interesting to me, a NYC psychotherapist), and all are portrayed with marked originality and truly extraordinary perspicacity.

On the way, there are delightful tidbits and dividends: a wonderful run through Paris; an engaging ear for the patois of the youth involved; and loads of good southern California.

Read *Wildwood*. Read it because it's immensely entertaining; read it because it's incredibly edifying.

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Summary: Get ten copies for your book club!
Review: My friend brought me this book, said she'd read it all the way through on her flight to see me. I didn't believe her. Then I started reading and found myself unable to stop. I was captivated by all of the characters, saw some of myself in each of the women. I loved that it wasn't predictable, as so many books are now. This is a great book club read - really brings out discussion.

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Summary: A great book for book groups
Review: This is a terrific tale of choices, and of the durability of friendship. As girls, these women share a wrenching experience, and over the ensuing years, make choices about their lives testing the strength of their loyalty to eachother and their current relationships. As a book for a reader's group, there are meaty issues of loyalty, love, motherhood, compromises and choices that are sure to yield lively discussion and memories of old friends.

Rating:
Summary: Agreeing with Arthur Waldron!
Review: While it took me fifty pages to get into the book, once I was there, I was hooked. I found myself to be reading through the night, absolutely intent to find out how the now-adult relationship would play out for Liz,Hanna, and Jeanne. It is a new twist on the coming-of-age novel. A twist that all of us who have maintain grade school friendships have or will have to journey through as we enter adulthood. Campbell writes with precision without taking away from the reader's own introspection. Perhaps one of the best Campbell has written and I have read them all!

Rating:
Summary: Refreshing and different!!!!
Review: Wildwood was one of those books you can get into and really identify with the characters. I especially enjoyed Hannah and her fight to bond with Angel. All characters were brought to life and you felt like you really knew them.