Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Family History
Review: I picked this book up off a best sellers table when I was in London this past March. I was looking for some good books to read on the long flight home but I had not gotten to this one until now.
I am very interested in family history and have researched my own family line back many generations. I believe that this book truly expresses why family history interests me so much. The tying together and weaving of the lives of the female clan members of this book show just how important heritage and family are. It tells of secrets that all families have hidden amongst their branches, of illegitimate children, of relationships between mothers and their children, of the relationships of mother-in laws with their children's spouses, of love, hate, loss, and triumph.
Even though this story takes place in a fictional place with fictional characters, its message is based on the lives of many that grew up in Austria during a time where farming, dairying, and war were common place. Even though my own life may not be anything like what it must have been like for the strong women figures of "Homestead", it is a life that is based on the choices, dreams, and goals of my ancestors and without them, I would not be where or who I am today.
Another interesting read that is similar to this book is "Oral History" by Lee Smith set in the Appalachian Mountains.
Rating: 
Summary: This is one of my top 5 all time favorites
Review: I was sad to get to the end of the book, I wanted more! I have been telling everyone I know, male and female to read this book. It is such an amazing piece of art.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, well-told generational saga
Review: In "Homestead", Rosina Lippi writes a series of short stories dealing with women in the Austrian village of Rosenau. It is fascinating to watch the characters evolve over time, some from tiny children into grown women.Subtle, daily, details are fascinating, so, too, is the almost casual way the major events of the 20th century are incorporated into this book. I especially enjoyed the chapter about making cheese. The only quibble I had was trying to keep straight who everyone was - clan (and romantic) relationships were definitely tangled! Overall, however, a very enjoyable book.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, well-told generational saga
Review: In "Homestead", Rosina Lippi writes a series of short stories dealing with women in the Austrian village of Rosenau. It is fascinating to watch the characters evolve over time, some from tiny children into grown women. Subtle, daily, details are fascinating, so, too, is the almost casual way the major events of the 20th century are incorporated into this book. I especially enjoyed the chapter about making cheese. The only quibble I had was trying to keep straight who everyone was - clan (and romantic) relationships were definitely tangled! Overall, however, a very enjoyable book.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, well-told generational saga
Review: In "Homestead", Rosina Lippi writes a series of short stories dealing with women in the Austrian village of Rosenau. It is fascinating to watch the characters evolve over time, some from tiny children into grown women. Subtle, daily, details are fascinating, so, too, is the almost casual way the major events of the 20th century are incorporated into this book. I especially enjoyed the chapter about making cheese. The only quibble I had was trying to keep straight who everyone was - clan (and romantic) relationships were definitely tangled! Overall, however, a very enjoyable book.
Rating:
Summary: Get this book!
Review: It's just wonderful. Enthralling. She captures the time, the place, the women. Couldn't put it down. Brilliant writing.
Rating:
Summary: Watch for the family trees
Review: Overall, I enjoyed this book. I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if the family trees had been placed in the front of the book rather than in the appendix (since I was a good girl and didn't skip ahead to the end). Considering there is a whole story devoted to a postcard mailed to "Anna" where the intended receipient could have be half of the village, keeping track of the names is tricky. The family trees are really helpful - if you know they are there. Otherwise, the format of the book makes for good reading. The book is a series of episodes in the lives of the women in three families. They aren't quite short stories since characters and plot lines reappear every so often. At the same time, the stories are distinct enough that I was able to put the book down between chapters. Bottom-line: A pleasant read with the chance to armchair travel into life in a small Austrian village. Our book group liked the book a great deal although it didn't stimulate an extensive discussion.
Rating:
Summary: Watch for the family trees
Review: Overall, I enjoyed this book. I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if the family trees had been placed in the front of the book rather than in the appendix (since I was a good girl and didn't skip ahead to the end). Considering there is a whole story devoted to a postcard mailed to "Anna" where the intended receipient could have be half of the village, keeping track of the names is tricky. The family trees are really helpful - if you know they are there. Otherwise, the format of the book makes for good reading. The book is a series of episodes in the lives of the women in three families. They aren't quite short stories since characters and plot lines reappear every so often. At the same time, the stories are distinct enough that I was able to put the book down between chapters. Bottom-line: A pleasant read with the chance to armchair travel into life in a small Austrian village. Our book group liked the book a great deal although it didn't stimulate an extensive discussion.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful stories about strong bur very human women
Review: Rosina Lippi's book, HOMSTEAD, is a wondeful book about the strength and endurance and beauty of generations of peasant women living on small dairy farms high in the Austrian Alps. Though this book is listed as fiction, after glancing through the table of contents with all of its names, clan charts, naming conventions, pronounciation guides, and glossary, I thought it was going to be one of those books I would have to plough through along with the women in the book. Golly, it was daunting! However, before I finished the first chapter about Anna, and the Begat Homestead, 1909, I was intriuged and was happy to be flipping back and forth between all of these guides meeting women who had personality as well as endurance . I wanted to be a part of their lives and have them be a part of mine. Lippi has done a remarkable job of bringing these women to life. She tells about the inevitable disintegration of peasant life as the world shrinks in the face of technology. By sending me back to the simple peasant life in 1909, I realize how much I miss by having all of these machines do all of my work so I can save all of that time to use these machines. I don't much want to milk cows and make my own cheese, but I would like the strength these women had to face the world. This book reminds me of John Berger's trilogy, INTO THEIR LABOURS, which chronicles the creeping death of simplicity in the rural areas of the Alps of France.
Rating: 
Summary: Something Missing!
Review: Since I always enjoy multi-generational sagas, I was most enthusiastic when I first picked up this book. But I'm afraid that I didn't enjoy this title nearly as much as I thought I would. Lippi's writings, at times, did invoke the spirit and solitude of the isolated Alpine farming village and the women who lived there. And these images and characters did fill the pages of the interlocking stories over an 80 year period. While the reader becomes familiar with these women's lives, losses and regrets, all of the stories weren't nearly as spirited or poignant as they could have been. And for some strange reason, the family trees appeared as endpapers at the back of the book and since I didn't see then till I was almost finished with the book, I felt that having them in the front might have made things less confusing and I also might have enjoyed the book more. I know that Rosina Lippi spent time in a village similar to the one she wrote about and I am sure this book was factual but I was hoping for stories with a bit more. I have since learned that Rosina Lippi also writes historical fiction under the name of Sara Donati. I now plan on reading one of these books to see if I like them better than this one.
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