Rating: 
Summary: Like Listening to Someone Rambling On and On
Review: The main character is telling the story and she rambles on and on, jumping from topic to topic. You start getting interested in a particular situation and almost mid-sentence, she switches thoughts and starts telling about another character. It seemed as if the author had a bunch of thoughts scrambled in her brain and she put the words to paper without unscrambling.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable & Funny!
Review: I've never read anything like this! It's a love story, a comedy & a real life story rolled into one! After I read this, I couldn't wait to read Big Cherry Holler. I'm on-line now to buy Milk Glass Moon! Lose yourself in these stories...I did!
Rating: 
Summary: Ordinary plot and characters in above average setting
Review: If many novels are coming of age stories Big Stone Gap is a coming into yourself story. However, that is not immediately apparent at first. The novel follows Ave Marie Mulligan through a year of his life right after her mother's death. The spinster pharmacist in a western Virginia mining town, Ave learns of a family secret in the first chapter and spends the rest of the book dealing with its reprocusions. Along the way she faces two men who wish to marry her, the demons left by her father, and her sense of being foriegn in her own home.While not exactly standard the plot isn't a font of originality The first half of the book doesn't seem quite sure where it is going, much like the main character. The book's second half is much better focused and once it finds its voice the plot is tied up in a satisfactory, but not overly insightful or compeling manner. The main character has passed the Woolf/LeGuin test of "do you remember the protagonist's name after you've finished". The good met good ends and the bad don't, but there is enough bittersweetness to give a sense of real life. That sense of real life is where this book truly excells. While Ave and some of the other leads aren't especially strong characters the supporting cast and setting is. Ms. Trigiani adds plenty of personality so that while the story itself may not be unique the novel is because it is so tied to its time and place. From an elderly snake handling minister to a 40ish bookmobile driver on the prowl the town of Big Stone Gap and the surrounding hollars comes alive as the book's highlight. The use of just the right amount of local language and color make sure we know we're in rural Appalacia and not rural New England or out West. Ms. Trigiani's books have been compared to Fanny Flagg's in terms of conveying a sense of the rural South and the comparision rings true.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Read
Review: My first Adriana Trigiani book and I'm on-line to buy the next one! What a great story and storyteller.
Rating:
Summary: Big Stone Gap
Review: A delightful read, I could not put this book down. The characters are fun, charming, and real. My friends and I passed this book around and we all feel in love with the little town of Big Stone Gap
Rating:
Summary: BIG love!
Review: As a life long resident of Virginia, though not southwestern VA, I really enjoyed the fact that this book was written by someone who was a Virginian, and wrote it about a small town in my state. The main character Ave Maria keeps you interested in her life. She tells a great story and made it so I could hardly put the book down. A single women in her 30's, Ave Maria is going through life wondering what true happiness means. When she finds out a secret about her past her whole vision of life changes. She is determined to find out the truth. Along the way to the truth she learns many lessons about herself, her town, and happiness. Great story! Great writing! I loved the book and cannot wait until the movie comes out in a few years. I'm still waiting to see when they'll finally film it!
Rating:
Summary: Spend time w/Ave Maria & friends, feel at home in BSG
Review: Ave Maria, 35 and single (she considers herself a spinster but I wouldn't label her as such), trying to recover from her mother's surprise secret that was revealed only after her recent death from cancer, is not a simple or 1-dimensional character, but I found it so easy to get to know her and care about what happened to her (and her friends). It's more than Ave Maria laying her feelings - weeds along with the flowers - out on the line for the reader to behold in all their splendor. It just doesn't feel like there's anything shallow about this book - it has a special quality I can't define that made me feel like spending time with Ave Maria and her friends and family in Big Stone Gap was like being somewhere that felt like home. Readers get to experience so much - from surprise, adventure, tears, laughter, suspense and that feeling you get when someone you "know" does something nice for someone else you "know" (even if it's only knowing them via pages in a book). I finished the book satisfied and wanting more simultaneously - I found Big Stone Gap an enjoyable read that tended to my emotional needs to connect with the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Average in every sense...
Review: "Big Stone Gap" is a big disappointment, the kind of novel you wish had been written by a more accomplished writer. It follows the pattern of many women in mid-life novels and proves that the quality of writing is what makes or breaks these formulas. Big Stone Gap is the kind of Southern small town that exists in movies and novels, where people start sentences with phrases like "I done gone..." and where there is no dearth of fried chicken and collard greens. (I half expected to see grandpas on porches playing banjos.) The heroine, Ave Maria, has recently lost both of her parents and is, to borrow Thoureou's line, living a life of quiet desperation. Then a sequence of thoroughly predictible twists leads her to abandon her spinster life in favor of a richer life. Part of the problem, in fact most of it, is the writing. Consider what Anne Tyler or Pam Houston might have done with this line: "The water reflects off the stalactites, throwing iridescent colors all over the water-washed walls. It looks like a moving painting of blues and silvers." That is an image that could have been breathtaking; instead it is merely competent. The last quarter of the book picks up speed, and there are a few scenes that are touching in their honesty. I won't give them away except to say that final image, a beauty, made me wonder what this novel might have been after a few more drafts.
Rating:
Summary: Quirky Characters With a Dash of Southern Humor
Review: Quite often, opening lines of a book may beckon to a reader and hold onto them for the duration of the book. As an avid reader I couldn't help but feel this way when I read the following opening lines from Big Stone Gap by Adiana Trigiani, "This weekend will be a good weekend for reading." And I felt my fingers skipping to turn the pages and begin reading more of this book. Now that I've finished the novel by Ms. Trigiani , I too must add my kudos along with the many other readers who have also recommended and enjoyed this title. Like the authors Fannie Flagg and Rebecca Wells, Ms. Trigiani has assembled a cast of Southern characters who are homespun, fun loving and just quirky enough to appeal to reading audiences everywhere. Ave Marie Mulligan at 35 is an unmarried pharmacist in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. The product of an Italian mother and Scotch Irish father, who died some years before has come to accept her father's cruelty when she was younger. She also has come to accept that her life most likely will never change either. Running the local pharmacy, which she inherited, making deliveries to the hollers, working with the ambulance squad and directing the Outdoor Drama musical every summer fill her days and years. But when Ava reads a letter from her recently deceased mother, she is left with some revelations and unsettling questions. Now Ava must find out the answers and we as readers fully realize that Ava's life will never be the same again. Ms. Trigiani offers her readers a delightful book which will surely be read and reread by her many fans. And the best part is that once you finished reading Big Stone Gap you can return to the area and people once again by reading the second book in this trilogy, Big Cherry Holler, and the recently published third and last book, Milk Glass Moon. Take it from me, spending time with Ave Marie Mulligan with her friends in Big Stone Gap is a perfect way to spend any weekend.
Rating:
Summary: Great Southern Read
Review: I hesitated to buy this because I hate to read books written in the present tense ("I go into the kitchen; he looks out the window...") but I'm a sucker for southern fiction and quirky small towns so I bought it anyway. What a treat! I fell in love with the characters right away and was so happy there was a sequel available. The writing was laugh-out-loud funny and I could feel for Ave Maria's situation. My only complaint was that the chapters are verrry long so I stayed up waaay too late reading because I just couldn't put it down in the middle of one!
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