Rating: 
Summary: Loved it!
Review: I loved this book! It was very disappointing when I got to the end and had to let the characters go. I recognized so many people I know/knew in the characters and was therefore fascinated with them. I highly recommend this book to people who love to study other people (and may learn something about themselves in the process).
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Summary: Great writing
Review: I really enjoyed this author's voice. It was not snobbish, but it was in a way Victorian. It was a pleasant and interesting experience. Experience it for yourself.
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Summary: Couldn't read it, wanted to, but couldn't
Review: I REALLY wanted to like this book. The idea of three babies born on the same day and their relationships, etc. So, I chose it for our book club. But, the book just didn't hold my interest at all. I couldn't get interested in the characters, I couldn't become involved in the plot... The story just didn't take me anywhere.
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Summary: A rare gem.
Review: I received this book as a Christmas gift and I just got around to reading it. What a pleasant surprise! (And a refreshing break from the flood of novels about contemporary dysfunctional families.) The seductive cover does not mislead -- inside these pages is a powerful story, but this is a gentle kind of power -- the power of family bonds and subtle domestic dramas. The author tells us the Scofield family stories in a distinctive voice that can only be described as discreet. It's as if a loving aunt were recounting the family's history for us. I haven't read anything else by Robb Forman Dew, but I am going to search out her earlier novels, and I'm looking forward to the sequel to this one.
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Summary: The icing is beautiful but the cake is even better
Review: I saw this book displayed, and the cover is so seductive that I picked it up and began to look through it. I was captivated by the first sentence which is one of the great openings of any book I've ever read, including A Tale of Two Cities. This is a complex tale about familial myths, and how they evolve, that shape the way we look at the narrative of our lives. And this is one of the only books I've ever read that explores the lives of girls at school, among many other things. At times it's endearingly amusing and at times it's searingly sad and sometimes heartbreaking. This is a book into which you walk as if you're sinking into a dream. It is slow paced and visual and increasingly mesmerizing. I emerged from it so sorry it was over. It's a whole world Dew gives us, and the writing is transcendent! It illuminates the fact that any person is always living his or her regular life while managing all sorts of emotions simultaneaously, and the author never judges the characters but leaves that for the reader to do if we choose. The ending is a shock and is entirely earned. I loved this book and think it will become a classic. I'm trying to find this author's previous books but they seem to be out of print.
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Summary: The Intricacies of Existence
Review: In her latest novel, National Book Award-winning author Robb Forman Dew delineates how, at the remove of time and space, the intricacies of existence assume the aura of truth.
Dew begins this first volume of a trilogy by discussing the births of three central characters, born hours apart, in late- nineteenth-century smalltown Ohio. These children, two of whom are cousins, grow up as friends until two of them marry each other, causing their childhood alliances to shift and shatter and seek resolution by means that may resolve their sense of loss and soothe their insecurities but that also, in so doing, cause their loved ones to suffer. Indeed, the dilemma presented both by and to Dew's distinct, equisitely drawn characters is that of the human condition. Over time, feelings translated into actions assume the aura of the truth by which people judge themselves and each other. However, the truth that translates as history is as tenuous and unreliable as are relationships themselves.
But Dew is not a pessimist; her vision, like her language, is transcendent. The last sentence of The Evidence Against Her reads, "And always there was a moment when it seemed to Agnes that it wasn't the case that darkness fell; it was really the light, all the voices, and complaints--the doings of any particular day--slowly evaporated, leaching upward into the wide, absorbent sky." Such masterful command of the language combined with the profundity of Dew's themes causes The Evidence Against Her to be among the best books of the year.
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Summary: a REAL book with substance! Wonderful!
Review: Lovers of the sort of fiction Jan Karon writes won't like this book, and it is a waste of time for them to read it. This is an astonishing work of lierature that is nevertheless accessable to any good reader. It is a whole world given to the reader to ponder for years after finishing the book. Is there Evidence? Of what and about whom? I think this is the best book I've read in decades, and if you're a fan of Jane Austen or Edith Wharton or even Carol Shields you will love this novel! I'm jealous of anyone who hasn't read it yet! Happy reading!
Rating: 
Summary: Such a plain story!!!
Review: Most books that I've read have grabbed my attention early on and then by the middle you can pretty much determine where the book will take you. It was no different with this book. Good beginning, but what the book seemed about in the beginning changed alot by the middle of it and really changed by the end.
The characters were ok. But the story was dry and predictable.
I was happy to close it when I finished, if you like a important stories, vivid characters, and something you can't put down, then don't read this book.
It was way too dull.
Rating: 
Summary: An intense study of character
Review: Not much happens in this book on the surface. At first glance it seems like that is not the case: there are births, deaths, marriages, World War I, an outbreak of influenza. But all of that activity plays a background role to the intricate workings of three families in a small Ohio town at the turn of the century--and everything that happens is leading up to one final act, providing motivation for that act.
I found this to be primarily a novel of envy. Every person in this book feels as if he/she is on the outside looking in. Agnes Claytor envys Lily Butler, who envys her right back. Catherine Claytor envys her daughter; in fact she envys anyone that takes the center of attention away from herself. In many ways it reminded me of a Jane Austen novel of manners: so many people were so concerned about what others thought, and caught up in their own propriety, that no one really understood or got to know anyone else.
I did find the ending to be bit abrupt. The back cover says that this is the first in a trilogy, so I'm thinking maybe this book was meant just as an introduction to these characters. Overall, the writing is superb, and the characters are fascinating, and for the most part, likeable people. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: A great read !
Review: The descriptions that Robb Dew uses in this book gave me more of a sense of the time and place than I could have imagined when I first started reading it. I was taken back into a time when women's voices were kept to themselves and the roles were so defined there was not much room to live your own life, regardless of gender. Robb Dew, in a quiet way that is really poetic, exemplifies the time, the social position of the families and the geographic location and families' heritage. This book lays out what life was like in a small midwestern town.Even in those days there were people from away who had to learn to find a place in the society they lived in, and Robb Dew takes the reader into those complex family situations. Early on in the book Lily's experiences shape the rest of her life, and in a strong subtle way Dew takes us to the parts of Lily that plague her and influence her. I thought this was a great read.
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