House Under Snow

Rating:
Summary: Prose that's proud of itself
Review: It's taken me a while to get through this book partly because I'm not very excited about the plot and partly because the author's self-conscious writing style really annoys me. There are lovely phrases here and there, but there are plenty of others that read like something you'd find in a greeting card--they try hard to impress and fail. The author makes deliberate, almost constant use of foreshadowing, perhaps in an attempt to get the reader to stick with the book and not lay it down for good. I'm contemplating the latter.

Rating:
Summary: Shattering of the Suburban Dream
Review: Jill Bialosky's roman a clef is an unforgettable, haunting rendering of what happens to a suburban household of beautiful women frozen by the spectre of inescapable tragedy. 15-year-old protagonist, Anna Crane, recounts her valiant struggle to escape the seductive narcissism of her loving yet destructive mother Lily, whose attempts to overcome the obstacles of daily living can be found in idiomatic invectives and cosmetic counters. There is a fragile sensitivity to the prose which often feels like breaking glass, and a frightening verisimilitude of the reality of three young sisters raising themselves while vying for the attentions of their compelling yet elusive mother. Part ICE STORM, part HOUSEKEEPING, this book vividly shatters the suburban dream.

Rating:
Summary: Cruel mother
Review: Lilly is the epitome of a damaged woman whose actions are cruel and who is not even aware of the sorrow she inflicts on her daughters. I read this in a fit of absorption- I just had to know what would happen to Anna and her sisters. Lilly is utterly fascinating and maddening at once. The author is genius at writing about a time and place, with fantastic details. i do think she writes very self-consciously, in hyper poetic prose. I still think this novel is a treasure.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: One of the most poignant novels I've read in years. Lilly Crane is a tragic and compelling charater and Bialosky captures her
situation so sympathetically. She is truly unforgettable. One of the most powerful mother, daughter novels I've read.

Rating:
Summary: House Under Snow
Review: Surprisingly, I couldn't put the book down, a real page turner. The ending certainly took me by surprise. Frightenly so, this novels captures the essence of family surburban life. The characters were truly believable, especially in the manner Bialosky captures Anna and Austin's teenage love affair. Very moving and beautifully written. Bialosky is a great story teller.

Rating:
Summary: Amateurish & trite
Review: This book reads like a first draft written by a young writer (high-school or college student) with some untrained talent. There were occasional passages of beautiful phrasing, but the book is overall sloppy and rambling. Didn't anybody edit this material? I found it vague, contradictory, and anachronistic (granite countertops, high fives in the early 1970s?). There were factual errors (the North Star is not the brightest star in the sky, far from it; nightingales do not live in North America), sloppy syntax, and grammatical errors throughout (it's try TO do something, not try AND do something; it's "the family was" not "the family were"). The character of the mother was quite moving at first, but Anna and her boyfriend were dreadful cardboard cutouts. The story grinds to a halt whenever they appear and act out their boring and overwrought drama, and after a time it just grinds to a halt because of all the repitiveness, the confusing cutting back and forth in time, and the deterioration of the writing over the last 50 pages. I won't be reading anything by this writer again, who unfortunately has been very poorly served by the editor and copyeditor of record. Shame on those publishing professionals! I hope not to stumble across any more of their work either.

Rating:
Summary: good writing, bad editing
Review: This is a very well written book by a poet and editor at a major literary house. It is, therefore, astounding to find editing that is so bad that you notice it. It actually distracted me from the reading. I read the hard cover edition. Maybe the editing's been improved in paperback.

Rating:
Summary: soap opera sentimentality
Review: This is the sort of book that gives womens' fiction a bad name. It is sentimental and obvious. Overwrought prose and a plot from tv talk shows, this novel lacks intelligence and depth. Never more than an inch above banal, I actually groaned while reading, and not from pleasure.