Sunday, November 16, 2008

Oh My Stars

by Lorna Landvik
Carver County Book Club kit, paperback, 389 pages

Violet Mathers goes from a winsome to angry to whining to lovely protangonist. The factory accident that costs her an arm changes her life. As she heads for San Francisco to commit suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge, a bus accident in North Dakota brings her in contact with Kjel ("Shell") Hedstrom and Austin Sykes. Her life is never the same.

I liked this book, though it was much more serious than other Landvik titles. I wish it were possible to listen to the Pearltones' songs - the descriptions of their music were so powerful. I look forward to discussing this with the book club next week.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Mary V via email:

I’m sorry that I have to bail out of book club. I loved the book. My son came to school with me today and I am pretty sure the book club meeting would be awkward for him.
Mary

9:04 AM
Jeanne LaMoore said...

I'm sorry that I had to miss book club discussion, too! I liked the book a lot and had put post-it notes on sections that I really wanted to talk about with everyone. I love the richness of our discussions!

11:52 AM
Jeanne LaMoore said...

Notable parts:
- pg. 25 "Monkey Wards" - we used to call Montgomery Wards that name, too!
- pg. 25 "damaged people" - Enid and Violet befriending one another . . . how true that this happens
- pg. 64 Walter Mitty reference - made me wonder when WM was written (I checked - 1939) to be part of a novel set in the 1930s.
- pg. 75 - I loved the marriage comaraderie when Esben and Leola "laughed together, as they had learned to do whenever their children threw them for a loop."
- pg. 101 - one is not likely to find "what I wanted in a man, which was everything."
- pg. 160 - loved the "All the best things happen in a library" quote, even though the librarian is a shusher
- pg. 163 - the description of how it felt to Austin when the man assumed he was bothering Violet. "Austin's skin was smooth and whole, but inside he felt he'd been cut. It wasn't a deep, gaping wound, but a sharp quick slice, and he felt that if his psyche had form and shape, it would be covered with the slashes of thousands of scars, from thousands of slurs and invectives."
- pg. 183 - the contrast between young people then and nowadays! "'Acting your age' as an eighteen-year-old meant acting like an adult; we weren't coddled and didn't have the luxury of stretching our adolescence into our thirties, as seems to be the trend now."

2:55 PM

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