Sarah Messer
Teoksen Red House: Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England's Oldest Continuously Lived-in House tekijä
Tekijän teokset
Associated Works
Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion (2007) — Avustaja — 93 kappaletta
Fairy Tale Review: The Brown Issue — Avustaja — 3 kappaletta
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Kanoninen nimi
- Messer, Sarah
- Syntymäaika
- 1966
- Sukupuoli
- female
- Kansalaisuus
- USA
- Asuinpaikat
- Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
- Ammatit
- dichter
- Organisaatiot
- University of North Carolina-Wilmington
White Lotus Farms
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
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Associated Authors
Tilastot
- Teokset
- 4
- Also by
- 3
- Jäseniä
- 235
- Suosituimmuussija
- #96,241
- Arvio (tähdet)
- 3.8
- Kirja-arvosteluja
- 7
- ISBN:t
- 6
The book tells the story of a house in southern Massachusetts that has been lived in (almost exclusively) by the same family from 1646 through the mid 1960's when a new, unrelated family, buys the house and lives there. The story is told in alternating chapters based on the historical knowledge for each generation of the original family then from the perspective of the current owners.
What went wrong is that neither perspective is well told. Knowing that there are limited records from the mid 1600's, the reader is not drawn to what happened at that time but there are long descriptions of the land and the house. My imagination couldn't really pull together what the area looked like in 1646 and how that changed in the subsequent eras. The perspective of the current residents was spotty and uneven. There is a paragraph near the end of the book, where the author (who grew up in the house as the 'current family') relays a conversation with an old boyfriend and goes into detail on what was on his tuna sandwich! I really didn't understand why the conversation (and subsequent actions) were even included never mind the tuna sandwich.
What does come across is how difficult it is to have a family house passed through the decades - the allure of history but the potential resentment that you could never create your own history but continue to live the history of your extended family. For the current family that lives there, they are living in a house with someone else history - the history they are making in their day-to-day live getting overshadowed by the history of the house and the generations of people that lived there previously.
I wanted to like this book but there is a lot that was wrong with it and not enough that drew me in. If this wasn't a book club book, I don't think I would have finished it.… (lisätietoja)