Customer Reviews

Almost Heaven

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The language is beautiful and the story engrossing, but it doesn't have a conclusion. It was like seeing only acts 1+2 of a three act play. I don't want to spoil the book, so I'll only say that there's an impending doom in the story, at the heart of the story really. The book ends when the doom strikes rather than coninue and show the ramifications of the doom and other actions in the book.
Another analogy would be a disaster movie that ended as soon as the disaster hit. That's not a satisfying story because we want to see how people deal with the disaster and, in this book, we don't get to.

I thoroughly enjoyed the language Marianne Wiggins used throughout her book, especially the scenes when Holden is explaining what he saw and how he reacted in Bosnia. As an ex-patriot American who just returned from "home," I thought he captured those feelings right on. Europeans never quite understand the American weather in the summer and could learn a lot with Wiggins' descriptions of the way American heat skies can get. I became somewhat bogged down in the implausibility of the trek West, despite the lush sex scenes, but was WOWED by the ending! Personally, how well a writer pulls off an ending is one of my gauges for success. Wiggins sure caught me there. One of the reviews in my book jacket tells of re-reading the book almost immediately. I can understand that.

the author's phraseology jumps out at you at expected times and you savour its impact. she weaves a subtle yet obvious plot around experiences that we all have had and takes you to boundaries of emotion few of us seldom reach. i sincerely hope there is to be sequal.

Marianne Wiggins writes an impressionistic, poetic and heart-breaking story. Her descriptions of emotions are wide and deep and revelatory. She weaves the numbing experience of the loss of self in war and the distressingly innocent, blank experience of amnesia. What is memory? What is feeling? Can we recover our memory without mourning its loss?
If you give yourself to the depths of this book, without demanding a conventional "story" (although there is a plot) you will experience depths that turn over your heart.

I remembered Marianne Wiggins from her marriage to Salman Rushdie days - when he had that fatwa hanging on his head, and they were living in hiding, darting out of alleys and bus stops in my fevered imagination. That didn't last - neither the fatwa nor the marriage. The book itself was about a woman who had witnessed her husband and children killed before her eyes in a tornado, and had suffered from a memory loss, as a result. A jaded news reporter who had witnessed the massacre in Srebenica, her brother's protege and close friend, helps her find her memory and finds his appreciation of his life. Even though I liked Wiggins' writing, I couldn't stomach the way I could foresee the dots.

Jaded reporter - finds out about his friend's sister having the accident - decides to visit - friend's sister is a stunner, even if she's prone to blank stares every time something from her recent past is brought up. You can see where it's going, right? Right into steamy sex in a trailer. Even if Wiggins explored nature and memory and loss, her plot points are way too Hollywoodish. I don't understand myself either. I love it when I can foresee the story line when I'm watching a film. Then why not a book? I don't know.

The most interesting part of the book to me was the dedication page. She had written something to the effect of "In memory of [some date], 1995". It just made me curious to know what that day was. Was it the day Rushdie's fatwa was lifted? Or when she got a divorce from him? Or her son was born? Who knows? Doesn't bode well to me that that is the most intriguing thing about the book.

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I really enjoyed reading this book and got caught up in the affair between Melanie and Holden. I loved the metophoric referances to the weather and love and the way that the characters are so realistic.
This is my second Marianne Wiggins book as I read Eveless Eden first. People who want to read this book should read Eveless Eden first because it has the same characters and explains things that are not explained in this book.
I'm really impressed by this and she is fast becoming my favourite author.

This was our February book club selection. The consensus was that this was the worst book that we had ever read. Some members couldn't even finish it. Reading it resulted in a 10 minute discussion on how we've never hated a book worse. Horrible plot, story, and characters. The main character Holden is dispicable and abusive. The book concludes at the climax, with absolutely no resolution.