The Brambles [Hardcover]

Eliza Minot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 18, 2006

A luminous, panoramic novel of family life—a beautiful, often hilarious portrait of motherhood and marriage—and a magnificent leap forward from the highly praised author of The Tiny One (“Minot has a sorceress’s ability to perceive the emotional spirits trapped in nature and a wild, unstrung, lyrical gift”—The New York Times Book Review).

This is the story of the Bramble family—Margaret, Max, and Edie—three adult siblings careening through wildly different byways of adult life. Margaret, mother of three, drowning in a sea of runny noses and lost mittens, is a nurturer with a sense of humor, a witty woman at wits’ end, about to take her ailing father into the tumult and chaos of her already overcrowded home. Edie, her younger sister, is a barely recognizable version of Margaret’s former self—young, single, clicking smartly down city streets in good shoes, but struggling mightily beyond her sister’s vision to anchor her desultory, and intensely solitary, life. Max, newly married, newly a father, is buckling under the weight of new responsibilities. Over the course of one critical season, a long hidden secret will be revealed, remaking each of them, and all they thought they knew about one another and about themselves.

Lyrical, emotional, and large-hearted—a sweeping and unfailingly precise depiction of the allegiances, as well as the miscommunications and misunderstandings, upon which we build our lives—The Brambles is ringing confirmation of Eliza Minot’s abundant gifts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Minot's graceful, candid novel about the meaning of adulthood and the depth of family attachment follows the three siblings of the titular clan as they face the consequences of their life choices. Margaret is an ambivalent mother of three who relinquished her autonomy and former identity as a hip New Yorker for a suburban life of carpools; Max, a new father, quit his job as an independent film producer but hides the truth from his wife by pretending to go to work every day; depressed, lonely 20-something Edie struggles with singlehood and a newly acquired eating disorder. Now, they must cope with their widowed father, Arthur, who moves into Margaret's home to suffer through the final stages of cancer. There is also the matter of a long-held family secret, revealed, of course, when they least expect it. Minot (Susan's sister and author of The Tiny One) has a refreshing, contemporary voice, and even the most mundane moments—Edie talking to herself in the car, Margaret's daughter dancing on the lawn—contain surprising swells of emotion. As it turns out, the revealed secret is melodramatic and far-fetched, but this novel excels all the same, buoyed up by its quiet conflicts and small, gorgeous glimpses at truth.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Minot's elegant second novel follows three siblings as they cope with their father's impending death from cancer, not long after their mother was killed in an airplane accident. The siblings' main preoccupations, though, are more individual. Margaret, a harried mother of three, has difficulty accepting that her children are growing up. Max can't bring himself to tell his wife that he quit his job in a moment of frustration, and he resents the burden that she and their baby son represent. The youngest, Edie, has fewer responsibilities, but is the most adrift, deeply lonely and plagued by an eating disorder. These quotidian problems sometimes seem overwrought, and the book's end brings an unnecessary plot twist, but the precision of Minot's descriptions succeeds in making her characters seem real and sympathetic.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker - click here to subscribe.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 2nd edition (July 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400042690
• ISBN-13: 978-1400042692
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,292,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Thoughts, August 27, 2006

By 

JJ Stark (Cicero, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Brambles (Hardcover)

I really wanted to like this book after reading so many positive reviews prior to its release (including a glowing recommendation from the "Big O" herself!). I just had a very hard time sinking my teeth into it.

I thought the author rambled a lot, going from one thing to another - one scene to a previous time, back to the current scene - way too often. It caused me to wonder where I was in the story and lost my attention and/or interest in the original event. Sometimes I would be reading page after page and wonder where the author was going with this. Some of the narrative felt unnecessary and pointless, like the author really wanted to tell a certain story but couldn't find a place in the book for it, so she turned it into a flashback or a memory for one of the characters. Sometimes this made sense, but more often than not, I felt let down as I finished a chapter. I like to see chapters in a novel flow from one to another, with one scene ending and then blending into the opening scene of the following chapter (kinda like the acts of a play), but in this novel, the chapters and charatcer's stories didn't quite seem to fit all together.

I also thought the twist (or "big reveal") was somewhat unbelievable and confusing. I don't want to give anything away for those who still wish to read this, but what was the point of the character who rumaged through the garbage? I thought the final explanation for this character's purpose was totally ridiculous and certainly didn't fit in with the rest of a story (it almost seemed like a conclusion you'd come to at the end of a bad romantic comedy). I found myself scratching my head asking "HUH?" and had to read the explanation a second time, just to be sure i read it right the first time. It just didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. I mean, if this was truly meant to be a character study (as it seemed to be many time), then this far-fetched secret had no place in this novel.

There were a few parts of the book that I really did like, however. I liked reading of Margaret's feelings of being overwhelmed as a wife and a mother. Of all of the charatcers, I liked her the best, and she seemed the most identifiable for me. Her feelings of confusion and love for both her family and father were totally believable and downright genuine. I also found the earlier story of Edie believable as the youngest sibling with little or direction in life. This story's been told many times before, and I think Minot got it right with Edie. But Max and his wife - they just didn't seem to fit, and I honestly found her to be quite annoying.

I'm not sure I wouldn't recommend this book - I really think there are some who will truly love it (as proven by some of the reviews left here). For me, tho, I felt a little let down after so much hype - - made me wonder if the book had been changed since earlier reviews were written. I just didn't love it as much as I thought. I will probably give Minot another try if she had another release sometime soon.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed feelings about this one..., October 20, 2006

By 

Tracy L. (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Brambles (Hardcover)

I must admit I'm not quite sure what kind of a review to give this book. On the one hand I liked the characters and the story, but on the other hand it is an extremely slow read for a 240+ page book.

Margaret, Max and Edie are siblings whose mother has died in a plane crash and whose father is dying of cancer. Each sibling is also going through their own problems (Margaret is finding the middle class life of having a husband and three kids too demanding, Max has quit his job and has not yet told his wife who suspects him of having an affair, and Edie is living a lonely existence in NYC while trying to deal with an eating disorder.) Each character is well defined and likable, and their individual stories are interesting. There were even a few laugh-out-loud moments that I enjoyed.

The problem with this book is that it is too bogged down with a great deal of metaphorical descriptive imagery - "He had the sensation that living in the world was like living inside of a hollowed egg, an egg that was like a Constable painting" or "The crickets and cicadas buzzing and rattling, whirling like alarms, sizzling like a table saw or meat dropped into a frying pan, the winking ember of fireflies, the hulking trees sunken into the warm dark like giant blots." If you like that kind of writing, then this is definitely the book for you because there is an awful lot of it, but it just made for a slow read for me.

Some other reviewers were bothered by the way the story seemed to flip-flop from past to present. That did not bother me so much, but the "secret", when finally revealed was very anti-climatic and I kept wondering why the author even decided that it was needed.

As I said there were some enjoyable moments, and the author does have a good sense of human nature, so for that I'll give this one 3 stars.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the wait!, August 13, 2006

By 

A. Vernick - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Brambles (Hardcover)

I've been a fan of Eliza Minot's since THE TINY ONE was published, and I'd just about given up hope that she'd come through with another novel. THE BRAMBLES was worth waiting for.

It has been mentioned in other reviews, but I can't help adding that Minot's description of suburban motherhood is freaky in its perception and accuracy. Her observations are complex and funny and if you're someone who happens to have a sister who's also a suburban mother, it's just about impossible to not put the book down to call her and say, "Just listen to this paragraph!"

The book's not perfect--a surprise at the end felt more tacked-on than organic. But I've been recommending this book far and wide, as it is just spot on: in its portrayal of the modern family, the experience of losing a parent, the daily grind and joy of caring for a young family, and the subtle manipulations of sibling relationships.

I really, really hope the wait isn't quite so long for the next one.