Customer Reviews

The Christmas Letters

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I received this book as a pre-Christmas book many years ago and have just finished reading it for maybe the fifth time just before Christmas. It is a very quick and engaging read.

The Christmas Letters recounts all of the bittersweet memories that surround Christmas. It is not necessarily all happy, but it is all very real. Maybe as I get older, the pathos of Christmas becomes more real - both the sadness associated with memories of the past which can no longer be recreated and the realization that we can only celebrate from that place where we currently live in our lives. When we are in good places, then Christmas is magical. When not, Christmas can be very difficult. Smith touches on both of these points.

I am a great fan of Lee Smith's books. I gave this one only 4 stars, but that is in relation to her other books. To me, her best is Fair and Tender Ladies, also written in letter form.

Christmas blessings to all.

For the most part I liked this book. It's the story of one family told through three generations of Christmas Letters (well, two really, the third generation only writes one letter). Now, it was very difficult for me to get past the feeling of...'why is all this stuff being written in x-mas letters, shouldn't the family have already known about all this stuff? Wouldn't you tell your family these things as they happen?'.

I know it was necessary to include these things in order for the reader to understand everything that's gone on in the family over the years, but it was very distracting. This said, I think this book would have been much better if it were formatted as a regular novel, not in Christmas letters. I believe it would have been a very interesting read.

But regardless, the story itself was good. It kept me turning the pages. I really enjoyed the second to last letter, where Mary (the second generation) sends out the REAL Christmas letter, not the superficial one that everyone gets saying all is peachy-keen and life couldn't be more perfect, blah, blah, blah. This letter tells us the 'good stuff'. I recommend this book as a very quick little Christmas read. It'll help you get into the Christmas spirit.

Lee Smith's book is a touching journey through the hearts and minds of three generations of women. When the Southern grandmother takes her first bite of a bagel, and remarks "Whoever thinks this is good has never had a biscuit!," I howled. This is a great little book

The Christmas Letters is a short novella by Lee Smith; my Mamaw gave me a copy for Christmas and i read it in one sitting. I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly to anyone who writes her/his own Christmas letters).

It's an epistolary novel told through the yearly Christmas letters of three generations of rural women, and spans the geography of West Virginia and North Carolina. The letters are somewhat typical of that sort of structure, recounting births and deaths and achievements, yet tell the story of the women's lives, their relationships, their struggles to cope with the hardships each generation is given--a husband off in WWII, a brother brokenly and miserably surviving Viet Nam, divorce, loss of a parent, a child leaving home and choosing a lifestyle you can't understand but try to accept. By the end, one of the letter-writers has come to a point where she addresses her letter frankly, and reveals the subtext behind all of her cheery soldier-on previous letters, and you can go back and see exactly how those emotions were definitely present beneath the surface of the writing of the earlier letters (some you'll pick up as you read them the first time around, others will be a surprise).

The book is a lovely quiet holiday read, and one that for me will take its place beside A Christmas Carol as a book to read every Christmas season, to remind me of what I hold dear about the holidays, an embracing of family, heritage, goodwill, charity...in short, the Christmas Spirit.

While this book was FULL of holiday sentiment, it was TOTALLY SIMPLISTIC with what seemed like only a paragraph on every other page. (only half of the book's 73 pages) I am a romantic and a sentimentalist but, I do not have money to simply throw away for someone else's profit. If the book had been priced at $4.95, I would have considered it worthwhile but, I paid $9.95 only to have insult added to injury with a price reduction of more than $1.00. There are many OTHER BOOKS that offer FAR MORE VALUE for the money. SO, If you value your money, DON'T WASTE IT ON THIS BOOK !!!

I wasn't expecting much when I ordered this book by Lee Smith. The reviews here seemed to paint it as not up to the standards of her lovely Fair and Tender Ladies. So it was with baited breath that I picked this up and settled it for a read. While it's not Fair and Tender Ladies, it's a lovely little story.

Told in the guise of annual Christmas letters, this is the story of Birdie, her daughter Mary, and her grand-daughter Melody. They send out their annual letters that we all dread getting, those terrible missals of another family's good fortune in the year, which we are supposed to compare our own lives too. However, this family's letters are actually worth reading. Birdie tells of her struggles to bring up her little family in mid-20th century America, Mary's letters detail the quest for suburban perfection, and Melody's letter speaks of the realities of the mid-90s.

I enjoyed the way the author lets us read between the lines, especially in Mary's letters. While we don't want our Christmas letter to be too honest, we do like being able to infer that our friends' lives are not perfect, and you can do this with her section. When she writes her climactic letter, our suspicions are confirmed, but not in a way that makes us hate her, but in a way that makes us like her more. the book starts out and you think that it's going to be a silly book or just a gentle way to pass the day, and the letter deepens and enrichs the story.

I also enjoyed the recipes being included in the book, as part of the letters. They are part of the family's year, and we see them fall back on food traditions, as a way to connect through time. I'm sort of tempted to try them, particularly the sticks and stones.

The only thing that I would change about the book is the ending. We're told about a sister, but is it a sister that Smith intends to write another book about, or just a red herring?

This was a nice book. Maybe not perfect, but a splendid gift. I only wish all Christmas letters were this much fun to read.

This short little book may start like a sappy, Hallmark movie, but it ends like a Nancy Meyer's film, with brutal honesty and humor wrapped around the three main women and their families. Suitable for women of all generations.

I just finished this wonderful novella.Lots of it will ring true with we babyboomers especially the ones of us just entering the last half of our first century.So much is said by the things left unsaid,If you love touching fiction. Don't miss this one I'm going to send several to friends it will be a wonderful Xmas gift.This is the first I've read by Lee Smith but it won't be the last I'm already searching for hardcover editions of her prior books but I'm so anxious to read other things by this author I may have to settle for paperbacks

I read this book in one sitting! Not your traditional "feel good" Christmas story, nonetheless, it still grabs your interest and simply will not let go. The recipes are interesting in that they make no attempt at being detailed,fancy or gourmet. Rather they evoke a very accurate image of each generation, from the simple custard representative of long-past generation's idea of what people who are ill should eat through the quick, easy, processed, food of the sixties and finally a back-to-mother-earth ethnic vegetarian recipe that reflects the character's new life(style). What I really liked was that the recipes set the tone without overpowering the story. So many books written in this style are all recipe and no story but that is not the case here. My only complaint is that the story ended with a mystery clouding it. What is up with the twin-thing? And what happend to "Rachel" mentioned in the first few letters from Birdie? She just disappears. Is she the twin to Margaret Hodges Long mentioned in the final chapter by Melanie? If not, then what is the story with the disappearing twin and where, exactly, did Rachel go? Mary tells us something about her sister Ruthie and we get a sense of loose ends tied up, but Birdie leaves us hanging. I sense another story. I hope so! I want to know about the twins from Birdie's generation!

A very short book in the form of a collection of Christmas letters. Because of the unusual structure of the book you get glimpses of this family over three generations.

Very unusual, very good. I personally didn't like it quite as much as Oral History or Family Linen (other Smith books), but it was definitely worth the time and money. Recommended.