Customer Reviews

The Folded World

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Some novels are richly written on the word and sentence level, and they are best read slowly with care paid to the precise language. Many more novels are well-constructed with compelling characters and are easy to read. To me, the best novels are both, and The Folded World fits into this category.

If you're not a particularly careful reader (you just want a "good read"), you can fly through this book--getting to know the complex characters, seeing their conflicts through, and disappearing into the "folds" of their world. You may or may not realize that it's beautiful, precise writing that makes it such a satisfying read, but you'll be satisfied.

If you like to read with more attention to the diction, imagery, and techniques of the author, you're sure to see the poetry in Gaige's writing. The first five or ten pages are among the most well-crafted I've ever read. And the rest of the book is lovely, too.

This book was engaging from the start, drawing the reader deeper into the lives of the two main characters with the turning of each page. I found myself thinking about the novel while at work, eager to get home and keep reading. The writing is lucid, gracefully capricious, and its unfixedness is both surprising and refreshing. I highly recommend this book to anyone.

Alice and Charlie come from very different worlds. How they meet, how they delight in one another, and how they live together in the midst of their very profound differences is part of the magic of this love story. It is a love story that opens to embrace the light and shadow of two human beings with wit and grace.

The comments in the Publisher's Weekly review shocked me when I read them after just finishing an all-day marathon reading of The Folded World. "The narrative may be too tidy for some"? Goodness, what does the reviewer think of other beautifully written and satisfyingly plotted books by the likes of Anne Tyler and Barbara Kingsolver? I was utterly engrossed in the unfolding of the story (no pun intended) and entranced by the author's imagery and understanding of human nature. Ms. Gaige, you are wonderful!

Alice and Charlie are a naïve and handsome young couple who have an idyllic marriage with twin daughters. Alice has given up on college and career to look after her mother, Marlene, and Charlie is a dedicated idealistic social worker, dealing with psychotic patients.
A serpent enters paradise as Charlie become a workaholic, overly involved with one of his clients, Opal, and Alice gets slightly entangled with another one, Hal.
I was a little put off by the ethereal sentimentality at the beginning, describing Alice and Charlie's childhoods, but that may be just me. I tend to like dry wit and harsh satire. I thought Alice and Charlie were a little to good to be true. It's different strokes for different folks. I thought the parts describing the illnesses of Opal and Hal were very good, but it's precisely those that the New York Times critic disliked. Gaige seem to know what working with chronic psychotic patients is like. I'd recommend this to anyone contemplating a career in social work.

The book has a common plot of boy meets girl and then life happens. The book is wonderfullly written and like life has love, anger, anxiety, disappointment etc. Life is a journey fraught with the unexpected. Gaige's prose has a poetic quality and her characters are real. The book is excellent.

I alternately wept and wondered at the complex emotional lives of the characters in The Folded World. I read many, many parts of this book out loud to my husband as we lay in bed at night. I took my time to appreciate the depth of the sentences. Each sentence helped me to see ordinary things in a new way. At the end, I recommended that my mom read it in her book club. Her older lady friends were equally impressed and moved by the fully developed world that Gaige creates. She is clearly someone who understands the pain of love and knows the words to make it real.

its clear that this author has some chops. a good writer, for sure. the prose was nice. the subject matter was a total bore.
this was painfully boring and about NOTHING. it was a sad story about a young couple. a very boring young couple. they love each other, yay. it is not a book about love, in my opinion.
sure, he has 2 "clients" who bring SOME interest to the story - but not enough. I didn't even like those characters.
thankfully it was a fast read. I really don't understand the rave reviews for this - perhaps the authors friends?
unless you want to waste an entire day, I would say to not read this.
forgettable.
dry.
sad.
nothing.

I got this book after Entertainment Weekly named it as an EW Pick a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I find the narrative so steeped in poetic language and flowery simile and metaphor that I am kind of bored by page 30. I guess I just don't really like reading a novel that's so...sorry, I don't know a synonym for it...poetic that it reads more like the Iliad than a novel. The associations that the female protagonist makes every few paragraphs create tangents that I just don't find interesting. I was hoping to be introduced to two interesting people and see how they get along, but it reads more like the protagonists are metaphysical beings who populate a surreal world. Not my bag, I suppose.