Customer Reviews

Gap Creek: The Story Of A Marriage (Oprah's Book Club)

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

 

 

Robert Morgan pulls the reader into his story almost without trying. The voice of Julie, the protagonist is one of the most natural and quietly alluring I've yet read. He is using language in a way that most writers ache to create. I prayed this novel would not end. I prayed for a sequel. You will cry for Julie and you will feel a pang in your heart for Hank, but all the characters are loveable in some way or another. There are trials of living in the wilderness, and then there are insurmountable odds; Julie champions all of them. She holds her husband up when he trips and falls over and over. Not once, does Julie stop to set and feel sorry for herself; she lets the reader do that. My jaw dropped again and again. Her suffering couldn't possibly compound. There were times when I just shook my head at Hanks actions. This writer knows men and women inside and out. The intricacies of marriage are laid thread bare and one does not easily find such honesty in writing.

The title: "The story of a marriage," is so correct. There are common denominators that every couple goes through: desire, spirituality, money issues, child birth and loss of a child, depression, isolation, family issues, poverty, shelter, making a living; its all there. this is like a manual of how it could be, and what issues couples should plan on dealing with.

Moving on, the visual scenery is like walking inside a life painting akin to a Southen Monet; I could feel the brustrokes of the golden leaves; the fall air climbs outside of the novel and lifts the pages.

You can feel that flood water rising inside the house. I could even smell

the barn.

Lyricism, stoicism, and superior story telling. Do not let this one flee from your readers clasp.

More gushing......one of the best lines of the novel that shows Julie's refusal to give up: "I throwed another log on the fire." In one word, "throwed," you get a feel for her personality, on a scale of lovability she's a twelve; her iron will just does not stop; and you desperately want her to come out with at least a years worth of warm and sunshine.

There are laughable moments and Julie even gets to talk smack to the know it all mother-in-law and the reader cannot help but cheer her on.

There is a town drunk that you can't help but feel sorry for. Two Amazing Grace church scenes that correctly display Julie and Hanks spiritual trappings. The great american novel does not get any better, these are big words for a little novel. But to be sure, Gap Creek, is no small thing.

After reading a forth of the way through this book, it just drove me up a wall, on how the sentences were

structured. It seemed like every time when either Julie or Hank would make a comment the author would end it with, "he said", or "she said". Finally when they were in a tuff situation the author changes from "he said" to "he shouted!" Wow a change in structure! This book was a chore to read!

Robert Morgan fills this quiet tale with poetic images and human truths. The story of a hardscrabble year filled with heartbreak for a very young newly married couple, Morgan writes with a sense of place nearly impossible to accomplish unless one comes from an identical background. Morgan, a poet who grew up on a small North Carolina farm succeeds in transporting us to the world of his maternal grandparents at the turn of the last century. I actually listened to the unabridged text narrated by Recorded Books by Kate Forbes which was a "tour de force".

This review is for the audio book (read brilliantly by Kate Forbes) of Gap Creek which I found to be possibly the best novel I've ever read in my life, at least in the top three. I had never heard of this book or Robert Morgan so this was like finding a treasure on a library shelf.

I think a lot of negative reviews got it wrong when they said it was a book filled with tragedy after tragedy. To me, it was a book filled with triumph after triumph. I wish I could give 6 stars. A must read!!