Customer Reviews

Going Home

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

 

 

I loved this story. I thought that she had excellent writing- starting with her first novel, Going Home. I just absolutely loved the story & the characters. Other earlier works of hers I enjoyed were: Season of Passion, The Promise, Passions Promise, Once in a Lifetime, Loving & Now & Forever.

This has to be one of her worst books. I cant connect with any of the charactors because they are so immature and just plain stupid. From the first day she meets the guy he's doing drugs and having sex with her on the beach and she knows he's living with another woman. And she insisted on attaching herself to him even though she had a child. She was totally selfish and didn't even think of how this would effect her little girl. And the fact that she thinks he loves her is just way to funny. Especially after he sent her away from him.

Aside from all that, she repeats everything she says at least 5 times. I found it hard to concentrate enough to read and where as I normally read 2 or 3 books a day this took me 2 days to read... I wouldn't recommend this to anyone... save yourselves the torture.

I loved the book very much. I have been reading Steel's books that she has written lately(1999-2002). I had been told that her earlier books were so much better so I decided to read one of the them. The story was hard to read sometimes because I became exasperated with Gillian letting a man treat her so badly. I kept waiting for her to turn on him and give him what he deserved. But, she hung in there in spite of his treatment towards her and she was happy. The ending was sad but moving.

It's hard to believe that Danielle Steel wrote this novel, but I guess first novels can be that way. The storyline is so boring, and you don't connect with the characters like with her other novels. The sotry reads like it was written by a teenager and suspends believe in any of the plot. If this would have been the first book I read by Steel, I wouldn't have bothered reading any of her others---that's how bad this novel was. Skip it!

This is a story about a young woman on the verge of divorce who moves to San Francisco with her little daughter to start over. She doesn't know anybody and one day meets a rogue stranger, handsome, passionate, a total opposite of her boring banker husband, who never does anything fun. Well, this new guy shows her good time all right! They have sex on the beach and visit a swinger's clubs. She gets attached to him and wants to be with him every minute of her day, but he is not so excited, because, he obviously is seeing other people on the side. Maybe even living with other people on the side.

Anyway, the book is boring and the characters are annoying, because they act completely backwards, but it's not a bad thing. It was Danielle Steel's first published novel. She had to start somewhere! The fact that her first work was so weak but that didn't stop her from pursuing her goal of becoming a novelist is the best example for anyone out there struggling to make it as a writer!

THe book was o.k. It took awhile for it to take off. The writing at the beginning was a confusing hodgepodge. The characters were very difficult to identify with because most of them were so unlikeable, including the heroine. The Steel formula in this, her first novel, is already present here....her filthy language....her shortening of names "GIL" for "GILLIAN" and "SAM" for "SAMANTHA".....and the beginning of her sentence fragments and use of prepositional phrases. It won't be among my favorite of her works and the ending was morbid and depressing and, like all her books, too pat. Its o.k. but don't expect great literature from Danielle Steel. I never buy her books when they first come out. I always wait until they're at least two years old so I can buy them for a penny or at a used book store.

The book captures the essence of California life in the early 1970's. Gillian is a divorced woman, a single parent who smokes marijuana and sleeps with a guy she's just met, without any kind of emotional angst or second thoughts. In most of her later novels, Danielle Steel's characters were sheltered and naive, and none were ever as wild or as badly behaved as Gillian, who sleeps around and uses extremely bad judgement as a parent.

The writing is rough around the edges, and I believe this is Steel's only book that was written in the first person. It's not the best writing, but it definitely showed some promising talent and gave a hint of the writer that she would eventually become. If Danielle Steel had stayed on this track, with the offbeat flawed anti-heroine, I believe today she would be an entirely different kind of author, offbeat and quirky, more literary than commercial. She would still be well-loved by her readers, but her books wouldn't be NYT bestsellers.

Book Description:

In the sunswept beauty of San Francisco, Gillian Forrester is filled with joy of a love that will surely last. But a painful betray forces her to flee to New York and a new life. There she discovers an exciting new career and a deep, enveloping passion--only to have her newfound happiness shaken to its core. Now Gillian must choose between her future and her past to find in the deepest desires of her heart the one way, the only way of going home.

I actually was disappointed when I read this book, maybe it's cause I expected more. I've read many of her books and think they'll all great till Going Home came to my hands. It's much like other Steel's books but in this one nothing much happened, there was no this "excitement" when I read it.

I actually was disappointed when I read this book, maybe it's cause I expected more. I've read many of her books and think they'll all great till Going Home came to my hands. It's much like other Steel's books but in this one nothing much happened, there was no this "excitement" when I read it.