Customer Reviews

HOMESTEAD

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I only happened upon Homestead after finishing (and really enjoying) Into the Wilderness. I was looking for the "Wilderness" sequel release date, and discovered it's author's real name was Rosina Lippi, and not Sara Donati! So, I found Homestead, and it was a lovely, stunning surprise! Actually, the only flaw I could find with the book, was the change in author's names, as I might have missed it! Homestead is a deeply layered, moving, work of art. Every word conservatively, and thoughtfully used, and touches the reader somewhere down deep. A must-own, and visit often novel.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if the family trees had been placed in the front of the book rather than in the appendix (since I was a good girl and didn't skip ahead to the end). Considering there is a whole story devoted to a postcard mailed to "Anna" where the intended receipient could have be half of the village, keeping track of the names is tricky. The family trees are really helpful - if you know they are there.

Otherwise, the format of the book makes for good reading. The book is a series of episodes in the lives of the women in three families. They aren't quite short stories since characters and plot lines reappear every so often. At the same time, the stories are distinct enough that I was able to put the book down between chapters.

Bottom-line: A pleasant read with the chance to armchair travel into life in a small Austrian village. Our book group liked the book a great deal although it didn't stimulate an extensive discussion.

Why hasn't this book been lauded more loudly? I stumbled on it and had never heard of it. These wonderful, interrelated stories capture the entire 20th century in one Austrian mountain village. Each chapter tells the story of one of the peasant women, and sometimes the real "end of the story" only comes in a future chapter. Touching and true, these stories show how little changes in the basis of a woman's life: love, children and work. Each woman's emotional life is laid bare in a short chapter. The course of the century leaves its mark as the wars wreak their misery even on this little isolated village, and of course the women are left to mourn.

You will love this book and will want to pass it on so you can talk about it with your friends!

This is a marvellous book. It is the story of a small Alpine village over the course of 70 years told through the lives of the women who lived there. Each chapter is the story of an individual woman at a point in time, but the stories weave in and out so that you never lose track of what happened to them. I found the book deeply satisfying to read - at times it was funny, it was always touching and often very sad. I felt I was involved in the lives of these women (and their men-folk), there was great suspense and it was extremely well-written.

I wonder what other readers made of the final chapter - it seemed to me that everything had come full circle. I would love to read this novel as part of a book club discussion.

If you enjoy "literary fiction" this book is for you - you will not be disappointed. It entertains and it stimulates - what more can any reader ask for?

This book is a gem. I didn't know I could identify so completely with characters from another country, time, and way of life. Lippi's writing gifts are responsible; they make every one of these stories evocative and memorable. I only wish she'd write more stories about the people of Rosenau -- not moving forward in time but paralleling the time she's already covered.

Rosina Lippi's book, HOMSTEAD, is a wondeful book about the strength and endurance and beauty of generations of peasant women living on small dairy farms high in the Austrian Alps. Though this book is listed as fiction, after glancing through the table of contents with all of its names, clan charts, naming conventions, pronounciation guides, and glossary, I thought it was going to be one of those books I would have to plough through along with the women in the book. Golly, it was daunting! However, before I finished the first chapter about Anna, and the Begat Homestead, 1909, I was intriuged and was happy to be flipping back and forth between all of these guides meeting women who had personality as well as endurance . I wanted to be a part of their lives and have them be a part of mine. Lippi has done a remarkable job of bringing these women to life. She tells about the inevitable disintegration of peasant life as the world shrinks in the face of technology. By sending me back to the simple peasant life in 1909, I realize how much I miss by having all of these machines do all of my work so I can save all of that time to use these machines. I don't much want to milk cows and make my own cheese, but I would like the strength these women had to face the world. This book reminds me of John Berger's trilogy, INTO THEIR LABOURS, which chronicles the creeping death of simplicity in the rural areas of the Alps of France.

I forget who recommended this book to me, but I would like to thank her in absentia. Homestead is spectacular. The setting is an isolated Austrian village, and the inter-related stories span several generations of the villagers, exploring their known and secret links and relationships to each other. The history told in Homestead spans the time from early 1900s to almost 1980, and some of the most gut-wrenching and poignant tales concern the nearness of the Nazi threat during WWII. Once met through the pages of this book, the characters and their motives and secrets will stay with you for a long time.

I have been enjoying the high marks other reviewers have given to Homestead. The enjoyed the book so much that I'd like to comment also.

I purchased the book after reading through a Houghton Mifflin catalog. The story sounded fascinating. I was a bit concerned when I received the book and saw the family tree and assumed it would be too "historical" for me. That was not the case at all!

Like others who reviewed Homestead, I did not want the book to end. I purposefully read the book very slowly. After reading each chapter, I went back to previous times of the characters' lives. I also took time to just reflect on the characters' development.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone!

After reading Rosina Lippi's works written as Sara Donati ("Into the Wilderness" and "Dawn on a Distant Shore"), I was thrilled to find "Homestead". Rosina/Sara has a gift for making you "see" her characters, and this book is no exception. I was truly saddened to reach the end of the book.

The author is so brilliant in the way she writes that sometimes she tells a personal story of a character that allows you to draw the conclusions on your own; and, sometimes she outright tells you what happens to a character. Either way, it is a moving experience. She actually makes you feel part of their little township.