Customer Reviews

Life Sentences: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This novel featured narration by a variety of characters, but predominantly our protagonist, Cassandra Fallows, narrated. As a reader, I did not feel a connection with her. She's wonderfully articulate, introspective, and thoughtful, but I didn't find her interesting or lovable. I found the so-called mystery to be interesting enough to finish the book, but not interesting enough to make me care what happens to these characters. I expected this novel to be mostly a mystery, but I found it to be mostly about race relations surrounding the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr. and how his death affected these characters. As a tale of race relations, it was awkward at times. It's not a bad book, but there is something about it that does not quite work. It's certainly better in theory than in practice. The idea of this book is riveting and fascinating, but the execution fell short. Still, I'm eager to read Laura Lippman's other books. She is a good writer, and I look forward to reading an actual mystery.

This stand-alone mystery might surprise some Lippman fans. It's more about relationships than crime. The main character is a successful memoir writer who returns to her childhood circle in Baltimore to write a third memoir about a former friend who may or may not have killed her own child.

The memoirist doesn't get a warm welcome from the old friends she wrote about in her previous books. This is a detective story in that she is forced to put together the puzzle of what really happened to that child. It is not what you might expect.

There's power, politics, and passion here. Lippman writes with intelligence and a reporter's insight into the mysteries of society's ills.

Lippman's previous books packed more punch. The characters were better defined and their actions made sense. In this novel, Cassandra, met success as a writer of memoirs about her child and adulthood. Cassandra, a white girl, grew up in a racially diverse area of Baltimore and she surrounded herself with black friends who appeared to be dynamic but troubled. It appears she foisted herself on this cast of characters: Tisha, smart, grounded but wary, Donna, rich and elegant who appeared to manipulate lives, Fatima who loved risks as a child but did an about face as adult and Calliope, who was convicted for contempt.

She returns to Baltimore to unravel Calliope's mysterious past and find her own future - a bit corny. It is difficult to determine whether Cassandra has stretched the truth or totally misjudged her black friends, her sacrificial mother and her selfish father who is not what he appears. Cassandra is driven and she is bound and determined to discover the secrets of her old friends and parents.

Lippman's plot became confusing and lacked a resolution. For a smart girl, Cassandra seemed lacking in reality. When the truth surfaced, it was cloudy and ambiguous. I enjoyed Lippman's other books much more.

Several of us bought this book for our book club. The three of us who read it before the others, decided to scrap the book for that month and pick an entirely different one. Life Sentences was extremely blah. I kept saying to myself, it's got to get better; it's got to get better but it most certainly did not. There was no mystery, no twists or turns, no unexpected ending and nothing to hold ones interest.

This book is AWFUL. I'm one of those people who doesn't finish a book if it doesn't deliver (in my lifetime, I've read the first few chapters of a hundred books that weren't worth finishing) - but I kept reading this one, hoping my initial impressions were off. Hoping the book warranted more of my time. There was such a good review in one of my magazines that I kept thinking the book would get better. But the characters are difficult to relate to, some are too stereotypical, some are too depressing... the story isn't engaging and after a while I realized I just didn't care. The author uses prose that is snooty - the book is trying to come across as sophisticated literature, but instead delivers mainstream chic lit with a depressing story and pretentious language. If this were a "first" novel it never would have made it passed an agent's reader. This book belongs in the recycle bin - it doesn't warrant me handing it off to someone in my book club, and I won't give it to an unsuspecting "victim" at the second-hand shop. I just can't say anything worthwhile about this waste of a ream of paper. If this book is on your "maybe" list, skip it and move on... there are SO many other good books worth your reading time.

I read 2 of Laura Lippman's books before this one and I liked them both. However, this book has one fatal flaw: the heroine is boring, unlikeable, and whiney (although she apparently LOOKS fabulous, ha ha). The chapters that focus on the main character are the most uninteresting in the book. The other characters, while not entirely likeable or even sympathetic, are much more interesting -- probably because there is not so much navel-gazing among them. I pushed through this novel to the end so that I could learn the central mystery of the plot. However, the final resolution is not even remotely interesting and is a bummer pay-off for having slogged through the rest of the book. 1.5 stars.

I usually like Laura Lippman, and I loved her last stand-alone novel, What the Dead Know. But in this book, the characters don't seem real, and are pretty uniformly unlikeable. I don't feel any connection to them or any reason to care about them. Cassandra is particularly unsympathetic, ghoulishly prying into long-ago happenings of other people's lives and having casual affairs with married men. Are we supposed to admire her? I'm giving this book away before I've even finished reading it.

Reading the other reviews here answered one of my questions. As a Baltimore native, when I read any of Lippman's work, in addition to loving her presentation and story, there's the thrill of recognition - I know that street corner! I know that liquor store! I see now that not being a Baltimore native doesn't detract a bit.

Besides being a gripping story (I forced myself to ration it to 2 sittings so it would last the whole weekend)it made me reflect on memory. How true are my memories? How are they different from what others remember? What is the impact of a national historical moment - the MLK assassination in this case - on my local personal memories?

I like Tess more, but this Cassandra Fellows is fascinating. And I never get enough of Gloria! Please hurry Laura - write more stories!

The role of memory and perspective shape this tale of a writer - Cassandra Fallows is known for her memoirs about her childhood experiences - with details called into question by some of the other characters about whom she wrote. Cassandra was the white girl with several elegant and privileged black friends - Tisha, Donna and Fatima. Their memories of events were quite different from her perspective on things. When she reconnects with them many years later, in order to put together the details of another story she is working on, she learns about these discrepancies.

Cassandra grew up in Baltimore with her intellectual father Cedric, a classics professor, and her less-colorful and almost "boring" mother Lenore. Her parents separated after the riots of 1968, when Cedric fell in love with Annie, a black woman he supposedly saved from being raped during the fracas.

Now Cassandra, enjoying the fruits of her success as a writer, takes on the project of writing about another school friend - Calliope Jenkins - who was jailed after the supposed death of her youngest son, because she refused to talk or reveal where he might be. He is either dead or missing. She maintains her silence through seven long years until she is released from prison. She only talks to Cassandra - finally - when a discovery during research reveals several secrets and the truth hiding behind a cover of powerful people protecting their own betrayals.

As old lies and betrayals surface, Cassandra finally begins to put together the truth in her own life - discrepancies in memory were not wholly responsible for the wrong details in her story. She simply had not had all of the facts.

How will the "truth" alter her life now? Will she correct the misconceptions of the past? How will she reshape her current life in view of the new facts available to her?

As Life Sentences: A Novel veers from one point of view to another, the reader soon comes to realize that "truth" and "memory" are multifaceted and that each person's reality is very personal and unique to that individual.

Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of: Web of Tyranny, etc.

Unfortunately, for those of us who have loved Laura Lippman's books in the past, this one just does not measure up. It lacks the fast paced excitement, the humor, and most specically a sympathetic, likeable heroine.
Even though Lippman's past books have unfortunately been filled with remarks, which perhaps mirror her own personal bigotries, the books were fun and intelligently written. This one, a significant departure from her usual mysteries set in Baltimore, features a rather boring, unlikeable main character who is surroooooounded by equally unlikeable friends and family.
She again expresses her antipathy towards Catholics and towards Italians making them the unsavoury part of her novel. Perhaps she should read up on how brutally they were treated in the past and about the extensive racism showed towards them. In her novel she simply continues a tradition of racist hostility.