19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful book, but a few small problems, April 22, 2007
This review is from: A Place to Call Home (Mass Market Paperback)
A Place to Call Home is a family favorite. Everyone in my family loves it. I read it first on their combined recommendation way back in March of '00 and recorded it in my book journal as a 4.75 out of 5 - a straight A, very close to an A+. On re-read, it doesn't quite rate that high, but this is still a very affecting read with a great pair of star-crossed lovers, Claire Maloney and Roan Sullivan.
The book starts off with Claire's reminiscences of her childhood in a small town community in Georgia. She begins by telling the story of her family and how they settled and thrived there, and then the narrative organizes itself around certain pivotal moments in time she has through the years of her young childhood with Roanie Sullivan, the poor, socially oppressed, abused, neglected son of the town's shame, Big Roan Sullivan. In their small town society Claire lives on one side of the tracks and Roanie barely exists on the other, though physically there are no tracks and they live only down the road from each other. Claire is surrounded by love, comfortable affluence, and family. Roanie lives in a junky trailer that lacks a working toilet or washing machine. He has no family ties outside his mess of a father. The town prefers to ignore his problems rather than deal with Big Roan. Claire is the only person who sees something in Roanie and she persistently defends him against any of his tormentors and against the expectations of her family. However, eventually, when Roanie's situation takes a turn for the worse, Claire's parents finally intervene and he comes to live with the Maloneys. Claire is certain everything will now be fine and she and Roanie will always be together. Roanie himself is more skeptical, but as the months pass, he begins to hope. Then a terrible tragedy blasts a hole in the Maloney family idyll. And twenty years pass before Claire and Roanie reunite.
The plot of A Place to Call Home revolves around two romantic fantasies - (1) soulmates kept apart by the vagaries of fate and (2) the resiliant child. Both have equal appeal and Smith uses both to tug the reader through the emotional wringer. She builds her story by building Claire's community, bit by bit, quirky personality by quirky personality including tons of authentic seeming Southern detail. Claire's childhood is a good one, but her family isn't all sweetness and light. Her Uncle Peter is a tail-chasing disgrace, his sons are cruel and sadistic; several of her aunts cling to their prejudices with all of their strength. Her parents are good people, but constrained in their instinct to do good by the family expectations. From Roanie's perspective none of these people give a damn about anyone not family. Claire tries valiently to bridge the gap between the respectable Maloneys and Roanie, developing a reputation as a troublemaker in the process. No one understands her or her crusade.
Smith's character development is particularly well done. The Maloneys act like real people, good and bad, sometimes both. Since the novel is told in first person, the reader really gets to know Claire and feels with terrible intensity the love she has for Roanie. Roanie is a bit more mysterious. The reader only gets into his head a few times, through short letters he writes to Claire. But his sense of betrayal comes through loud and clear as does his emotional vulnerability to those he considers his true family. Roanie is a tragic figure, even though, or perhaps because, he survives and thrives. If he can go forward and prosper given his horrible childhood, what more could he have done if he'd had a proper family to love and raise him?
From the beginning of the novel it's immediately clear that Claire and Roanie are meant to be together. They understand each other despite all of their surface differences. They accept each other. They nourish each other and stick up for each other. Unfortunately, almost no one sympathizes with their friendship. All of these nice, well-meaning people in Claire's family manage to drive a twenty year wedge between them with their own agendas and selfish behaviors. That Smith can manage to make the reader understand that these are nice people and yet make the reader simultaneously burn with anger and frustration at them is a tribute to her ability to characterize.
The book is not without flaw, however. The novel's biggest problem is that the emotional payoff comes just about dead center of the book, leaving a lesser conflict to propel the narrative to its end. Right there, smack dab in the middle, is a bunch of heart-stirring, throat-wrenching emotional stuff: true love thwarted, family betrayal, aimless wandering in life's barren wilderness, bitter loneliness, and then finally, FINALLY, reunion. Get out the hankies, this is good stuff. Great stuff. For about 100 pages.
Before that middle third, the book is about a B+. It's got all that great characterization, but there's also some info dump in the beginning (first about Smith's real-life rural Georgia Irish ancestry, then about Claire's fictional rural Georgia Irish ancestry) and a touch too much Southern cutesiness. The middle third is an A, very close to an A+, very, very affecting. The last third, however, is no better than a B. With the main conflict of Claire and Roanie's physical and emotional separation resolved, Smith has to use a new conflict to fill up the remaining pages. This secondary conflict has some meat to it, but it's not as vital or riveting. And, unfortunately, Smith chooses to resolve it too easily with some impossible yet very timely maneuvering involving nature. In the end, everything wraps up very tidily. Too tidily. Without any sort of hammering out of original grievances between Roanie and the family. The book ends on a sugary note with everything finally made precious and good.
So, add it all together - B+ and A and B - and you get a B+. A Place to Call Home is well worth reading, even re-reading, but, Dear Reader, the best stuff is in the middle and not the end.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book to call keeper, August 17, 2003
This review is from: A Place to Call Home (Mass Market Paperback)
If I were a better reviewer I would gave you a nice plot summary with dozens of the reasons why I LOVE this book so much and how deeply it made me feel for those charactors.
But because I'm not that good so all I can say is that this book is absolutely a MUST READ. There're a lot of touching moments and some vivid scenes that made me laught and cried. I sighed with happiness when it came to the end but also felt a little bit sad because I wanted more. What a wonderful book and what a great author!!
Though I agree with some reviewers that the second half of the book isn't as good as the first part, it only means that this book deserves more than 5 stars with additional stars for the first half.
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