Customer Reviews

Songs in Ordinary Time (Oprah's Book Club)

5 star:		(84)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(42)
1 star:		(72)

 

 

I purchased this book because I trusted Oprah's judgment, and I wanted a long book to get lost in during summer '99. Well, it is now February 2000. Through great discipline on my part, I'm finally finished. I feel gypped. There were so many extraneous characters, and their fates were never disclosed. Why introduce characters when they ultimately fizzle out? Why couldn't the author spend more time giving insight into the main characters? Reading this book made me feel voyeuristic. There was a lot of surface "dirt," and I was frustrated by not knowing what made the characters tick. The adults were despicable: sleazy Omar, irresponsible Sam, needy/abusive Marie (I'm no shrink - was she manic-depressive?), among other losers. However, my heart broke for the children. I truly cared about Alice, Norm and Benjy; and I was pleased that the story ended somewhat optimistically - for Alice, at least.

This book should come with a warning: Only read it if you're too happy. It's guaranteed to bring your mood down several notches.

If you can get through the first 150 pages, you'll be happy you did. With a slow start, that's when the story really starts to pick up & you start to remember the characters, there's a lot of them! I agree with an earlier reviewer in that there were too many sub-plots & characters.
I did end up liking the book, and I was VERY close to putting it down & not finishing it. I am glad I stuck it out.
The characters are memorable. Their plights, long & hard.
You will cringe with them when things go wrong. It's a story that is so believable it feels real. I see why Oprah picked it.
Just remember, there are many books that start off slow, but they don't always have such a rewarding ending.

A friend who lives in nearby Rutland, Vermont, loaned me this book because she had loved it. I should trust her taste. I guess I'm a snob because knowing it was an "Oprah Book" and that its setting was Rutland, Vermont (thinly disguised as "Atkinson, VT") slowed down my beginning to read it; I'd had it for a year before guilt set me going once my friend had asked so much whether I'd started it yet. I loved it! It is not a layered piece of philosophic artistry, but the characters are so true and the honest striving of so many of them is so palpable that I'll buy a copy for my classroom library. These people are flawed, for sure, but most of them are striving mightily to live a good, moral life, especially Marie Fermoyle, whose kids probably see her as mean. But the novelist's keen and unflinching sympathies let us see a woman in a hard place trying to do right even if she does not always succeed. I found many scenes very profound emotionally, especially the scene where Benjy wants to drown [285--6] and the scene in which Benjy tells his brother Norm the truth [438]. Many of my favorite scenes involved Benjy, the youngest Fermoyle who just wants his mother to be happy, but who carries the load of so many secrets. I also loved occasional descriptions such as this: "Her perfume smelled of roses and wrinkled dollar bills." [502] The language does not often call attention to itself, but the characters are unfailingly well-observed and believable. There are enough psychologically complex but accessible characterizations to fill a family's social circle in a small city like Rutland. The book also unfolds slowly enough that a reader can really get the sense of the passage of time in the summer of 1960. I moved to Rutland ten years later in 1970, but it was still essentially the town from whose Catholic high school Morris had graduated in 1957. Knowing the geography, however, is not the main pleasure of the novel; its compassionate and accurate reach goes well beyond merely regional items.

I loved Morris's writing style. There are paragraphs where she leads you along with innuendo and subtlety, and when the scene finally gels, you find yourself exclaiming OMG - out loud !

Our story is set in Arkinson, a working class town in the mountains of Vermont. The town looks pretty ordinary on the surface: ordinary people living ordinary lives. But all is not as it seems. This is as town of forbidden passions, petty jealousies, private shames, and secret ambitions. A town where lilacs bloom and spirits wither, quietly, behind closed doors.

If there was ever a woman in desperate need of Prozac-too bad it was 1959--that woman was Marie Fermoyle. Whatever joy in life she might have once felt was buried under too many years of rage. Rage at life, at the unfairness, the indignity, and the humiliation of it all. Rage at a town where the sins of the fathers determined the fate of their offspring, where judgments were harsh and irreversible. Rage that made her lash out at her children because she had forgotten any other way to be. Rage that made her suspicious of every motive, distrustful of any overture of kindness or friendship, unable to love and comfort. Rage turned inward: humiliating, debilitating rage.
Then along came Omar Duvall: salesman and con artist De Luxe. He made her want to believe again. Would he be the catalyst to turn everything around, or would he just turn out to be the ultimate disappointment?

(a quote) Ordinary Time...nothing to look forward to and no one to love...

I recommend giving this book a read. But set aside some time. It is 740 pages long.

I read this book about a year ago...it was the next pick on the Oprah list and was raved about so heartily I figured it must be great! Then I got the book and struggled through it praying it would get better but it never did and by the end of the book I was sure I had ordered the totally wrong book, but no. It was the right book, just not the right book for me. I just didn't get it and never warmed up to any of the characters. I cannot imagine why it was rated so highly by Oprah.

Talk about a con job! I agree, too many characters. It doesn't feel like a full novel; it feels crowded, and that's a big difference. And how in the world can we appreciate any of the Fermoyles when they are so busy flip-flopping between rage and mindless affection. Morris tries to write it in different voices, but the third-person narrative doesn't work for this. Any interesting characters (like Father Gannon or Renie LaChance) just get dropped. Feels like the author is vastly out of control of this book, and it doesn't feel like that was her intention. Even the few good sections get drowned out. I read the whole thing, hoping that someone would learn something, and I was very disappointed to find that not a single person in the book changes at all. What a long story to tell about people who never learn or grow or change. The bad news is that it will probably get made into a movie.

Seven hundred and fourty (yes 740) of the most painful pages that I've ever read. I only finished it because I believed that something-anything good HAD to happen to someone in this book. The end (if you can call it that) was completely unsatisfying. Morris is a good writer but she created not a single character (and there were a lot of them) in this book that I cared about.

I had high hopes for this book, but it missed the mark. In fact, I was hard pressed to finish it. In Songs in Ordinary Time, it's 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. The story centers on Marie Fermoyle and her children, Alice who is 16 years old and discovering her sexuality - first with the Police Chief's son and then with a visiting priest, Norm who is hot headed, and Benjy who is 12 years old - ignored by his family, and can't quite figure out what the shameful, nameless "sticky warmth" that unexpectedly appears in his pajama bottoms in the morning, so he sleeps in a towel.

As the story opens, we meet The Judge, but he's dead. His housekeeper lets him stay propped up in the window, refusing to admit he's dead until he starts to get quite ripe.

The rest of the story is about greed, and the human desire to believe that someone can come along and solve all your problems for you. And how badly we want someone to solve our problems, that we ignore the fact that he may be a slick talking, murdering, thief.

This book had such gross and dark images that I just did not like it. I made myself finish the book, but it was difficult.

My disappointment with "Songs In Ordinary Time" began with the first chapter. Though the initial prose was beautifully executed, it offered no clue to its purpose or eventual meaning. After several chapters, the loose ends were twisted together a bit, but I had an irritating feeling that I must have missed something in the first reading; that feeling wasn't compelling enough for me to read the first chapters over.

Every time I set down the book, I vowed not to return to it. I eventually picked it up, each time hoping to discover why this book received any acclaim what-so-ever. And each time, I struggled for the next page and a half to piece together the new chapter and new character.

Mary McGarry Morris has a gift for creating believable characters with accurate, realistic psychological profiles. She has an potent precision of perception in regards to human motivations and justifications. But, I didn't feel as if she created a story set in a small town. She created a metropolis of character sketches with no plot, no significant purpose and no emotion. I felt no positive or negative emotional attachment to any of the characters while reading the book. I was given no reason to care for the Fermoyle family nor did I particularly fear or dislike the antagonist, Duvall. I felt the characters were trapped in a static but realistic photograph while I longed to behold a moving, breathing body that could whisper in my ear.

For those who believe that the jumbled, dragging and confusing construction of the plot is a sign of "heavy and deep" literary material, I thoroughly disagree. Readers should not have to suffer to find meaning in a book. I have read a great deal of literature lately dealing with poverty, destitution, and unfortunate family situations. When I compare "Songs" to the exquisite clarity of books like "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" by Wallace Stegner and "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt, I can't help but feel I was cheated in wasting my time on the book's 740 pages. Classics in literature like "Mountain" and "Ashes" enlighten, illuminate or edify the reader. "Songs in Ordinary Times" is far from a literary classic. It led me down a path of detached scenery and disappointing turns with too many detours that led nowhere.

I was not planning to review this book as I am still trying to make my way through it (I am approximately 3/4's of the way through it and am determined to finish) however, I was reading through the other reviews and saw several which said that the people who don't like this book only want "happy" books and don't enjoy good literature, etc. I feel compelled to say that while it is a dark and gloomy book, the real problem is that it is boring. It fails to hold your attention. I started this book in the middle of October and have had to force myself to read it. It is taking forever. This book is the story of a mean, dysfunctional mother who can't be nice to her own children (for their own good, of course) and yet seems to be blindingly trusting of the only con man in town. None of the characters are likeable, including most of the children. Do yourself a favor, don't read this book. While the story seems to have potential, it's just not worth the effort it takes to read.