Customer Reviews

Winner of the National Book Award A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

From the opening paragraph, a woman's description of being struck by lightning, the reader of this book learns to expect the unexpected-and gets it. Dorcas Mather, the narrator, is a librarian in Frome, Rhode Island, who quietly catalogues books while a hurricane bears down on the town. Fortified with some scotch she has brought for the occasion, she is bent on cataloguing one particular book, her own personal "hurricane"--entitled In the Driver's Seat: The Abigail Mather Story by her twin sister, Abigail Mather, and a ghostwriter, Hilda DeVilbiss. With delightful mockery of the book publishing process, Dorcas reveals that this book is making her sister into a national heroine for not only surviving her "marital horror" but for doing something about it.

Exaggerated, over-the-top paragraphs from the novel written by Abigail and Hilda alternate with Dorcas's iconoclastic and sometimes cynical tales about the real Abigail, as the dual history of the Mather sisters unfolds. Because the narrative moves back and forth between the events as told in Abigail's book and Dorcas's much later reflections on these events, the plot is not linear. The reader learns in the first twenty-five pages that Abigail has committed a "savage act of assertive self-realization," otherwise known as murder, but it is the circumstances which led to the murder and the divergent views and lifestyles of Abigail and Dorcas which provide the interest and intrigue for the reader. As Dorcas tells us, "Abigail and I divided up the world. Sacred and profane. Spiritual and physical. Mind and body." Abigail, sexually liberated since the age of 14, is, according to Dorcas, an "amoral exhibitionist." Dorcas, by contrast, "knows what it feels like...to experience desire," but she has rejected it completely, finding love-making "ridiculous."

The novel is a light, breezy, and often satiric send-up of New England values, the literary life, family interdependencies, our pre-occupation with "self-image," and the cruelties we humans perpetrate upon each other. Firmly rooting the novel in its Rhode Island setting, with its storms, hurricanes, and blizzards racing up the Atlantic coast, author Jincy Willett recreates the tumults and storms of her characters' daily lives, leavening the action with humor at the same time that her characters both create and meet their own disasters. Uncomplicated in its plot and simple in themes, the novel chooses to amuse and entertain rather than provide new insights for the reader. It is a lively look at two peculiar sisters, whose opposing views of life and conflicting values may not seem so peculiar in the end. Mary Whipple

It is unlikely that Winner of the National Book Award will actually be a winner of the national book award but this fine, funny novel by Jincy Willett earns its cheeky title. It smoothly satirizes the type of novels that Oprah was once famous for selecting for her book club. Not bad books in themselves but of a type. The author of this book plays with that type in this story of twin sisters, one earthy ... and one cerebral ... and an abusive man who enters their lives. There will be abuse and there will be revenge but mostly there is humour, particularly in the voice of the narrator, the purer sister. It is a delightful read.

This is the story of the twin sisters Abigail and Dorcas Maher. They were born on the last day of 1938 and are, by now, in their forties. They live in Frome, Rhode Island, a state devastated by the sharp comments in this book.

Dorcas is the town librarian and has the prunish character to go with it. Abigail was defiled at the age of 14 by the local football team and apparently enjoyed it. Hilda, a family friend, catalogs in a book all the terrible things that have come to Abigail's mind over the years and that have been executed by her and on her. At present, Abigail is in jail accused of killing her husband, while Dorcas reads through the biography. Her comments and corrections are the subject of this book.

The two sisters loved each other dearly despite their opposite makeup. Sexless Dorcas never envied Abigail and her loose life style. She called her sister the Wife of Bath, with great power and no dignity. She herself would be the reverse.

And then the devil in the disguise of suave Conrad Lowe enters the picture. He tries to seduce Dorcas but settles for the easier Abigail. And here comes the Faustian pact: Abigail must shed all the gross excess weight she carries around or Conrad will dissolve out of her life. Strangely enough, and for the first time in her life, she gives up, submits meekly and looses the required weight. But Conrad does not feel that the pact has been satisfied. He keeps maltraiting Abigail who cracks and kills him.

The story is beautifully told, in full three dimensions and surprise happenings. It is not the belly laugh some commercial reviews promise, but it is full of wonderful little chuckles.. Foremost, it is an absorbing portrait of two women who seem so very strange and yet are so familiar.

This book was a selection of the book club I belong to.

I usually prefer novels where I admire or at least sympathize with the protagonist or other characters. That was not the case here. Yet I enjoyed it enough to consider rating it at five stars. (I didn't, as I reserve five stars for the best of the best.) I wouldn't say I loved this book, but I did like it very much.

What was good about it? I loved the discussions of Dorcas, the narrator librarian, about books, reading, readers, writing and writers. I found the writing style to be frank and easy, and to flow well. It was anecdotal without becoming tedious. And although I never actually laughed aloud, it was definitely funny in a dry cynical way.

Ms. Willett's dialog was excellent, and she presents her characters thoroughly by example rather than description. Although many of the characters and plot events are wildly exaggerated, making the novel a satire of "Oprah's Book Club" style fiction, yet they are weirdly authentic.

I liked neither the sister protagonists nor most of the cast, yet they seemed to make sense, and reminded me of the some (admittedly strange) social circles in my own life. Perhaps what touched me the most, was the portrayal of different female sexual experiences in our culture. The twin sisters are each other's yin and yang, extreme (unrealistically so?) opposites, but together the present a flawed but human whole. The storm metaphor evoked at the beginning and end worked very well in my opinion.

Out of 7 club members, 6 of us liked this book. I would especially recommend to women with some life experience (in their 30's and 40's) and to any "voracious" readers like myself.

Dorcas, a middle-aged librarian spinster who is intellectually sharp and movingly genuine, tells the story of her and her sister Abigail, who is sexually promiscuous, frustratingly undignifed, a blaze of ego and naivety, whom she loves but can never understand. Dorcas' tale is funny, dark, and recounted with razor sharp wit. The book starts off a little slow but with the introduction of Conrad Lowe, Dorcas' arch-nemesis, a third of the way through the book, it really takes off. Conrad is one of the most brilliantly written characters ever created--sneering and descipable, sexual and predatory, unpredictably sympathetic, and above all completely disarming, it is easy to see how he throws the sisters into a vortex of uncertainty. Abigail is furiously annoying; I actually felt my fists clenching when she appeared on the scene. Dorcas is one of those fine sympathetic first-person narrators you love from beginning to end. Never cliche or overdone, you never stop identifying with her. Few characters in fiction get written with the same bite that these three do. As the tale unfolds, we know it may end badly but we can't wait to see how it plays out.

"Winner" is a book that suffers from bad advertising. I was promised a black comedy. "Riotous. Hugely funny..." and "The funniest novel I have read, possibly ever" appear right there on the cover.

The book was certainly sarcastic. It was caustic and biting but there was very little in the book that I could laugh at in good conscience. (And honestly, during reading, I wasn't inclined to do so.) In many ways, it was more like a car wreck on the highway - horrific but engrossing - than anything else.

Ms. Willett's main characters, twins Dorcas and Abigail, area a fascinating pair. Each completely embody the part of the human condition that the other lacks. "Winner" is the story of their interactions with each other and the members of a New England literary circle made up arch-typical characters.

Through my entire reading, I was off balance. I kept expecting 'funny' to show up and it never did. That said, "Winner" had other redeeming qualities which kept me reading. Ms. Willet gives Dorcas, the bookish narrator, wonderful recollections and descriptions of the joy of reading. The relationships between the people in a group and between the sisters were exaggerated for effect, but still intriguing.

Other parts of "Winner" were less successful. There were bits of extraneous metaphor and occasional clunky bits. Occasionally certain characters verged on caricatures.

I understand what Ms. Willett was attempting to skewer but in the end, "Winner" falls a bit short. If I had come at "Winner" with different expectations I might have found it more enjoyable, but I never shook the feeling of being a bit cheated by a novel that failed to deliver on its promises

This book has the single best opening sentence I've ever read in any book anywhere. That's saying a lot, because I have a classical education, and I'm a freelance editor. What's more, the book gets better and lives up to the electrifying excitement the opening line inspired in me. Read this book, and give copies of it as gifts. This is a book to proselytize about!

Yes I think psychology is the key to this book's success. The author knows people, knows their foibles, their habits, their suspicions and their strengths. This satirical story of two fraternal twin sisters, Dorcas and Abigail Mather, studies the incredible opposites that can come from the same source. Dorcas is a bookworm librarian who shuns sex, and Abigail, though just as intelligent, becomes the "town pump" and has a series of marriages that culminate in marriage to the evil writer, Conrad.

Jincy Willet, in the voice of her protagonist Dorcas , often comes across cynical and sad, but it is the moments of revelation and admiration of others that stand out. Even better are her often ironic juxtapositions and innovations of novel format, such as repeated use of italicized phrases, a la Dave Barry (though not as slapstick). It is not a humor novel, but it has some moments. The funniest parts, at least for me, having grown up in Massachusetts not far from Rhode Island, are the observations of normal behavior in that region. Dorcas is from a WASP family, and though she is too wise even as a child to feel like a snob, she is amused by the second-generation kids from Italian and Portugese families who can't understand her. "Say summatime" they ask her. She says, "Summertime." Elsewhere she observes that, it's not that New Englanders in general don't notice other people's concerns, they just won't give you the Satisfaction of Knowing they do. But even later, in the climax of the story, she is genuinely grateful for this pretense of unconcern - she loves Rhode Islanders - when she must face a very private struggle over what has happened with Abigail's messy, violent marriage.

This is a book for people who love and are amused by other people, in spite of their faults. It deals with the one truly rotten apple to enter the sister's lives, and so doing becomes a parallel challenge to each reader to live their lives intelligently, with honor. Abigail's honor is only reclaimed through tragedy. The story is less interesting than the telling of it, not melodramatic, but still inventive and playful. A worthwhile read for students of human nature.

In some ways my title is misleading, as from the opening chapters you know the outcome of this tome. Yet it belongs in the same classification as Donna Tartt's My Secret History a pseudo-thriller very literately penned. Although Dorcasm twin of Abigail (a modern Aphrodite) is a librarian with a love of books, that is not why I call it lieterary. Although the supporting characters Guy and Hilda are artusts and writers this fact alone does not make it literary in my view either. Rather it is the whole essence of the narrativem the sense one gets of Willet's love of the English language and the care the author takes stating exactly what shen means to write, i.e. each sentence has been pored over and written with greast care a rare trait for novelists these days. You can tell Ms. Willett is very well read just by reading this novel.

Admittedly at first I found the narrative structre a little hard to get into, but then about a third of the way through the novel I was hooked finding this novel of familial loylalty and angst an extremely well written read. I recommend this book to fans of Donna Tartt and David Sedaris. If you enjoyed Wally Lamb's I Know this Much is True there is a good chance you will enhoy this as well. The characters are beyond well drawn the pace is perfect for the story. This is not neccessarily a fast read or a novel you might breeze through in a day but I predict if you take time to savor the story and can appreciate the dark sometimes subltle humour/irony you will love this book as much as I ended up loving it.

If you enjoy dark humor, intelligent writing, beauiful prose, and complex characters, then buy this book. And read it...twice.