8/14/10

The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard


Read: August 11 - August 14
Format: Trade paperback 276 pages
Source: LT ER program for review
Subject: Farming, Art, dysfynctional families
Category: Niagara Falls - Overflow
Genre: Fiction
Challenges: 101020, 75 Book, 50 State, TIOLI
Stars: 3


This book is the story of two women born on the same day (birthday sisters) in the same rural hospital and how their lives intertwined and eventually came together in the same place again.

Ruth and Dana are very different and yet very similar. Ruth is a farmer's daughter who loves art. She grows up on the farm helping her father (she has 4 other sisters) but longing for girly things like a Barbie doll. Dana is an artist's daughter and is very scientific and down-to-earth, eventually getting a college degree in horticulture.

The story is told in alternating chapters with the two women as the narrators. The entries are almost as if the reader has been handed their diaries which have been shuffled together, showing moments that they shared as well as their individual lives.

The idea of this story is not new and the outcome was pretty evident early on. Each of the issues that appear in the book are easily predicted by the reader. It was well-written but not great reading because of the lack of originality.

1 comment:

Alyce said...

That kind of predictability can definitely make a book less enjoyable.