Rating: 
Summary: Nice book, but get real!
Review: Another Kidder success. But Northampton isn't typical of anything! The town reflects the PC nature of the 5-college world around it. But there is great Chinese food in abundance!
Rating: 
Summary: Kidder captures the best & worst of a community that works.
Review: Tracy Kidder continues his reign as a top writer of narrative non-fiction in 'Home Town', a book well worth reading for the engaging character portraits alone. Literature if full of stories of good and evil. In this book the good people, like father-of-the-protagonist Bill O'Connor, are charming, funny, and very good. Interestingly, most of the bad guys are at least a little bit good too. While other excellent authors have successfully built around dramatic events (Perfect Storm, Thin Air), Kidder crafted this story around a vibrant community, the people who make it work, and the people who test its limits. The book could just as easily have been set in Santa Fe, Charleston, or a thousand other interesting places. As one of the legion of Northampton expatriates who follow the community through the local paper's gazettenet.com, I have to admit that Kidder showed me parts of the town that I had missed in 25 years of living there and 15 years of watching from afar. News reports of horrible tragedies around our Nation focus us on places that have imploded in social disaster. 'Home Town' shows in contrast a community that is at least narrowly winning the struggle to achieve comity and civility...and have some fun.
Rating:
Summary: Conveys accurate "shadow town" beyond the obvious
Review: I enjoyed "Home Town" because it delved into the "shadow town" that underlies the physical town most people experience. The characters that Kidder chose to follow were interesting and eclectic. The realities of the dark side of Northampton were amply illustrated as were some of its historical and rebuilding facets.Kidder's characteristically clear prose and ability to draw illustrative scenes is evident throughout the book. I've rated this book 4 out of 5 stars because it didn't reach a satisfactory sense of closure -- many loose ends dangle. While this is a characteristic of the life of Northampton - or any town - I would have felt closure if Kidder had provided more follow-up on the main characters. This is a good read and portrays something that may be missing for much of our transient society - a true sense of place and belonging. The multi-generational history of some of the book's characters should be warmly familiar to long-time members of any small town.
Rating:
Summary: Kidder Doesn't Kid
Review: I really loved this book. It is introversion and extroversion at its height. The comparison of people in just this one town is incredible, but even more so the fact that the reader walks away wanting to know what happened to each and every character. I literally was going to take a road trip to Northampton to meet some of the main characters of this novel, but I didn't want to creep them out. At points the story line is a little slow, but usually this is because Kidder is focusing on one character and the reader just wants to know what is happening with his or her favorite character. I would recommend this book to anyone that has ever visited, lived, or wants to live in a town in New England.
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