Taking Lottie Home

Rating:
Summary: This story will touch you unexpectedly.
Review: "Taking Lottie Home : A Novel" is a good summer read that will pull you in, without knowing it. I saw this book on the discount shelves at the nearby conglomerate bookstore, and with its warm cover, I bought it. I was worried that the plot would revolve around baseball, but it only ties the characters together. It revolved back to teamwork and comradeship. The chapters will fly by, and before you know it, you're at the epilogue. That's where the story lost me, and I became confused. The references to grandma, Gra-Ma, mother, father, etc., made me confused about who was who. It's best to just leave off after the final chapter is finished. An enjoyable read. I recommend.

Rating:
Summary: This story will touch you unexpectedly.
Review: "Taking Lottie Home : A Novel" is a good summer read that will pull you in, without knowing it. I saw this book on the discount shelves at the nearby conglomerate bookstore, and with its warm cover, I bought it. I was worried that the plot would revolve around baseball, but it only ties the characters together. It revolved back to teamwork and comradeship. The chapters will fly by, and before you know it, you're at the epilogue. That's where the story lost me, and I became confused. The references to grandma, Gra-Ma, mother, father, etc., made me confused about who was who. It's best to just leave off after the final chapter is finished. An enjoyable read. I recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing book
Review: At first I didn't like this book. I picked it up and thought, oh great, it's about baseball. How wrong was I when I picked this one up at a bookstore? So I put it down. A few days later, after finding myself at loose ends because nothing I picked up sounded good, I gave it a try again. And this time, I was hooked. Terry Kay's writing just ensared me and I couldn't put the book down till the last page was turned.

Kay's characters just came alive in this book ~~ their dreams, their passions, their loves and fears. This is an wonderful book that will haunt you with its lyrical writing and true characters. There is Ben who is kicked off the Augusta baseball team at the same time as Foster Lanier, an older baseball player. They meet up again on the way home from the baseball fields. Ben struggles to make a life again in his hometown, Jericho, as he struggles with ending his dreams of playing baseball. Throughout his life, he kept track of his best friend Milo who did remain behind to play ball and eventually played for Boston Red Sox. Then there is Lottie, the woman he meets on his journey home ~~ and he continues to meet her over the years. And this is their story ~~ of friendship and eventually taking Lottie home. Foster married Lottie and fathered her son, but Ben took her home.

It's an enchanting story of the deep South at the beginning of the 20th century. These characters are just as real as your grandparents were ~~ and very interesting too. It's a great book to read on a lazy day swinging on the hammock ~~ just be prepared with lemonade and cookies ~~ once you start reading this book, you don't want it to stop!

5-25-04

Rating:
Summary: Train ride with Little Ben, Georgia Peach, & the Carny Girl
Review: Ben Phelps and Foster Lanier share a train ride home in 1904 after being cut from a low minor league baseball squad in Georgia. Another Georgian not only makes the cut, he advances quickly to the major leagues, where he is universally hated by the players for his dirty style of play and the public for tales of his wife-beating, drinking, and low-living. Ultimately, he becomes the top player of his age and very wealthy through Georgian business ventures (think Cobb and Coca-Cola), but he always refuses to see the old town and gang.

Ben and Foster meet Lottie Parker on that train. This enigmatic creature is both innocent and way too worldly for her teenage years, but never one to be forgotten. Lottie changes their lives for several generations. Foster and Lottie marry, and name their son Little Ben. Ben goes home, takes a job in the dry goods store, and becomes engaged to the proprietor's daughter. Foster, Lottie, and Ben have a subsequent encounter; when Foster and Lottie are working a travelling carnival baseball game of skill, they make Ben look like the town hero and get him very nearly killed.

Several years pass and then Ben comes to see a dying Foster, who makes him promise to take Lottie home. Both Ben and Little Ben take ill, and end up in the care of Ben's lonely widowed mother and Ben's fiancee. Lottie becomes the talk of the town, first rumours spread that she and Ben had an illicit relationship, then she wins over all with her charm and grace, then she falls in love with Ben's long-suffering father-in-law, finally she leaves town to return home, just as rumour surface that she is the famous carny girl of many years earlier.

I have not read any other Terry Kay novels, and I highly recommend this one. It has a few slow places, especially in the beginning, but it gracefully ties together America's past-times of baseball, commerce, and raising families in the hard-scrabble turn of the century days without much medicine, transportation, employment, or money, especially in the rural South.

Rating:
Summary: Painfully Beautiful
Review: From the wonderfully talented storyteller, Terry Kay, "Taking Lottie Home" opens in Augusta, Georgia in 1904, and is a tale about the early days of baseball, traveling shows, small town charm, and love in all its varied forms, woven around a mesmerizing young girl, Lottie Barton. Her effect on men who come to know her (and alter their lives to make her part of their respective worlds) propels the well-written narrative forward. Another winner from the master wordsmith, Mr. Kay.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I always enjoy books like this which are set in the early 1900's. Even though there is the threat of war, things seem to be much simpler--people a lot more laid back. Although the book itself was a nice, quiet read, I didn't care much for Lottie. Although she was supposedly one of the main characters, I enjoyed the book more when I placed her in the setting of a secondary character and stopped focusing on when and where she was going to fit into the storyline.

Rating:
Summary: A book from a much simpler time.
Review: I always enjoy books like this which are set in the early 1900's. Even though there is the threat of war, things seem to be much simpler--people a lot more laid back. Although the book itself was a nice, quiet read, I didn't care much for Lottie. Although she was supposedly one of the main characters, I enjoyed the book more when I placed her in the setting of a secondary character and stopped focusing on when and where she was going to fit into the storyline.

Rating:
Summary: Not up to Kay's potential
Review: I found the first half of Kay's novel reminiscent of To Dance With the White Dog. Reading that book is what brought me to Taking Lottie Home. But, I was disappointed overall. At about the halfway point, the story seemed to take a left turn into soap opera-land. It was as though written by two different people. ... I thought it a shame the promise of the beginning wasn't kept through to the end. --This text refers to the Paperback edition

Rating:
Summary: Taking Lottie Home
Review: I have been a long time fan of Terry Kay. From the time I read "To dance with the White Dog" to "The Year the lights came on" I knew I would never tire of Terry Kay's stories. "Bringing Lottie Home" has hit the top of the charts with me and all my friends! I would recommend this book to anyone, young and old!.

Rating:
Summary: A Story About Life
Review: I just finished "Taking Lottie Home." While reading the book, I kept thinking that it was a good book but not a great book. Then I read the epilogue. At that point, the book became the great book. When a writer can write and make his reader feel the joy and pain of life as it really is, then he has risen to the top of the craft. He becomes like Hemingway or Steinbeck. Terry Kay has done that with "Taking Lottie Home." As I read this book I hurt and I laughed. And when I finished it, I was affected. Terry Kay wrote in the front of my book (I bought it at a book signing) that he hoped that the story mattered. Mr. Kay, the story mattered. Thanks.