Hole in the Universe

Rating:
Summary: Morris Is Back With a Winner!
Review: I found "A Hole in the Universe" to be Morris' best novel since "A Dangerous Woman" (which I loved and highly reccomend), because what she does in these two novels is what she does better than almost anyone else: she brilliantly captures the essence of characters who are on the fringes of society; those who are socially inept, socially shunned, those "too needy" for other people's confort levels. She very craftily makes her readers both sympathetic, and at the same time repelled, by her characters.

Rating:
Summary: Best money spent
Review: I LOVE Mary McGarry Morris so what you'll read here is 100% biased. Having devoured A Dangerous Woman and Vanished before realizing Ms. McHarry Morris is not exactly prolific, I promised to buy my own copy of her subsequent books and refrain from lending them to others if she'd just "step on it" a bit more. Fell on deaf ears, though ... .

Alas, what attracts me to her books are the characters and the prose. Her characters are somewhere between mainstream akimbo and slipstream irregular; fringe-dwellers who we're all capable of employing at one time or another. Her dialogue flows easily and every so often hesitates momentarily for honest and revealing introspection.

My offer still stands, Ms. McGarry Morris: Hardcover purchase, no lending. Now, get going on the next book!

Rating:
Summary: I cared about these characters!
Review: I've read many reviews of books with the testimony "I couldn't put it down'" but had never really felt that way about a book. To me that was one of the beautiful things about a book, I could always put it down and do something else and come back to it when it suited me. Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the last 100 pages of A Hole in the Universe. I so needed to know what was going to happen to Gordon, Jada and Delores the three main characters in the novel. Mary McGarry Morris makes these characters part of your life and you care deeply for them and hope beyond hope that their lives will get better. Needless to say I loved this book!

Rating:
Summary: fine reading of a thoughtful story
Review: Readers of Morris's four previous novels know that few can script dialogue with her skill and understanding of human foibles. This is rich territory for actor Jason Culp to mine and he does it superbly, whether it is the voice of Gordon Loomis, a man recently released from prison after 25 years or a 13-year-old street child who ekes out a living dealing drugs.

Loomis has almost as much trouble outside prison walls as he did inside. He returns to his old neighborhood, which is dramatically changed. It's rundown, rife with drug dealers. His brother tries to help him find work, and Delores, the woman, who visited him regularly seeks to reconnect with him.

He cannot forget his senseless crime; others don't want him to forget it.

As she has done in the past Morris draws sharply etched, sympathetic portraits of the down and outers. We see them through her eyes and perhaps rethink our definition of forgiveness.