Rating: 
Summary: THE WORST BOOK I EVER FINISHED
Review: I was lured by the great cover, & stellar reviews, but this book, as another reviewer said, is so derivative, not only of Faulkner but especially Cormac McCarthy. Anybody who's read McCarthy will, I expect, cringe at the repeated use of verbs like "tamp" & all the working-class language & taciturn (& shallow!) characters. The story's reasonably compelling, & I liked the middle section best, & yes there are some beautiful passages, but the prose is a cheap, clunky (intentionally clunky, it's still clunky--doesn't matter) imitation of true masters. You want a better imitation of Faulker & McCarthy, read Frazier's Cold Mountain. At least he has a grasp on sentence structure. And the ending's not even close to making it worthwhile. Please, literary hierarchy, don't send us any more cheap imitations like this one! Writers, strike out on your own!
Rating: 
Summary: Too long but had good bones!
Review: I agree with several other reviewers who found this book much too long and overwritten. Some of the rambling thoughts, often very deep for the types of characters thinking such thoughts, were really overdone. Sometimes the language was hauntingly beautiful and sometimes it was so smothered in wordiness as to not be comprehensible.That said, I think the bones of a good story were there, just too well-padded to always be evident. The author took an interesting approach and the story was somewhat different than other post-Civil War tales. This was the only thing that kept me reading.....but I must admit that I often scanned long passages that seemed to take detours away from the heart of the plot. I look forward to watching this author's progress.
Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to stop...
Review: I am a member of an online book club and this was a November selection. I kept reading even though I wanted to stop because the book club usually picks such excellent books. I kept waiting to find some redeeming quality with "In the Fall", it never appeared. I am amazed at all of the good reviews for this book on this site. The writing was so amateuristic and uninteresting. I have no understanding of how this book is getting an average of 4 stars. Everybody's tastes are different. All I can say is if you feel the need to stop reading this do it, because it never gets any better.
Rating: 
Summary: Lyrical and stunningly poignant
Review: This was a treasure, a surprise, a book that joins the ranks of my top ten favorite books. I didn't want it to end, I was so enamored with the characters and the story. I was not sure in the beginning, as Lent's writing was initially awkward and rambling, but I saw the spark of characters and his painterly descriptions spoke to the artist in me. You will not be disappointed....this will be the gift of choice for my reading friends this Christmas
Rating:
Summary: Overwritten So Not Believable
Review: One of the worst things one can say about a book is: "It was too long." This book could and should have been shorter and what should have been left out was obvious. The author interjects deep philosophocal soliloquies into the thoughts of a) an uneducated Vermont farmer folk, b) a freed slave woman, c) a home school dropout bootlegger, etc. It is a shame the author went this route so often, for the story line and theme were excellent. The placement of these philosphical musings just did not fit.
Rating:
Summary: Went to Jeffrey's reading in VT
Review: Listening to Jeffrey read from his novel, watching his face as he read inspired you to read on. His second novel was being reviewed as he spoke to us. It was a hard book to put down plus we were staying close to the area of his home and where part of the story took place. A wonderful read for our book club with much discussion.
Rating:
Summary: Labor of Love?
Review: When I started reading this book, I found myself struggling with it. I thought the characters two dimensional, unexamined. On top of that, the story seemed to be going nowhere. Events did not add up, and just when I thought the book was going in one direction, it would turn and go another.
Frustrated, wanting to throw the book across the room, I came here to Amazon.com to read reviews of this book. To my suprise, most of them were glowing. A few felt the same as I, and I was shocked more of you did not think like I did. That being, this book is pretentious, and downright boring.
The reviews here gave me the courage to go on, and I'm glad I did. Although it takes you almost half way through the novel to get some depth in character, and plot development, it was worth the time invested.
I give this book only three stars though for the following reasons. Lent's prose is hard to read at times. Run on sentences, and the occasional deleted word make for some frustrations. Character development was slow in my opinion, which added to my frustrations with his prose. Also, I do think the story was a bit long and could have been a bit shorter. It took me 200+ pages into the book before the plot of the story was starting to take shape.
However, Lent does have some very moving sequences in this story, and those make reading this book worthwhile. Take for example the death of Jamie's wife, and the aftermath that follows. So many unanswered questions I had with the book came together for me in that scene and the twenty or so pages that followed. At that point, this book became a labor of love. For what I believed Lent's message to be in this novel became clear to me at that point in the story.
As for what that message is, I wont spoil it for you, afterall, that's why you need to read the book.
Rating:
Summary: derivative
Review: I found this book relentlessly echoing Faulkner's prose -- the broken sentences, omitted subjects, use of participles instead of active verbs -- but without Faulkner's love and deep knowledge of his characters. Also, is all that graphic sex and violence really necessary to the narrative?
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Majestic
Review: Jeffrey Lent is truly a fresh voice in American literature. I enjoy his sweeping, descriptive prose and the depth of his characters. Very satisfying. Although they write in different genres, I would compare the poetic nature of Lent's writing to Shade of the Maple by Kirk Martin, whose vivid prose captures the beauty of Robert Frost and Claude Monet.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I really liked this book. It was well written for the time period of the book. I also liked it because I live in Vermont and am familer with the towns mentioned in the book.
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