Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book, gripping characters
Review: I adore this book! I read a lot of novels, and this is one that I enjoyed from start to finish. The characters pull you in, and with each passing generation, you feel a loss. The ending was hard for me to get through, so terribly sad, but the answers to questions are there, and brought the story full circle. It was a remarkable story, I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Finally...a real novel
Review: Reading Jeffrey Lent's book resurrected my dying belief that there are still new and deeply emotional stories in our literary futures. This book was incredible and painfully good. The characters are vividly human. I cannot wait to read more from him.
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Summary: Finally - a real ending
Review: What I loved about this book was the ending. It actually had one. So many books I read are spetacular until the end, then it feels like the author's editor has said, "you better meet your deadline", and they finish abrubtly or without meaning or continuity with the story. This book, I feel, did not do this. It is a fabulous story, and you wish for it to go on and on, but it can't (although, with the ending, you know that the story does continue).
Rating:
Summary: Stumbled upon.
Review: I found this book while looking for another. What a great piece of luck. I read about 50 books a year and have done so for several years. I do not rate many books as excellent. However this one won me over. It is one of the five best books I have read.
A great story with wonderful characters.
Rating: 
Summary: ...all's NOT well that ends well...!
Review: I am rounding off my actual 3.5 stars upward to a *4*... in other words, closer to a 4 than a 3! In The Fall was the latest book in the online reading-group that I am a part of, and my overall opinion of the book was the most lenient among us! Most of my negative criticism would be directed at the writing style early on in Part I where my constant thought was "What is with all of this sentence fragmentation?" I've never seen anything like it. Lent's unique sentence and paragraph structure certainly is unnerving at first, and left me wondering if this was intentionally done to exemplify the idiom of late 19th Century America? Or what? I still don't know. I think that readers should be warned that, grammatically speaking, the greater majority of Lent's sentences (in this early section) are actually lacking the "subject" portion... as though the reader is supposed to fill in the blanks. The subject is not plainly given, it is assumed!But I enjoyed the content of Part I which tells the passionate story of how wounded soldier Norman Pelham is rescued by the fugitive slave Leah. They journey to his childhood home in Vermont where together they raise a family. Leah is increasingly haunted by her past however, and events conspire to shatter the general bucolic bliss they, for the most part, enjoyed. Part II is the story of their son Jamie, and Part III deals with Jamie's son, Foster. The inner struggles of three generations are chronicled, and many comments have been made that Part II is almost entirely superfluous, and the story could have been adequately told if this part was omitted altogether. I disagree. I think that "shortening" it would be better than eliminating it. Part II is essential because I think the author wanted to put a sort-of "distance" between the Norman/Leah story and the Foster/Daphne story, to show us that it is possible to "break the mold" (I can't think of a better term) of our generational curses. (Family secrets might be a synonym). But this can only be done by someone who CHOOSES to stand outside of his own anger or resentment, and face the past objectively. To stare at the portrait of the past (as Foster does at the home of Abigail and Prudence) until that portrait speaks to you. The tragic story of Jamie in Part II shows us someone who runs and hides from the past. Foster, in Part II, purposefully runs INTO the past. His end is at least... hopeful. Reading In The Fall felt, at times, like hiking uphill... early on I wished that I was equipped with better boots. But in some way that is as elusive to define as Lent's style, I felt it was worth the climb.
Rating:
Summary: Passion, Angst and Discovery
Review: As a first-time novelist ("The Legacy", Savage Press, 2000), I appreciate quality prose written by other first timers. Jeffrey Lent has hit the mark in this epic saga of Americana. Lent's charecters, his use of language and dialogue, all point towards a long and illustrious career as a fiction writer. Having just read "Peace Like a River", another much celebrated debut novel, I can honestly say that I liked "In the Fall" better. For readers who cherish history, this book seems to be a better fit. Both are expertly written and have memorable charecters but the overall historical context and Lent's positioning of race as a central theme, in a book set in lilly white New England, held my interest and compelled me to read when I wanted to sleep. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: stick with it!
Review: I picked up this book because of the cover, believing that, after reading the back, it was a Civil War story (my favorite reads) - it is that, but it is so much more. My best friend (also a librarian) saw I was reading it and stated that it was a book she just couldn't get into it, (I can see why it does seem to move a bit slow in the beginning, and the prose boggs it down)I told her what I will tell you - stay with it, as it only gets better as it goes. You are hooked when Leah travels "home", by the time you get to the story of her son Jaime you are really hooked, by the time his son Foster gets down South, it is an all-night, can't put it down type of story. My advice, stick with it; it is a wonderful story and you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Overwritten good story
Review: One of the worst things one can say about a book is that "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) uneducated Vermont farmer folk, b) freed slave woman, c) home school dropout bootlegger, etc. It is a shame the author went this route so often, for the story line and theme were excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Run and don't look back. Spare yourself.
Review: Why so much praise and wonderment for this book? It is abysmal. I can't recall when I have enjoyed a story less. Was there an editor involved anywhere in the process? Incomplete sentences seem to be the only type that Mr. Sears can write. I understand writing within a dialect for effect, but it isn't a successful tactic in this novel. It is a failed conceit. Mr. Sears wastes paragraphs describing scenery, I am supposing as an attempt to bring us into the world of the characters. Then when something truly important happens he provides it with 3 (incomplete) sentences. Example: chapter after chapter about Leah and Norman's struggles to conceive and the eventual birth of a daughter. Then one measly paragraph telling us that a few years later she had another daughter, and years after that a son. It's an absurd way to tell a story and completely unsatisfying. I could get past the misuse of language if the story were worthwhile, or perhaps if it helped transport us to the time and place of the novel, but that just doesn't happen. Lessons go unlearned, sons repeat the mistakes of their fathers, people behave badly and without remorse. I am left feeling a great loss, though, for the time I wasted on this book.
Rating:
Summary: An Absorbing Family Saga
Review: I loved this book! It is the best book I've read all year. The characters are very well-developed and just draw you in. I truly cared about all of the characters. The book tackles a tragic part of American history. The story is very moving and absorbing. Once I began to read, I did not want to stop until I got to the bottom of the mystery. I highly recommend this book. It is long (over 500 pages), but well worth it.
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