SALT DANCERS

Rating:
Summary: Can you go home again?
Review: At 40, Julia is pregnant and unmarried. And knowing that her father is aging rapidly, she decides to return home and put to rest some of the demons which have plagued her for the past 23 years. Running away from a home which provided her with difficulty while growing up, it is as if Julia must now come to terms with this before she can become a parent herself.

Salt Dancers focuses on various themes often discussed today which in the able hands of Ms. Hegi become painfully fresh and new. Themes such as forgiveness, emotional and physical abuse, abandonment, closure and finally moving on.

Although Hegi is best known for her book Stones from the River, I have found all of her titles compelling, especially this one.

Rating:
Summary: Its In The Writing!
Review: Exquisitely written. Salt Dancers explores the life of a family separated, physically and emotionally, by secretes and lies. The story is told through the voice of the daughter, who returns home after many years of absence to uncover the "whys" behind the physical abuse from her father and the truth behind the disappearance of her mother. Sounds pretty formula, but the beauty of the novel is in the writing. Hegi's prose is crisp, fluid, and expressive. She simplifies in writing some of most complex emotions and thought processes existent in the human experience. I agree with other reviews in that this is no Stones From The River or Intrusions, but a worthy read for those who can appreciate the intricacies of fine writing.

Rating:
Summary: Boring, disappointing book
Review: I can hardly believe this is the same writer of Stones from the River and Floating in my Mother's Palm.
The story is boring (standard story about a disfunctional family survivor - what every other contemporary American book is about), and not particularly well written either.
After reading a wonderfully written, profound book like Stones from the River, so deep and thought provoking, the self-absorbed navel-gazing main character of Salt Dancers is unbearable.
What a let down...

Rating:
Summary: The best book I have read in a long time.
Review: I love reading about the past wars and getting the inside look at them. The one thing that I really loved about Stones From The River is that it didn't give you a general overview of the life people lived during the war with Hitler, but it gave you a close up look at some of the trials and tribulations that the people of the town went through. Following Trudi through her struggle of discovery you find yourself questioning,wondering and discovering the new ideas right along with Trudi. I for one can not relate with Trudi and what she lived through, but Hegi does such a good job at writing I almost felt like I could. I would really recomend this book and her other Salt Dancers to anyone who is in for the discovery of the real truth to life.

Rating:
Summary: Boring, disappointing book
Review: RETURNING HOME FOR UNDERSTANDING AFTER 23 YEARS: A haunting story about a young woman that goes back home after 23 years and an unplanned pregnancy to get answers from her past so she can feel comfortable that she will make a good mother to her child. Julia has avoided going home until now, running from her past and trying to create a life for herself independent of it. However, after one failed marriage and an unconventional relationship resulting in this pregnancy, she felt it was time to confront her demons or her father as the case may be.

ABANDONED BY HER MOTHER AND PHYSICALLY ABUSED BY HER FATHER: Julia and her younger brother were abandoned by their mother when her mother left her unsatisfying and later abusive marriage to their father. Julia's recollections of her mother are about the good times and she has built up considerable fantasies about why her mother left them. She recognizes this, but mostly is troubled by the fact that her father beat her exclusive from her brother, later as she was growing up, and she never understood why. Also her brother remained with their father after they grew up and even though he briefly attended college, returned to the family home and continued to remain living with their father. She did not understand why he too did not choose to escape.

JULIA WANTS TO UNDERSTAND WHY: Julia has returned to understand the past. This is not so easy as the past and present are not so easy to resolve to one another. Julia's father is now a frail older man that is well respected in the community. Only a few friends knew of the beatings Julia suffered at his hands. He is now and has through their correspondence over the years, very considerate of her needs. She feels this is all a sham and is determined to resolve her childhood traumas.

USULA HEGI, DOES A MASTERFUL JOB OF BRINGING THE CHARACTERS TO LIFE: Ursula Hegi, does once again a masterful job of creating the musings of the main character's mind, weaving past present and other thoughts that crowd Julia's mind as she lives from day to day. You understand what Julia does and why she believes this. You can see how her mind works and what is important to her. Ms. Hegi did this masterfully in both "Stones from the River", "Floating in my Mother's palm" and "Unexpected pleasures" as well.

Rating:
Summary: A masterful characterization
Review: RETURNING HOME FOR UNDERSTANDING AFTER 23 YEARS: A haunting story about a young woman that goes back home after 23 years and an unplanned pregnancy to get answers from her past so she can feel comfortable that she will make a good mother to her child. Julia has avoided going home until now, running from her past and trying to create a life for herself independent of it. However, after one failed marriage and an unconventional relationship resulting in this pregnancy, she felt it was time to confront her demons or her father as the case may be.

ABANDONED BY HER MOTHER AND PHYSICALLY ABUSED BY HER FATHER: Julia and her younger brother were abandoned by their mother when her mother left her unsatisfying and later abusive marriage to their father. Julia's recollections of her mother are about the good times and she has built up considerable fantasies about why her mother left them. She recognizes this, but mostly is troubled by the fact that her father beat her exclusive from her brother, later as she was growing up, and she never understood why. Also her brother remained with their father after they grew up and even though he briefly attended college, returned to the family home and continued to remain living with their father. She did not understand why he too did not choose to escape.

JULIA WANTS TO UNDERSTAND WHY: Julia has returned to understand the past. This is not so easy as the past and present are not so easy to resolve to one another. Julia's father is now a frail older man that is well respected in the community. Only a few friends knew of the beatings Julia suffered at his hands. He is now and has through their correspondence over the years, very considerate of her needs. She feels this is all a sham and is determined to resolve her childhood traumas.

USULA HEGI, DOES A MASTERFUL JOB OF BRINGING THE CHARACTERS TO LIFE: Ursula Hegi, does once again a masterful job of creating the musings of the main character's mind, weaving past present and other thoughts that crowd Julia's mind as she lives from day to day. You understand what Julia does and why she believes this. You can see how her mind works and what is important to her. Ms. Hegi did this masterfully in both "Stones from the River", "Floating in my Mother's palm" and "Unexpected pleasures" as well.

Rating:
Summary: Salt Dancers was a Disappointment
Review: Salt Dancers was a great disappointment after Stones from the River. The story itself had pontential but I found the writing flat, lacking the depth and color of Stones. There was a certain lack of maturity in the writing, which led me to wonder if the book had been written well before Hegi's best seller. Was Salt Dancers, perhaps at the urging of agent or publisher, retrieved from the back corner of a closet to take advantage of the hype attached to Stones from the River? If so, it was a great disservice to Hegi, a truly fine writer.

Rating:
Summary: Searching for the Other Half
Review: The search for one's mother never stops, even when your mother is always with you,(for who can ever really know their mother) but when she just one day disappears, the heartbreak and longing that follow are incomparable. When Julia was only nine years old, her mother just vanished, never to return. She and her brother, Travis, were left with a father who loved them, but also drank too much and occasionally, took out his despair on Julia in the form of beatings and rage. Although she left as soon as life would permit, she was forever filled with the hate left from those years and the abuse she sustained from her father and her brother's lack of help. When she returns at age 41, pregnant, her thoughts are full of what kind of mother she will be as she encounters her father, now old and slow, for the first time in twenty years. Memories come and go, but slowly she realizes that some of those memories are good. The universal fact that all people are selective in their memories is reflected in Julia's realization that her childhood was not all bad, and that her father's selective memory had blocked out all those times of anger and rage against her until he had simply lost them. This is a novel of redemption, not only for Julia but for her brother as well. That her father is somewhat redeemed in her mind and the realization that she does love him are in fact, the anchoring point of the novel. The reclamation of their mother is a secondary and restoring event that brings the lives of brother and sister--and mother--to welcome fruition and peace. Julia finds as she leaves her mother, that she can be a good mother herself as she treasures the hope that her own mother will be part of her future life. Ultimately a life affirming book, Salt Dancers examines family and personal issues that haunt many people and it forces the reader to reevaluate their own memories.

Rating:
Summary: wonderful book about the way families really work
Review: This book was amazing. I checked it out of the library because Stones From the River was not in stock. It turned out to be one of my best reads ever. I felt it told the real story of how people interact with eachother, and the effect of emotional scarring in one's youth. I would recomend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Good beach reading
Review: This novel that makes good beach reaching. The pace was slow, the mood dreamy and the characters interesting.

The theme is contemporary -- a 41-year old successful female architect, unmarried and pregnant by choice, visits her home town of Spokane Washington to come to terms with her past. Her childhood has been broken by her mother's desertion when she was 9 years old, and her memories of her childhood with her father and brother haunt her. Little by little, the reader is drawn into the story of her family and the final resolution brings completion to her questions about the past.

The story is small but the writing is good, and I was drawn into the character's thought processes and memories. It was a pleasant, if not challenging, read, and a good example of mood and setting. Recommended if you're looking for a well-told exploration of this woman's story.