Lucid Stars

Rating:
Summary: You can do better.
Review: After just over two months of struggling with this boring, inspsid, uninspiring novel, I finally sent it flying out the window into a convenient rainstorm last week. It's not so much that it's a BAD book, really (although insipid is probably the best word I can think of to describe it), it's just that it's been done so much better. Okay, here's the scenario. Young girl from small town is swept off her feet by cosmopolitan socialite, gets pregnant, gets married, finds out that life married to cosmopolitan socialite ain't that great, has kid, leaves cosmopolitan socialite, cos. so. marries second wife, first wife and daughter heal rift. Hmmmm. We've never heard THAT one before.

Once again, we have an overused half-baked plot, and we have a convenient piece of excellent work to hold it up against. If you want a dysfunctional family circus, it's hard to do better than Michael Cunningham's _Flesh and Blood_. It's good that people try, because eventually someone _will_ write a better, funnier, sadder, more intimate novel than Cunningham's, but the discerning reader will realize, by now, that in order to find the bigger pearl, one will be reading a whole lot of swine.

Rating:
Summary: I want to know about Andrea Barrett's background.
Review: Andrea Barrett has written a number of books. Nowhere is there anything I can find about who she is; what is her background;what is her education; why does she write, etc.

Rating:
Summary: I want to know about Andrea Barrett's background.
Review: Andrea Barrett tells the story of three females living during the late 50's, the 60's and the 70's - the time period of the modern women's movement. Using her considerable skills as a short story writer, Ms. Barrett weaves her three characters into a whole; a connectedness usually only yearned for and not accomplished. Using lucid stars as a metaphor for that which can be seen by the naked eye having greater potential, depth and brilliance if seen with more perception, Andrea Barrett reveals the complexity and promise of all late 20th century women. What pleased me most was that her female characters were still growing when the book ended.

Rating:
Summary: Too bad it didn't age well
Review: I read this book because it was recommended as one I might like by Amazon. Reader, beware. This book was pretty much a waste of time, set in a rather uninteresting Cape Cod, with inadequate character development and no plot to speak of. Probably fresher when it was new.