Morning is a Long Time Coming (Paperback) Review

I definately consider "summer of my german soldier" to be one of my top 3 favorite books of all time, so of course I was anxious to read the sequel. After reading some disappointing reviews, I was skeptical, but decided I had to read it to find out what ends up happening in Patty's life. Actually, the first half of the book is pretty good, although her relationship with Ruth is not what I pictured it would be, the first half of the book ends well with Patty getting ready to leave for Europe. Through the first part, she goes on about how she misses Anton and what her life has been like over the past 6 yrs. Then come the second part, and let me tell you...almost anyone could have written a better conclusion. It starts out with Patty on aboat to Paris, where she meets a fairly nice guy named Michael, who likes her. They are in love for a while, and there is even the chance of them getting married. Then he makes a joke about her "reeling in a doctor" (he's an american med student at switzerland) and she gets mad at him saying this and all of a sudden realizes that she dosent want him and he is somehow just like her father(although I never understand her point on this.) Soon she is in Paris, and meets another guy named Roger, who is the biggest jerk, and who most resembles everything that is bad about her father. Somehow, she still thinks hes good looking, so she has sex with him less than a day after she meets him! He even asks if it hurt when he entered into her, so this is definately NOT a childrens book!When she finally gets the courage to tell him she's going to Germany (months after she arrived in Paris) he goes wacko and tells her he considers her dead, and dosen't blame her father for disowning her because she is ungrateful to him, etc. Basically, Roger is a younger version of her father.When Patty gets to Germany, thats when she really goes off the wall. She thinks that everybody is a Nazi, and although everyone is really nice to her, she seems to hate them all of a sudden. She goes to the home of Anton, and his father welcomes her in and is really great to her, but once she learns that Mrs.Reiker is dead, she goes without asking him about Anton. That is when Patty really goes anti-German andeven gets thrown in jail for making a big scene back at her hotel. She goes back to Paris after calming herself, and realizes that Paris and Roger and the right things for her life, and she is sooo sorry she casued Roger so much pain and she'll never think of Anton again. (At this point, I was about ready to throw up)

Click Here to see more reviews about: Morning is a Long Time Coming (Paperback)

Product Description:
Patty is now eighteen, and a high school graduate--but she cannot face her future until she comes to terms with her past. She decides to go to Germany in search of Anton's mother, desperate for a connection to the man she loved and lost. En route, she stops in Paris, where she meets Roger. And now she must think twice about her plan--not only because of what she might find, but because of what she must leave behind...

"A compelling first-person narrative about love and human relationships." --Booklist, starred review

* A Puffin Novel
* 272 pages
* Ages 14 up

Buy cheap Morning is a Long Time Coming (Paperback) now

Bright Shiny Morning (P.S.) [Paperback] Review

I was the first to get the book from my local Barnes and Nobles and I know this because they told me this--I read a lot.I read Austen and Bronte.I read Hemingway and Faulkner.I read Mailer and Vidal.I read I read I read.You'll have to trust me when I say that I consider myself a literate person, a published writer, and a harsh and unbearable critic--of self and others--and I haven't read all of Bright Shiny Morning yet.I have read four hundred and ten pages of it.With the negative reviews that are to follow, I figured a partial review on my favorite place to buy books online would be appropriate to thin out what will surely be many an unjust review.Let's put aside that he's an embellisher in his memoirs (I could care less).Let's focus solely on the novel at hand.Let's start with the negatives.

Two Teens runaway from home to start a life together.(Cliche)
A blockbuster actor married to a beautiful woman is really gay.(Cliche)
A spanish nanny with a deformity who starts a relationships with the son of a client.(Cliche)
A homeless man who befriends a runaway.(Most assuredly cliche)
The writing is shoddily punctuated, annoyingly incomplete, and choppy.(You look and have to make sure you read it right).
The language is rough. (Constant swearing, difficult to read material)
The vignette excursions are sometimes annoying, sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, sometimes a miss, and sometimes a hit.(Some worked in the book, other's probably could've been left out).

Now I'll tell you why none of these negatives matter.

The cliche story lines could kill a book if not so beautifully put together that you become engrossed in the characters--the characters become the originals in a story that's been told a thousand times.
The writing is all his own. It's reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.It flares with an immediacy not seen in books anymore--or rarely seen in books anymore.The excursions from the story are necessary because without them, you don't get the major character, which is, LA.LA rings as the focal character, a land and place all its own that rings true to the world around us, the focal point for the American dream, the focal point for hope and decadance, the focal point for stardom and fame, the focal point for what drives American's home lives to the television each day, the focal point for these characters existence, the focal point for life in a sense.

I ask, and I hope, my only hope, that you who are angry at James Frey, let it go, and don't try and crush the book simply because you feel lied to.A believable lie, after all, is what good fiction is made out of, for if he could suspend disbelief well enough for us to believe everything in his memoir's (that he didn't even want to call memoirs, mind you, it's labeled, Memoir/Literature), he certainly suspends disbelief in bringing to life the characters.You will feel their pain and their defeats, their victories and their happines, at least to where I've read to.I don't know about the rest of the book... but he's never been one for the crapped out ending, so I'm quite sure. Buy it, you'll love it.If you don't buy it and you don't read it, then just don't write a review, for a review is not how you feel about the author, it's how you feel about the work he put out into the world, so be mature, grow up, and read a good book from a unique and new voice in the world of literature.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Bright Shiny Morning (P.S.) [Paperback]



Buy cheap Bright Shiny Morning (P.S.) [Paperback] now Get 32% OFF