"4.5 stars, rounded up.

This novel, first published in 1989, reminds me of Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout except it explores the struggles of a father raising his young daughter alone after the unexpected death of his wife. It is a moving portrait of their complex relationship made even more complicated when the daughter moves away and marries a man that her father desperately warned her not to.

Richard Bausch shifts perspectives between James Field and his daughter, Annie, while also including the perspectives of the other characters central to their lives. Most of the narratives are written in third person, but there are several first person narratives of James and Annie which give the reader a better understanding of the inner turmoil that stems from their father-daughter bond.

This story is plot driven in parts and there is an underlying tension throughout, so I won't go into any more details. The prose is outstanding and there are numerous passages that are worthy to be savored. I'm always fascinated when I read a book like this one that was considered contemporary when it was released but still holds up so well decades later.

*A huge heartfelt THANK YOU to Julie G for her wonderful review of this very underrated novel. If not for her, I would have never even known about it."

"I appreciated the writer's skill a lot more than I enjoyed reading the novel. What am I saying, I did not like reading the novel at all. I struggled too hard to understand the timelines, plot and symbols. I had a guide which explained everything nicely which helped me understand things but took away any joy of reading. I have no idea how it's better to read this classic. Do not read any guide and just go with the flow or, as I did, but with the risk of not getting a pleasant experience out of it.

For a competent review please see others here or on Google. I really can't be bothered."

"Winner of the Booker prize 2024.

Well, there is no doubt that the writing is beautiful. Did I enjoy reading the novel? Hmm, I am not sure. Mostly because I could not focus on it for more than 5 minutes at a time. I listened to the book and it might have been a bad decision, since the novel is plotless. Yes, there is absolutely no plot in it. It does not start from a point and goes to another. It might circle around like the space station orbits around Earth. Ok, there is no plot but there are words in the novel, what are they about, you might wonder? Me too, but I will try to write something about them. A bunch of astronauts from different countries are gathered together on a space station for 6 months and while they are there, they study the Earth, think and talk stuff. Sometimes about their childhood and what made them become astronauts. Sometimes about their family. Sometimes they wonder about the beauty of the earth. Sometimes they do science stuff, some involve genetically modified mice.

In conclusion, the book was beautifully written but boring (to me). I like space so it shouldn’t have been. It probably did not help that I was jet lagged while listening to it."

"If you ever take on an American reading project that includes entries from all 50 states, you might want to consider this your selection for Mississippi.

I’m not sure that any writer has ever inspired me to feel like I understand the state better than I currently do, nor has one caused me to reflect on such devotion and confusion for loving such a complicated place.

Here, the Mississippi carved
its mud-dark path, a graveyard
for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
Here, the river changed its course,
turning away from the city,
as one turns, forgetting, from the past--

If you aren’t an American and/or you aren’t familiar with the state of Mississippi, it is a Southern state, and one that has struggled with deep socioeconomic burdens, low public school funding, and a long legacy of racism.

I don’t think that anyone’s going to argue with me when I declare that William Faulkner is the most famous writer ever to hail from that place, and I can tell you, with a decent amount of confidence, that he would have loved this Pulitzer winning collection of Natasha Trethewey’s.

I was not familiar with Ms. Trethewey’s poetry before NATIVE GUARD, nor was I familiar with her backstory: she was the daughter of a Black woman (a social worker) and a white man (a poet and professor) in Mississippi, in the 1960s, then the step-daughter to an abusive man who went on to murder her mother when she was 19.



Ms. Trethewey is a gifted poet who is blessed with both the technical prowess needed to tackle verse and the temerity to take on the topical subjects still teeming in the South (and elsewhere).

She manages to be both “old school� and completely innovative, at the same time, and I was excited to see a contemporary poet bringing back some classic rhyming patterns that deserve to re-emerge.

This was my favorite:

Graveyard Blues

It rained the whole time we were laying her down;
Rained from church to grave when we put her down.
The suck of mud at our feet was a hollow sound.
Ìý
When the preacher called out I held up my hand;
When he called for a witness I raised my hand�
Death stops the body’s work, the soul’s a journeyman.
Ìý
The sun came out when I turned to walk away,
Glared down on me as I turned and walked away�
My back to my mother, leaving her where she lay.
Ìý
The road going home was pocked with holes,
That home-going road’s always full of holes;
Though we slow down, time’s wheel still rolls.
Ìý
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I wander now among names of the dead:
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý My mother’s name, stone pillow for my head."