⇒ Read Gratis Dale Loves Sophie to Death A Novel Robb Forman Dew Books

Dale Loves Sophie to Death A Novel Robb Forman Dew Books

Download As PDF : Dale Loves Sophie to Death A Novel Robb Forman Dew Books

Dale Loves Sophie to Death A Novel Robb Forman Dew Books

I decided to read one of Robb Forman Dew's books after reading a conversation between Ms Dew and one of my favorite authors Anne Tyler. Ms Dew writes quite differently than I expected but her characters are very real. I am looking forward to reading another of her books


Tags : Amazon.com: Dale Loves Sophie to Death: A Novel (9780316890663): Robb Forman Dew: Books,Robb Forman Dew,Dale Loves Sophie to Death: A Novel,Back Bay Books,0316890669,FIC045000,Family Life,Domestic fiction,Domestic fiction.,Family - Ohio,Ohio,Ohio;Fiction.,Problem families,FICTION Family Life General,FICTION General,Fiction,Fiction - Coming of Age,Fiction - General,Fiction Family Life,GENERAL,General & Literary Fiction,General Adult,Sagas,United States

Dale Loves Sophie to Death A Novel Robb Forman Dew Books Reviews

This is the WORST book that I have ever read! Every page reads like the author went a little too crazy with the Thesaurus tool on her computer! I read this for a book club and everyone in the club agreed that the main character is next to impossible to like or feel any connection with. By the end of the book we all could have cared less about what happened to any of the characters and were very disappointed about the waste of our time! I would rather read a trashy romance novel (and I hate those!).
Although the subject of Dew's novel is well-trodden territory-- a husband and wife, temporarily separated, re-evaluate their marriage and their conceptions of each other-- Dew's writing is excellent. This story of this complicated couple and their families and friends is quietly moving as well as engrossing.
Because I read Dew's later novels first, I found this one not quite as good. It is, however, a very interesting 'novel of character.' It is an 'interior' story, along the lines of 'Madame Bovary' and 'Anna Karenina,' with everything viewed from the specific perspectives of various characters. Since one can see their innermost thoughts and feelings, of course one won't find them "likeable." Who of us would be if people knew exactly what we were thinking or feeling? If you aren't interested in WHY people behave the way they do, or if you want an action-packed story in which motivation doesn't matter, you probably won't like this novel. If you're fascinated by how others think and respond, you will.
I read this book years ago, when it first came out in hardback, and it has stayed fresh in my memory. The title refers to a spray-painted sign on a highway overpass that the family references each summer on it's way back to visit the extended family in the heartland of America. While visions of getting centered en famille overtake the mother in this tale, she neglects the danger confronting her own children, ignoring signs of malaise until she is forced to relinquish her dreams, and deal with reality. All the characters are well drawn. My heart went out to every one of them......things do happen that aren't anyone's fault, and happen when you least expect them. All the characters change, grow, adapt....in very realistic ways, and there is a kindness in the way the author tells their story. It's easy to understand how it won the National Book award; what isn't easy to understand is why it was never made into a movie----i feel like I've almost seen it, because Ms. Dew's descriptions are so visual, and her characters are so appealing.
This novel follows a family through a hot summer in Ohio. Nothing tremendously dramatic happens and the characters are all fairly normal Americans going about their lives but by the end of the book we feel we know them inside and out.
This book is beautifully written and Dew subjects her cast of characters to deep analysis -- she is much more penetrating and observant when examining her invented people than most real humans are about themselves. She sees and hears everything but she refuses to judge.
The author remains studiedly neutral even when the husband has a brief and foolish affair and the wife willfully neglects the health of one of her kids. The characters are sometimes appealing and sometimes maddening and always quite real.
That's the strength of the book. The weakness is that by the end one can't help wondering a little why it's been worth the time and investment to get to know these people who are so uniformly ordinary and mediocre.
But I think the author's intentions go beyond that. She's using these people to compose a portrait of a specific time and place -- the place being Smalltown Aywheresville America (the midwestern "heartland" venue being quite deliberately chosen) and the time the end of the 20th century.
So we're left with a very well-composed study of ordinary people living ordinary American lives with their pluses and minuses, their strong and weak points. By the end of the book, the reader reacts almost like one of the characters looking back at one of those golden summers of childhood and wondering what made it so wonderful.
The writing for this "story" was beautiful. I enjoyed the author's descriptions of the setting and the character's thoughts, but this was more of a character study than a true story. I learned a lot about Dinah and why she was stunted from her childhood, but I didn't really feel like there was much of a plot or true resolution. The three-star rating is mainly for the quality of the writing.
This was one of the most uneventful, anticlimatical books I have read. It did not even give mental illness a creative twist. No stars! (I had to give it one star just to move along the electronic site...)
I decided to read one of Robb Forman Dew's books after reading a conversation between Ms Dew and one of my favorite authors Anne Tyler. Ms Dew writes quite differently than I expected but her characters are very real. I am looking forward to reading another of her books