This is a review I did on amazon. amazon actually seems to appreciate my work as a reviewer. Go figure. Well, here is what I wrote about this book:

Firstly, I have enjoyed this author's other work, so I had some high hopes going in.

I liked the idea of tracing an uppercrusty New York Family from 1935 until the present day. It is an easy thing to blame all the blue bloods for everything. The character of Joan really was the central one for me as far as this novel goes. I am not sure that was the author's intention, but I kept reading because I liked Joan and wanted to see things work out for her. I usually abandon a novel after 50 pages if I am not engaged. I broke my own rule because a friend recommended this. It turns out the friend couldn't get through the book, but I did. The author lost the plot somewhere in jumping from time frame to character study. The family tragedies, particularly Moss's death, did not make sense. He seemed very experienced in the water to have met such a tragic end.

Then, to condemn a grieving mother for not taking a Jewish child onboard in 1936 is pretty unfair and that is the leaping off point for this novel. I read it all, with hopes that things would improve. Since the child's mother is the one who chose to take him back to Germany (when he was safely in the United States), why doesn't the onus fall on her? Shouldn't she have been aware of her own surroundings back in Germany, more so than a grieving mother in the United States I would think. That was a problem for me as well as the easy cry of prejudice that screams throughout the end of the novel. No insular group of any color or religion likes to have their party crashed and I think that's a bit of human nature not necessarily race.

The title never quite came together for me, either. There is a "guest book", but it's only mentioned a couple of times in passing for people not having signed it at a party. It is not an important part of the story and to be used in the title there should be a thread or something. I would have liked to have seen Joan and her relationships developed more thoroughly, with less easy blame placed on the older generation. I felt that the descriptions used were overblown and overly self-aware.

It sort of makes me sad because I think the seeds of a great work are in here, but in the end I wouldn't recommend spending the time reading. Maybe someday Hollywood will rewrite it into a masterpiece. As for me, I regret the time spent as the ending was pretty weak.

have the time back that I spent reading. It is a long, heavy book. I wished it was better than it was.

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Created Jul 04, 2019 at 10:47am • Submit your own review...