Big Stone Gap

Our book club book for the month was 'Big Stone Gap' by Adriana Trigiani. It is the story of Ave Maria, who considers herself the town spinster, never to marry. She is a pharmacist in the little town of Big Stone Gap, Virgina in the 1970's. Her mother had just died a month ago, and if grieving for her weren't enough, her mother has left a letter for her containing a family secret that she had never expected. Ave Maria struggles to juggle work, friends, relationships, and finding out the truth of her families past.

These are my thoughts on the book: It is a very simple, cute story with a small town feel to it. It was an enjoyable read. However, there are other books in this series, and I am not really compelled to read the rest of them. First of all, I like the note that it ended on. I feel closure with all of the characters, and I am not necessarily thirsty for more. Secondly, it is definitely not great literature. As I was reading this novel I could picture in my mind the author writing it at her computer, with a sticky note pasted to her monitor that read "Sex Sells!"I imagine that every so often she would look up, read the note, and then add some sexual reference that didn't really fit the context of her novel. Each one was like a thorn in a rosebush. These sexual plug-ins simply did not need to be there. I am not against sex in a novel per-say, but these were so wildly out of place I felt like the language of the book all of a sudden switched from English to Chinese. You are either writing an erotica novel or a cute romance, you can't have it both ways. My next issue with this book were the authors sporadic time frames. In one paragraph you were living in a moment in exact time and in the next paragraph you jumped ahead a few weeks and were covering time fast paced. There was not a clear break between the two types of paragraphs and I felt it baffling. The other problem with this kind of sporadic timeline writing, was that she left conversations between characters unfinished and moments unresolved. The last thing that irritated me about this novel was how overly dramatic the protagonist could be. One minute she is a completely normal person and the next you are reading her thoughts thinking it's time for a straight jacket. I suppose all of us have "crazy" thoughts every now and again, but this was a little too over the top for me.

I must mention that one thing I think the author did really, really well was write the language through her dialogue. As I was reading the words I was actually speaking them in a southern accent in my head. Each character had a  well developed language, and each was unique to it's character. I admired this quality very highly and was impressed very much with her talent.

I don't necessarily know that I would recommend this book, maybe just watch the movie and then decide for yourself. (Yes, there is a movie. I haven't watched it myself, but it looks pretty good, so who knows? It might be worth looking into.)