(19 November 2016, from Luci)

Set (or starting) in the 1960s, we follow the story of Juliet Montague, a woman both married and not married living in a conservative Jewish community which holds conforming in the highest regard. Her husband left here a few years ago, but having a husband who’s disappears brings with it an embarrassing and awkward half-status and Juliet feels half-alive as a consequence. Accidentally falling in with a group of artists, she forges her own way in life – daring to be different and even going on a road trip in the US. But can she ever really escape her origins? She remains slightly outside the riotous 60s life, allowing us to observe it from the outside and the inside, and her community, where she still returns to lay her head, sums her up thus: “She was polite but there was pertness in her gaze”.

This was a good read, but I felt that the author was maybe slightly too keen on her subject – unsurprisingly, if you look at the note about her inspiration for her book – she never really comes wholly alive for me, perhaps because she’s a representative cipher and nothing is really allowed to be negative about her. I also felt it suffered a bit in the latter stages from rushing to update us on all the characters. The different tracks of her children’s lives are interesting, as is her daughter’s rebellion in the only way she can find to shock her mother. And I do like the idea of all the portraits of this fairly ordinary woman lining her stairs. Another point in its favour is that it didn’t end as I started to fear it would.

At the meetup today. If not taken, it will go on the bookshelf.

Welcome to BookCrossing. Thanks for taking the time to visit the site. Please make a journal entry to let me know that you have found this book, you may do this anonymously or you may join. There is no charge to join this site, if you are like myself from time to time you may donate to help support Bookcrossing; but it is not mandatory.

If you are new to BookCrossing and choose to join, please indicate that you were referred by LyzzyBee. Membership is free and your name and e-mail address is not shared with anyone else and it will never be sold. BookCrossing is a world-wide group of people who love books and wish to share them with others.

Please enjoy this book, if it is not your genre pass it along to someone else or wild release it. In this way we promote literacy and at the same time we can watch our book continue on its journey.

I look forward to hearing what you thought of the book when you've read it, and to seeing what happens to it next!

Picked up from meetup.