The Love Children Book

I was disappointed by this book. While I expected the story to be some what predictable and it was-teenage girl becoming aware of the world, going to college only to drop out and join a commune followed by motherhood and eventual marriage/career- it was also uneven. The last chapter took the main character from age 25 (in 1980 or so) to the present day. This meant that the fates of the characters we spent 300 pages getting to know were summed up in just a sentence or two: she wrote a book, he opened a store etc. I have noticed that many authors seem to have difficulties ending a book, especially if it is about a person's life, they start off with lots of detail but then it sort of speeds up about 2/3 of the way through but this book took it to the extreme. We read a tremendous amount about a 10 year period in the woman's life but then had virtually no details on what happened after that. Perhaps it would have been better just to have had it end with her becoming a faux Alice Waters with plenty of life ahead of her than to try and sum up 30 years in just a few pages.

I also found the writing style to be almost expository. There were few detailed descriptions of anything-not the people, not the farm, not the weather, nothing. "Mom and I had shrimp and peas and rice for dinner that night." "She was old, white haired and wrinkled." It was difficult to form any sort of emotional attachment to a character and story than was so plainly written.

We never had to think or wonder about what Jess thought because she told us: "The kids grew, our house was comfortable, we loved our work, and we felt that was the most people could get from life. It was enough." Everything was spelled out for the reader, which discouraged the deeper thought about life that I think was the book's goal. Nearly every chapter left me wanting to tell Marilyn French to "show, don't tell!".

It is easy to want to like this book because of Marilyn French's earlier works but unfortunately, it falls flat.