The Worst Thing I've Done: A Novel Book

I wanted very much to like this book. I loved the main character Annie and her friend Jake, and Annie's sister Opal. However, I could not relate to the characters in any way - and I should have, because there were a lot of personal similarities - and I found the premise to be unbelievable, perhaps uncomfortable. Mason, Annie's husband, was a very disturbing character who kills himself essentially to make Annie and Jake feel as bad as he does. As the story goes on it becomes clear that he has always been the center of this friendship and makes it very disfunctional. Wading through the relationship, as a reader, became torturous and I didn't understand why Annie and Jake hadn't dumped him back in preK and created a healthy, two-person lifelong relationship.

There is a strong anti-war, anti-Bush subtext in this novel, and while I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, it just didn't work here. I am more forgiving than other reviewers in that I saw parallels that could have made it work, but Hegi didn't pull it off. It often came out of nowhere, and the tone of the writing and the personalities of the characters seemed to change. It felt thrown in as an afterthought and seemed clumsy and foolish.

Hegi's Stones is one of my favorite books, so when I saw this work and was immediately pulled in by the title, I expected a lot. Unfortunately, this is the sort of book that I will not even be able to remember reading in a few months. It is completely forgettable.