Reviews for The happy room

The average rating for The happy room based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-21 00:00:00 Kathleen A Srofe This novel explores the adult feelings & experiences of a set of siblings who grew up in a missionary family in Africa. Of course I can identify with some of what they go through (fortunately not the boarding school part of it!), & I'm glad I read the book--in one long sitting last night. I also appreciate the novel's focus on sibling bonds, which are hugely important in my family too--they are generally given short shrift in novels. As literature, this work isn't hugely successful; it's not subtle or poetic. But it's worth reading for those who need to think again about their experiences growing up in a Family With a Mission & what effects those experiences might have had on their adult choices.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-24 00:00:00 Michiel Van Der Biest Palmer's story of three grown missionary kids confronting their past and their parents is at its best when telling their childhood stories of Africa and the missionary subculture in which they were raised. The story has trouble in the narrative present, in America, as the same children struggle with finding their own places in the world. Perhaps the story is not long enough to deal with this amount of complexity -- or perhaps we are not meeting the characters at the right point in their lives. Though the ending is not tidy, it does come cross as though the characters themselves believe that their problems, and their respective solutions, are simpler than they are. When reading this book, I found myself comparing it to The Last Year of the War, another work of fiction which describes the evangelical Christian subculture with more particular detail and depth. Despite its flaws, though, this book's inside view of the missionary subculture is more accurate than the one given in, for example, The Poisonwood Bible. As a missionary kid myself, I know and recognize people like those in The Happy Room; I don't recognize the ones in Kingsolver's book, whom I suspect represent an outsider's projections.