Reviews for The Christmas Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Series #8)

The average rating for The Christmas Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Series #8) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-04-04 00:00:00 Justin Henderson I respect that this book is well-written, and I like that Chiaverini really made me care about her characters. That said, it was a huge disappoinment. The plot is almost non-existent, which is generally fine for character-driven texts, but I'm not really sure what Chiaverini was trying to accomplish with this. It starts strongly enough, but it sort of train wrecks into nowhere. The main character is an old lady who, at Christmas, remembers the joys of her past and the now-dead family members that she has lost. Some deaths were inescapable tragedies (WWII, for example), but in other cases, she has caused the problems. She has made the decision to avoid her family for fifty years of self-imposed estrangement. The protagonist has remained bitter because of a decades-old grievance (albeit a significant one) and has chosen not to speak to her family. Of course, now that everyone that she has loved is dead, she deeply regrets her decisions. It's too little, too late. The whole book is a remembrance of one sorrow after another, and Sylvia is powerless to change anything now. That doesn't stop Chiaverini from trying to make this a story about redemption. She tacks on a thin ending that seems like an attempt to be uplifting. It isn't. This book is depressing as all get-out, nothing happens at all, and in the end, the main character's epiphany and newfound peace (because she has come to terms with her past) is sloppy and forced. I don't know why she wrote it this way. Was she trying for an epic tragedy and then lost her nerve? Was she trying for something uplifting, but ran out time to put effort into the end? Was she trying to cater to certain expectations? I'll never know. I'll also never re-read this. This book is for you if you like reveling in someone else's suffering. Or if you happen to prefer stories where 97% of the text shows, with remarkable clarity, how devastating someone's life can be, only for the last few pages to throw out a casual remark about how she's managed to find peace. In any writing class, students learn to show, not tell. Chiaverini's unbalanced text "shows" pain very well - and the first three-quarters of the book are remarkably well written - but features one of the poorest excuses for an ending that I've ever seen. A cheap, tacked-on cop-out that not only fails to be literary on its own terms, the ending of this book is an insult to its readers' intelligence. I hate to blast this book completely - particularly since so much of it is remarkably well-done - but as whole, it was a crushing disappointment. Seriously, people are depressed enough during the holidays. You don't have to endure the Christmas season AND read this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-12-07 00:00:00 Mr.cheramy Cheramy.eric A really nice Christmas read. Follows family through their dreams, sorrows and trials of life. A Christmas quilt plays a part in the story but only in a way to tie the stories together.