Reviews for A Gracious Plenty: A Novel

The average rating for A Gracious Plenty: A Novel based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-05 00:00:00 John Goodroe I wrote a review for this book when I finished it last week, but it seems to have disappeared. I won't try to reconstruct it from my Covid/aged/winter weary brain, but I will say that I loved this book set in a graveyard. Finch Nobles is the owner/caretaker of the graveyard. She was badly burned and disfigured as a small child and as a result walled herself away from her community and made friends with the dead spirits that surrounded her. This novel tells us how she returned to the real people of her small town, with a little help from a lot of others, dead and alive, but mostly her own feisty self, once she realized that everyone is lonely in their own way.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-31 00:00:00 Anthony Gould Your truth may not look like mine, but that is not what matters. What matters is this. You can look at a scar and see hurt or you can look at a scar and see healing. Try to understand. A unique and one of a kind story, A Gracious Plenty packs a punch in a very short book. Sheri Reynolds’ prose is succinct and concise allowing her to cover a lot of story in a brief manner. I believe it worked beautifully. There are some really fascinating passages. I have been old all my life, my face like a piece of wood left out in snow and wind. Finch Nobles becomes the caretaker of the cemetery where she lived all her life after her parents died. She was so isolated and lonely as a child and as an adult chose to remain elusive to those around her who feared her. At 4 years old, she was accidentally scalded on her face, neck and shoulder. Initially, people sympathized with the family helping how they could, but they suddenly turned away and left her feeling segregated from the world. She became scary to other children and then the butt of jokes of the teenagers who endlessly taunted her. Her only respite was the solitary life where she kept to herself to tend the cemetery land. I tend this land. This land and the things that grow here are the only family I have left. The ones without scars, they kept their secrets, hid their losses, lied in ways that only the living world does. Finch has a very rare and uncommon connection with the Dead that “live” in the cemetery. She figures out that she can actually talk and interact with them. The Dead bring a magical realism aspect to this story that was, in all honesty, a bit weird for me. I don’t usually want to suspend my disbelief in order to enjoy a story. I have spent some time going over the parts that I had trouble with. I have gone back to reread sections at the beginning that will help to explain the purpose of the Dead in this story. The Dead play a role in showing Finch about sorrows and regrets. They actually help her to realize that friendship is possible even after the outcast life that she has lived. The idea of the person and the heart of the person — those are wholly different landscapes.