Stephanie KallosRezensionen

I started to like this book when Margaret Hughes went home and asked her possessions if she could take on a boarder. I liked it even more when Mrs. K, a wonderfully meddling, caring, Jewish, bowling, red-headed old lady was introduced. Though the book does take some unlikely turns, and it could probably have been a bit shorter, it was a really enjoyable read. Tenderly written, full of history, character-driven, and intelligent.

The audiobook narrator was amazing. Not only did she create unique voices for all the main characters, she also sang and performed the following accents: Irish, British, Southern, French, and Yiddish. Wow.

This one was a strange one for me because I kept vacillating between whether I liked it or didn't like it. I would read a few chapters and think I could keep going, but then hit a few more which made me nearly not finish.

I enjoyed the writing style and loved the imagery. I liked the strange characters. Loved the dream sequences. There was some suspense going on that kept me interested.

But ... Really thought one of the main characters was a huge baby and she grated on me. I don't appreciate sex scenes or that many F words. There were a few characters introduced who felt significant upon initial meeting, then disappeared almost the entire book. The ending felt really rushed and so very cliche. I didn't feel very connected to the characters, any of them. Some of the scenarios seemed sort of ridiculous. And what the heck is that story line which resulted in August?! Makes no sense.

As you can see, more negative than positive. So no need to own it and likely won't recommend.

Overall, this book was interesting, but in some places it was confusing and slow. Eventually it circled back and filled in the gaps, answering the questions I had. The concept was unique. I know other books have been written about strangers changing each other, but this book did it in a new way. I don't think I saw what was going to happen just by reading the description of the book. The characters were well developed, although there were many, and sometimes I had to take a second to remember who was who. I wasn't especially happy with the ending, as it seemed kind of abrupt. Basically all the plot lines had concluded, yet it seemed like there should have been more...I'm not sure how to explain that, exactly.

I would recommend this book to anyone that likes good fiction, but doesn't want to read something supernatural or fantasy. This is a good, general fiction novel that has a feel-good story.

3.5 stars. I've read many reviews that call this book "charming." OK - I'll buy that, mostly. It's also odd, quirky, sweet at times, terribly unbelievable. I enjoyed the notion that opening up our lives and our very brokenness to other people can enrich and expand our lives in ways we never expected.

Intriguing. All of the characters were "broken" in some way. Margaret lives alone with a collection of valuable antiques for company. She places an ad and takes in Wanda as her first boarder. The back story of the antiques is that they were stolen by the Nazis and Margaret's father knowingly bought them. Margaret traced and returned what she could, but she can't find the owner's of the rest. One drunk day, Wanda and Margaret smash Margaret's wedding china to smithereens, which launches Wanda's new career - she has a gift for putting the pieces into interpretive mosaics. Margaret adds more boarders, much to her ex-husband's dismay, now forming her surrogate family out of the broken people she befriends.

Zev, you have tried to read this three times. Please stop, even if you're reading while waiting for another book to come in. Each time, you consider it too weird. This time, you got fifty pages into it and were super creeped out. The stranger who recommended it to you was trying to continue the flow of a nice conversation. You read spoilers tonight for the novel, anyway, and ooh there's -reasons- there's so many allusions to Christianity, specifically Catholicism, in this. The reasons are sinister. Find and read another book, please.

Hope Jones, married to a physician, battling a chronic disease, and living in rural Nebraska with three children, is one day tragically swept away by a tornado and never seen again. Many years later, when their father also dies somewhat tragically by a weather event, her grown children are still struggling to make sense of their lives.

This is a long novel that seemed to have a lot of potential. It's not every day you come across a book about someone being swept away by a tornado. The fact that Hope's disappearance/death was referred to numerous times in the story not by either of these terms, but instead as 'When Hope "went up"' seemed especially endearing. The story is told from varied points of view, not only from each of her children, but from Hope herself in the form of diary entries, a few times by a few extraneous characters, and even from the souls (?) of those in the community who had previously died. And the timelines switch back and forth between Hope's earlier married years, the years when her health began to decline, and the present day of her children. All three of Hope's children seem to be struggling in some way or another, but I didn't really feel as though this had anything to do directly with the fact that they'd lost their mother at a younger age. There were times when the story became bogged down with excessive detail, as though the author were trying too hard with descriptive content. Though there were some quirky character traits with some of the characters, I never really felt a true connection with any of Hope's children. The town of Emlyn Springs was almost a character in itself, and I think maybe I most enjoyed that aspect of the story. I don't think this was a bad book, but I often wondered where the story was going and exactly what the author wanted the reader to come away with. It seemed like it had the potential to be more than it was.½

This was so interesting as it was written in 2 hour increments by so many authors who wrote in a public setting one after the other. I wanted to write a chapter, too. More of a read for how a book could be a collective writing and for the experience.

This book was a pretty easy read, but there were some strange aspects to it -- halucinations of relatives, breaking priceless china to memorialize victims of the Nazis who had stolen it, a housefull of un-related characters. But despite all that I actually liked this book -- the ending doesn't leave you with any big surprises though.

This novel is interestingly enough about many characters that are “broken”. Particularly there is the sick and elderly Margaret Hughes who has conversations with her vast antique china collection. Then there is the young and lost Wanda Schultz who has spent many years surviving, first with relatives and then on her own, after her parents abandoned her. These two both have secrets and worries that they share with no one. When Margaret decides to offer a room for rent in her large mansion, Wanda answers the ad. The unlikely pair begins forming a friendship that frees both of them, and in doing so; the two find an unusual way to make broken for you truly a relevant title for the book.

I sympathized with the characters and was very happy when they found one anther. And I enjoyed how the theme came together. However, it was very easy to predict how everything might fall into place to bring the book and the reader to a satisfying conclusion. In spite of that, I would recommend the book as an above average read.

So wanted to like this!

Much better than Sing Then Home, but it just did not hold me. Started off really well, great characters, mild hints to draw you in, but then it relied way too much on coincidence, or the "It's A Small World" theory. Fine for a beach or travel book, maybe that is why my library copy was full of SAND!!!

The last 100 pages were okay, the rest was annoying, boring, repetitious, and waaaaay to long. The attempts to add magic to the story were leaden, the characters were whiny and unlikeable and worst of all, they were stereotypically damaged. This would have made an excellent short story!

36 authors, 1 story

The thing about Stephanie Kallos' writing is that you start a story and you think, "Get to the point." She gives you a lot of background and a lot of detail and just when you think you might have had enough...you find yourself totally wrapped up in her narrative. I cared about the characters in the novel so much by the end that I wanted to keep following their lives. Difficult situations, not always dealt with gracefully, that that's life with real people. Ambivalence and ambiguity are the hardest things to master in life, and Kallos gives you that struggle in deft prose. I'm a real fan. But each time I start one of her books, I read for a while and think, "Get to the point" and whoosh! I'm totally involved.

Charles Marlow is an English teacher at a private high school. His life, therefore, is filled with language and words. However, all the language in the world cannot help him communicate with his son, Cody, who is autistic. Cody's diagnosis took a toll on his marriage and now Charles finds himself alone in the house -- all his kids are out of the house, his marriage has ended -- and he's wrestling with his demons.

I absolutely loved Kallos' "Broken For You," so I was extremely excited to pick up her latest novel. It definitely took some time for this one to grow on me. The book got off to a slow start and Charles is not the most likable of characters. Still, once I got into the plot, it's a lovely tale and extremely moving. Kallos does an amazing job of tying together her ancillary characters into a beautiful way--not one that's trite, per se, but a manner that seems fitting for each.

Overall, the book is a touching tribute to language, in many forms, and to art, as well. It's also a very insightful look at autism and the toll it can take on a family, but also some of the gifts that those termed as "disabled" by the general public can give to us. Definitely worth reading - just be patient.

Really enjoyed this book. The more I read it, the more it drew me in.

Margaret Hughes, a 75-year-old long-time divorcee, has just been told by her doctor that she has a brain tumor and should immediately begin treatments to prolong her life. Instead Margaret decides to fill her enormous Seattle mansion with a 'family' consisting of quirky strangers each one stranger than the next. The first boarder is Wanda, a young woman from Chicago who was uncerimoniously dumped by her jazz-loving boyfriend after he told her he needed 'space' which she took to mean that she should divest herself of all of her wordly goods so that she could move in with him without cluttering his apartment with her things. (What????) Wanda then proceeds to stalk him to Seattle where she actually impersonates a police detective visiting music stores that sell rare jazz albums looking for her ex. Margaret and Wanda are joined by Gus, an 80-year-old hotel valet who strikes up a romance with Margaret, Susan, a nurse, Bruce, a caterer, and Troy, a handsome young man who falls for Wanda and can seemingly do any kind of repair, restoration, or construction ever needed.

Every room in Margaret's home is filled with valuable china and porcelain figurines, dinnerware, tea sets, vases, etc. Margaret has conversed with her collection for years but now that she has family what better way to treat her treasures than to start breaking them. (What????) Wanda turns out to be an accomplished mosaicist so all of those broken pieces are put to good use, the whole quirky household pitches in to help and they become fabulously famous. The only saving grace of this book for me was the secret of where Margaret's collection came from originally and that was a truly interesting section of the story.

Meanwhile, Wanda's long-lost father M.J., who left Wanda when she was a child to search for his kooky wife who had abandoned them both, is also living in Seattle working in a bowling alley and has befriended a nice Jewish lady and her 3-legged deaf cat. M.J. has not bothered to contact his daughter in the 20 some odd years since he left but their paths cross several times in Seattle without either of them realizing it. The inevitable reunion can't be too far away.

I'm not sure what to think about this book except that I really didn't like it. I enjoy quirky characters but this group is beyond strange and some of them, Wanda especially, weren't even likeable. The history of the figurines was touching but I had a problem with the continued breakage after the characters knew the truth.

Sappy, weepy, too convenient ending. Yuck!

Sappy, weepy, too convenient ending. Yuck!

Do you remember watching the movie The Sixth Sense? And when, at the end, you realized that the boy, Cole, had been seeing dead people all along, it changed your experience of the entire movie? (At least that's how it was for me.) I didn't see the twist coming at all, and I loved it.

In Language Arts, we meet Cody and his family. Cody was a happy little boy. He was developing normally until he started to lose language. His parents, Charles and Alison, took him to specialist after specialist to find out what happened and to try to help him get better.

Cody doesn't get better. Shortly after the birth of Cody's sister, Emmy, Charles and Alison's marriage deteriorates. As Cody gets older, and ages out of the system that can provide care for him, Charles and Alison have to work together to find a suitable living situation for him.

We see everything as Charles and Emmy experience this. Kallos weaves together this family's struggle, including back story around Charles, with Charles as a child befriending an autistic classmate, language arts, and, interestingly, Palmer handwriting. Language Arts felt a little melancholy, heavy with this family's desperation to try to help Cody as well as deal with deteriorating relationships.

I was engaged in the story as it was, and then a Sixth Sense kind of twist came at the end that made me go back and reread passages of the book to see how she did it. SO well done!½

Fascinating concept, but spoiled for me by too many implausible coincidences.

Wonderful, wonderful story but it takes a bit of patience. The story unravels at a slow pace and in small increments. It is mainly the story of Charlie Marlow, now a middle aged divorced man, who is the father of Cory, who was normal until he was three and than lost all powers of speech. He is also the father of Emmy to whom he is always writing letters. The book is narrated by a few people but mostly Charlie and it jumps around from his youth, learning the Palmer method of writing with its creative loops, to Cory's birth and diagnosis, to the present day when he is a Language Arts teacher and somewhat at loose ends.

At the heart of the story is the importance of language and the many different ways we have of communicating. Postcards, to letter writing, to the methods used when one is not capable of speech. Cory and the way he has of communicating his needs or wants, and at last a Nun, who now has Alzheimers and often lives in the past.Her story is wonderful and sad, integral to the storyline.

An event at the end was a shocker to me and yes I was a bit teary eyed. The cover is designed brilliantly and the meaning is found within the story. Wonderful writing, and I loved the way the author tied everything together at the end. Some great characters it is hard not to lose your heart to and I embraced them fully. Amazing story.

ARC from publisher.

“When my brother Cody was about two years old and for reasons our baffled parents were never able to fathom, the word God entered his vocabulary.”

Because I loved the authors novels Broken for You and Sing Them Home, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. It grabbed me from the first sentence and kept holding on until the last page.

Ms. Kallos writes about ordinary people who are perhaps not quite as ordinary as one would hope, but quite beautiful in their own ways. Because I don't like to know too much of a story before I begin reading a book and because I chose this one based on the author alone, I did not know how Cody and his not-quite-normality was such a large part of the book, but I appreciated it.

Part is written in third person with a lesser amount in first person by daughter Emily. Charles, a student who was revered by his teacher for his aptitude for the Palmer Method of handwriting, now has a family and writes frequently to his daughter. The letters are all the more poignant for what we learn of Emily later in the book.

Yes, the book does move slowly. Yes, the subject has been done and overdone. And I still absolutely loved this novel. It is not a “shake you by the neck until your teeth rattle” kind of story. It is gentler and as much about the characters as it is about the situations in which they find themselves. It is about relationships, trying to do the right thing even if you came from a situation that was all wrong. The art of handwriting, the endless loops, and then the Language Arts, are thematic and help tie all together. There are references to times that I remember too well, and this book and its characters caused me both sympathy and empathy.

This book makes me want to see what this author comes up with next. I doubt that I will be disappointed.

I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review.

I greatly enjoyed this book. Hard to believe it is a first novel. The metaphor of the chipped and cracked porcelain being rendered into completed works of mosaic art may not be a new concept, but it is done quite well here. I will definitely read more by this author.