Ellen BakerRezensionen

A young girl is sold to the circus just before the Depression and she becomes a bareback rider. She has losses, good times bad times with some interesting issues. The backwards and forwards timeline can be a bit annoying but the book felt real.

Make no mistake, Baker’s engaging novel takes some effort to truly appreciate. This tale of long-simmering family secrets performs many somersaults from one era to another and weaves together multiple POVs. Readers who prefer more linear storylines might suffer a minor bout of literary whiplash. That being said, a book that skillfully blends life in a circus, young love and DNA explorations into a twist-filled story that’s partially set in the Great Depression ultimately rewards readers. Could I have occasionally used a “cheat sheet” that reminded me who was who in this complex saga? You bet. Were there a few subplots that could have been trimmed? Absolutely. But in the end, this multi-generational story treats readers to unique insights about resiliency, friendship, family bonds and the true meaning of personal identity.

*well-written book with a captivating storyline
*easy to read and kept my interest from cover to cover
*great character development
*highly recommend

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker is a highly recommended family drama concerning families, adoption, and ancestry. The narrative begins in 1924 and ends with a climatic conclusion in 2015.

At age four Cecily Larson is dropped off at an orphanage by her mother in 1924. Her mother promises to return within a year, but she doesn't which allows the orphanage to put Cecily up for adoption. When she is seven she is sold to a traveling circus to be trained as a trick bareback rider. She is renamed Jacqueline DuMonde and billed as the “little sister” to the star bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde.This life becomes her home and she eventually falls in love with a roustabout named Lucky.

In 2015, ninety-four-year-old Cecily is living in Minnesota by her daughter Liz, granddaughter Molly and great grandson Caden. Cecily is hospitalized after she fell and broke her hip. Cecily realizes that secrets she has been keeping need to be shared soon. Liz is keeping her own secret from everyone, as well as the fact that she and Molly tricked Cecily into taking DNA test in the hospital for Caden's biology project on DNA testing. At the same time in 2015 in Florida and North Carolina another mother, Clarissa, and her adult daughters, Kate and Lana, are wondering about their heritage and take a DNA test.

The novel is presented in three parts. The first part of the novel is very satisfying and compelling as it follows Cecily in the circus, later in 1946, and her family in 2015. Part two introduces Lucky and the other mother and daughters plot. It is this addition to the story where I lost much of my captivation with the The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson. Certainly most readers will sort out all the new characters, but it is the dueling story lines that became unwieldy making the narrative feel muddled in the middle of the novel. Some of the sub-plots could have been left out and the introduction of the second family could have been smoother.

The gem remains the chapters set in Cecily's past and everything that she experienced.

Obviously, readers will know something is going to tie all these people together. It is clear Cecily's hidden secrets will be revealed and readers will anticipate that the DNA tests will tell all. It is this one fact that will help many readers jump the hurdle once the secondary cast is introduced and all the new characters are sorted out. In the end story lines are tied up neatly and quickly. Thanks to Mariner Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via Edelweiss. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2024/02/the-hidden-life-of-cecily-larson.html

I did win a copy of this book, but it in no way impacts my review, other than there is a written one ... as I usually favor stars only. Thank you, Mariner Books for letting me read free.

I loved the character development of the book. Each character was a believable full-fledged human being, with human actions, flaws and emotions. The characters each reflected beauty and warts which real-life people have, not purely good or evil that many book characters represent. These human aspects created an engaging, complex, and emotional relationship between the characters in the book, and me the reader. When a book can take you on such an emotional journey that plays out in your head when away from the book, then you have found yourself a great read!

4.5 stars

I just read that Baker will have another book out in 2024---great news! She is quite a writer and this story was so involved with overlapping issues among the many characters.

When a young bride moves to a small Wisconsin town in the 1950s, she becomes obsessed with the vacant mansion that once belonged to the town's most prominent family.

Baker uses the character's fascination with the house to tell the story of its inhabitants from 1897, when another young bride arrived on the scene, moving through the generations as they grow up and deal with two world wars, the family's changing fortunes, and the restrictive view of women prevalent in the era.

Using quotes pulled from actual women's magazines, cookbooks, and marriage-advice manuals of the era, Baker paints a quaint and almost laughable picture of the advice being peddled to 50's women; yet a careful reading has to bring up the question of whether all that much has changed. Yes, women have made advances in legal equality and wage equality (sometimes in a two steps forward, one step backward pattern), but many still look outside themselves for approval or direction. Is today's young woman, struggling to advance her career, nurture her personal relationships, and rear her children in the effortless way presented by the media really any better off than the 1950s housewife who was instructed to always and only put her husband's wishes first? Is wanting a career but being told you can't have one any more stressful than being told you must have a career when you would prefer to take the Mommy Track?

Most of Baker's female characters manage to find a balance (though that balance is not the same for all of them, nor does it arrive at the same point in each one's life). Meanwhile, most of the men in the book seem to have a bit of difficulty keeping it in their pants. There's plenty of fence-jumping, unwise hookups, and rash decisions to complicate the already-Byzantine relationships set out over half a century.

It's an interesting read for all of that, even if this reader particularly wanted to smack a couple of the male characters upside the head, and occasionally became a bit impatient at the number of love-at-first-sight romances folded into the book's 500+ pages. (Hint: Some of them turn out better than others.)½

I'm amazed that I thought this story was somewhat familiar---only to find out that I read it when it first came out in 2007! I still loved it and really didn't want it to end.

Digital audiobook read by Christine Williams
1.5*

From the book jacket: Set in the conformist 1950s and reaching back to span two world wars, [this] is the story of a newlywed who falls in love with a grand abandoned house and begins to unravel dark secrets woven through the generations of a family.

My reactions
The novel begins with a prelude set in 1896, when a young married couple come to Pine Rapids, Wisconsin, then moves forward to 1950, as newlywed Dolly Magnuson struggles to fulfill her role as the perfect wife to Byron. She’s young, somewhat naïve, and eager to join the nearly closed society of this small town.

I was interested in Dolly’s storyline and was hoping for more insight into her maturation process. But Baker’s choices in the plot made me unsympathetic to this young woman. I found her easily swayed, overly romantic, and almost hopelessly immature. The additional “secret” behind the Michelson property, and the constant moving back in time to tell that family’s story, did nothing for me. It seemed like a melodramatic soap opera. It’s a pretty tangled web of intrigue and betrayal among a group of family members that … in my opinion … deserve one another. Okay … that was possibly too harsh as Anne and Elissa seem more victims than perpetrators, and Harry proves his mettle at the end.

Anyway .. I disliked the bunch of them and finished the book only because it satisfied a challenge.

Christine Williams did a fine job narrating the audiobook. She sets a good pace and her diction is clear enough to be understandable even at double speed. Too bad she didn’t have better material to work with.½

This book is very hot and cold for me.

I appreciate the historical fiction component of this book. It's interesting to hear about roles of particular groups--women, vets, daughters, moms. But I do find all the decade switching to be a little distracting and difficult to follow

I nearly gave up on Keeping the House very early because the reader on the CD version is SO irritating. She overdramatizes nearly every line. Nevertheless, I stuck with it because I have a fairly long commute and need long audiobooks.

Well, this one is unnecessarily long. The author really strings us along. She alternates between several time periods, and often tells the same scene in more than one section, but without really giving a significantly different viewpoint as such a multiplicity of perspectives should do in order to make that technique worthwhile. This book could have been at least a hundred pages shorter. Was she being paid by the word? At one point she actually writes (I paraphrase): "He got to the top of the stairs. He could take a 180 degree turn left or right, but he always turned right, because his office lay that way." Why even mention this?? Here's another one: "He closed her door, walked around the truck, opened his door, sat down and closed his door." What kind of time-wasting padding is that?

FINALLY, I got up to the climactic moment we've been strung along for, and it's such a melodramatic cliche! *spoiler alert* Why didn't the author mention Florence the southern secretary EARLIER, so we could have had a chance at putting two and two together and solving the mystery ourselves?? I wish I had been this woman's editor. There is some good stuff here, but excessively padded and missing the impact it could have had.

I thought this book was good. Once I was able to get into it I really enjoyed it. It moved at a good pace and kept you intrigued. I am going to try to read her other one, Keeping the House.

I really enjoyed this book because it gave perspective on the role of women in America from WWII forward. The life stories of members of a family, and that of an interested party, are nicely put together as part of the history of a house.

A neglected wife who is obsessed with renewing a house that doesn't belong to her.

A neglected wife who is obsessed with renewing a house that doesn't belong to her.

A neglected wife who is obsessed with renewing a house that doesn't belong to her.

Ok, now THIS is my favorite book of 2012. This is the one to beat. Loved every minute of this book.

An unusual book. Not completely predictable and yet in the end not surprising, either. It was beautiful loyaly to a point and then sad how they were all waiting on someone, someone that was not necessarily their happy ending. There's a danger in being so focused on finding the one thing that one thinks will be their ultimate happiness that they lose track of the happiness of the present. A good book.

I lked this more than I expected. Reading it for book club I was interested in the observations Baker made regarding marriage. How people often don't really know the person they marry. Their notion of who this person is more a product of their dreams rather than reality.
She uses the character Dolly and her facination with the Mansion on the hill to challenge the notion our materialistic values.
The marital crimes and misdemeanors commited by the matriach and patriarch of the family pose important questions. Are actions or attitudes more important. or equally important?
I would recommend it for a book club. Good for discusion.

I won this book from Goodreads, and I'm glad I did!! It was a really good book! I like that the book went back and forth between time periods! I thought it would be confusing at first, but the author did a good job tying everything together. Because it was written like this, it made me want to keep reading to fine out what happened next!

This is a book I'm hoping to review at my newest blog: http://thebookishdamereviews.blogspot.com in the coming month. A novel of women and the men they love in time of war...it's a story that draws me time after time.

Enjoyable novel partially set in Northern Wisconsin during WWII. Grace and her friends are riveters in the Superior shipyard. We learn of the women's hopes and heartbreaks as they work for the war effort. This look at four generations of women is well-written and certain to please fans of historical fiction and family drama.

Unhappy marriage times two; surprising solution times one.

Moving back and forth in time between 1897, the World Wars, and 1950, this is the story of Dolly striving to be the perfect housewife in 1950 while trying to discover the mysterious history of the Mickelson house that has captured her fascination. There were a couple of dull parts, but the characters were interesting, and the story kept me hooked. The bits of advice gleaned from the Ladies' Home Journal and other decades-old publications were a fantastic addition.

http://fingersandprose.blogspot.com/2010/06/keeping-house.html

so-so read ... probably wouldn't recommend it ... not much else to say.