Hillary JordanRezensionen

A couple of dozen erotic vignettes by leading contemporary authors. I think the overall quality was mediocre but there were a few really well written ones: History Lesson, En Suite, Love Doll, What The Hands Remember, maybe a couple of others. Recommend checking the first page of each to see what grabs you as reading cover to cover will leave you disappointed.

Excellent writing, excellent story, complex characters and storyline.

I wanted so badly to LOVE this book. I wanted it to take up residence on my "favorites" shelf. The subject matter of this book, I just knew, as soon as I saw it, this was right up my alley. I promptly put it on my wish list over at barnes and noble, high priority, even. When I saw that the nookbook had one day dropped in price to $3.99 from $14 , I got that tingly feeling that only getting a much-wanted book at a bargain price can give.

The story started okay, explaining who the character was, her predicament and the hows and whys of how she got there. After that, the story pretty much dropped off and it just felt like it was all over the place and NOTHING was resolved. What happened to her sister and Cole? What happened to the people that ran the home she spent those six weeks at? There was mention that the Novembrists might do something to them, but nothing ever happened. Her situation with Aidan, I felt there was no resolution there either. I was sorely disappointed with the story and felt like the author just hurried up and finished. It's almost as if Hillary Jordan got tired of writing and said "screw it, I'm done, let's wrap it up and put a bow on it." I give the book three stars because the idea behind the book is a good one and I did enjoy reading about that. This is just another one of those books that I feel the author could've done so much more with.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Jordan-carlate/428948

Wonderful new talent. Compelling writing. Read this!

June 2013: Even better the second time around.

Incredibly moving and well told. Somehow it manages to be both absolutely devastating but also inspiring. Not only do I want to work towards a better future for all people, I have to remember that there is just so much hurt from the past that must be felt and acknowledged so that it can hopefully one day be healed.

Second half is better than the first half, which reminded me of a very tame version of [b:Half-broke Horses|6366437|Half Broke Horses|Jeannette Walls|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348507420s/6366437.jpg|6553801]. (Very tame version.) However, I still felt it was bits of many other books I've read in the past; I can't say it told me a whole lot I hadn't read before. Perhaps the role of African-Americans in WWII, but that's about it. Florence was my favourite character, but she did not get enough "air time." In general, characters were flat or typical; nothing surprising.
But why the tongue?

I could barely finish this. The first half of the book is terrifying in its take on a possible future where fascism based on right-wing religion gains not only legitimacy, but political and governmental agency. That's not the church that Jesus founded and I have loved. The latter half of the book loses its way, just as the protagonist seems to find hers. Coincidences and stupid decisions abound and lead to an obvious and unsatisfying ending.

A modern re-imagining of The Scarlet Letter, in which people who are convicted of crimes have their skin modified to be tinted a color that correlates to the kind of crime they committed. For Hannah, who was caught just after having an abortion, it means her skin is red, the color for murder. She refuses to name the father, who is a famous evangelist and recent appointee to a religious post in the federal government, and she must navigate a society that is completely hostile to her all while struggling to with the notion that her conservative Christian upbringing may not have been an accurate outlook on the world.

A great tribute to Hawthorne while also being a bit terrifying for how close to the current state of things it gets. Excellently strong, feminist ending as well. Recommended.

This book was just okay. Some of the narrators were great, and others I did not like. Some of the stories were great, and others were not. What I did enjoy about the book was that I could take breaks when listening to it, and I wouldn't have to worry about remembering any key details since it's a collection of individual short stories. The book definitely gave me a greater appreciation for short story collections.

This was our summer reading book the summer before freshman year in 2010 and I'm pretty sure I was one of five people who actually read it. I enjoyed it!

This was SO good. I couldn't really put it down or slow down or anything.

If this was a television show, they would say it was an ensemble cast. The story is mostly set on a farm, and you can feel how hard life was for a farm family. The farm has tenant farmers, and the major plot deals with the relationships between the white farm family and the black tenant family . . .but there's many more layers to the tale, and it's just really a terrific, very well paced and well told story.

Almost everyone takes a turn at narration, and I loved how each character showed the story from their own (sometimes flawed) point of view. I loved how the characters were revealed, and how they were imperfect. The book has twists and unexpected moments and an overarching theme. The author really draws a picture, and you can relate to each character, even when you don't agree with what they are doing.

The only flaw I found was the character of Pappy. He's just totally putrid and horrible . . .with really no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. He's a little too villainous to seem real to me, but on the flip side, he was a great foil for the other characters.

WOW it was NOT a good idea to read this right after Kennedy announced his retirement...

This is a lovely awful dystopian novel, and I appreciate that it stands alone and that it called into question faith and the various ways one can embrace it. I don't have any myself, but regardless, I enjoyed reading about Hannah's devotion changing.

Same issue as always though--there's never quite an easy solution to dystopian novels. Kinda like our world today.

Interesting concept but the results weren’t so great. Mostly didn’t appeal to me, although some of the stories were nicely done.

I found the book to be a page-turner and imaginative in some ways, but it also seemed juvenile and clumsy and unoriginal in other ways. A pretty good YA book I guess. People have compared it to Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" - I read that a long time ago, but I remember liking it a lot and I'm guessing it was a much better book. The other obvious influence is the Scarlet Letter, but I don't see exactly why it's so great to have a sort of sci-fi remake of the Scarlet Letter. But I do have to admit there was definitely some writing skill in the page-turniness of the book. I really wanted to see what would happen and I never seriously thought about bailing out on the book.

Scarlett letter meets a Handmaid's Tale plus lesbians. Derivative but compelling anyway.

In a word, "Wow" - that's what I keep saying... wow, wow, wow.

But for a really great review that explains the story, as well as why this a "must read", please read this review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/223415300

Debbie's review is spot-on, so read her review, then read the book...

Historical fiction set in the deep south in the 1940’s, this powerful and riveting novel weaves together the stories of six characters, three black and three white. Each character narrates his or her point of view on what is happening. I felt this method was extremely effective in developing the characters such that the reader can understand their motivations and actions, even while disagreeing with some of their choices. I could hear their dialogue, and it seemed very real. In short, the author did an excellent job of breathing life into her characters. She also did a great job of describing the Mississippi Delta area. I could almost feel the sludge of the mud forming as it rained.

It is a story of adversity in many forms, such as the difficulties of a tenant farmer trying not to fall back into a life of debt, the hardships in a marriage when changing lifestyles from one of comfort to one of deprivation, and the obstacles faced by soldiers returning from WWII haunted and changed by what they have experienced. Major elements include racism, sexism, marriage, PTSD, and the impact of keeping silent. Although parts of this book are rather bleak, I think it tries to show that some of the seeds of change in race relations were sown in the mid-40’s after WWII when the soldiers returned, as evidenced by the friendship between the two returning soldiers of different races.

Recommended to readers interested in tragedies, difficult subject matter, and the history of racial injustice. Contains graphic violence, racial slurs, bigoted characters, and infidelity.

Mudbound is a story of two families, one black and one white, living in post World War II Mississippi and farming the same land, one as a landholder and the other as a tenant. Two of the characters, Jaime McAllen and Ronsel Jackson, are young men who have just returned from the war and who have experienced things that link them more to one another than to their own communities. But, a friendship between a white man and a black man is not just risky, it is forbidden, and there is a sense of impending doom that hangs over the novel as it progresses.

The picture we are given is a remarkably complete one, in that there is racism of varying degrees from friendship that conquers the barrier to absolute, Klan-style hatred, blind and unfeeling and dehumanizing. These characters are complex people with complicated feelings toward one another, and the hatred that possesses Pappy is not limited to people of another color. He is an evil man who mistreats his sons and misses no opportunity to make everyone around him unhappy. Laura and Florence attempt to bridge the gap and hold on to what is essentially human in one another, and they manage to do this primarily by recognizing the thing they have in common, motherhood.

It is my experience that few modern authors are able to give a fair depiction of the Jim Crow south. Either every character is the devil incarnate, looking for someone they can torture of lynch, or they are drawn like caricatures of real people, without true emotions or feelings. Hillary Jordan managed to treat all of her characters with the respect that they deserved. Life at this time was hard for anyone living in rural Mississippi and, while change was coming, it was coming slowly to this area and with much resistance. If you take away the racial barriers, who is a sick man like Pappy ever going to feel superior to? Mudbound is an unflinching look at the horrors that were virtually inseparable from the society itself and the price that was paid by those who were caught in the hardtack life of the Jim Crow South, and a read worth steeling yourself for.

This was an awesome book. Couldn't put it down.

Star and a half. Spoilers ahead. I was utterly absorbed in this when it first came out, and curious to read it again this year. It had been positively compared to "Handmaid's Tale," which I wasn't able to get ahold of at the time. Reading the first twenty pages of this, I understood it to be a society that had once again murdered or tortured into conversion its Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and other populations. I suspected that once again, Pagans and Wiccans had been hanged, drowned, pressed, or burned at the stake, and tortured beforehand. The reigning religion was coded as Evangelical Christianity, but other readers have also suggested a fundamentalist branch of Mormonism. I did -not- want to be in such a world, but I had to if I wanted to finish the book. It was on practically every page. The world-building was good. I hated Aiden both times, and on reread I believed him to be a serial cheater, that he's had sex with women from his congregation before. What a douchebag. Him and his behavior, his whining when he faced consequences, or more often, when the woman he seduced did. What a greedy, selfish man. And for some reason, readers are supposed to hate his wife. I couldn't. I empathized with her. There's a lot of sexism in this book, but it's presented as world-building. I didn't appreciate it, but I got why.

Hannah's mother was a terrible person and I wished her dad had been more proactive. I get why this was set up the way it was, though. Becca felt like a character that was there just so her husband could hit her and roar at her. He's--not really too complex an antagonist. While I hated him instantly and throughout the book, it also felt like he was one in a long line of people who I was supposed to despise. It felt like the only person I was supposed to like was Kayla, and that I was supposed to sympathize with Hannah. That happened, but this time I was definitely wondering why people were characterized in such broad strokes. I hated Hannah's mother and Cole, though.

I was not impressed with Hannah sleeping with Simone or the stereotypical lesbian subplot--it was a Big Lipped Alligator Moment (thanks to Nostalgic Woman for the term), and Hannah was really sanctimonious. Homosexuality isn't a rebellion! Stop treating it as such. She's so cheesy and melodramatic about it, too, after so much time pining for Aiden. I believed her yearning for Aiden more. She acts as though she's known Simone for years just because the other woman gave her an orgasm and had sex with her in a way she hadn't imagined. Other homophobia is blatant besides. A gay guy sells Hannah and Kayla into slavery so he can pay for a lavish house restoration, after arguably kidnapping them. The other gay person in this story is Simone, who has at best dub-con sex with Hannah. Dub-con because there's a power dynamic: she's responsible for Hannah's safety and should things go south, Simone has a lot less to lose. In the edition I was reading, two pages after they have sex, Hannah goes back to panting for and pining after Aiden, and rushes off to find him.
This is not only a common trope; it's common IRL. It leaves a lot of queer folk with heartache as they realize they were yet again a science experiment for a bored or sad straight person. Why the fuck was the Simone love scene added to the story!? It adds nothing and doesn't change the plot in anyway, and comes out of nowhere. Hannah quickly grows annoyed with Simone once she realizes Aiden still wants her. She contemplates killing this woman so she can get back with her boyfriend who's totes gonna leave his wife, folks. Simone reveals she's been raped, and there's more homophobic framing: an incredibly common question lesbian women can have when coming out is indeed, "Am I a lesbian because I was raped?" I just--(shakes head)

A lot of this was really repetitive: Cole's a monster and Hannah's the only one who can stand up to him, thinking of Aiden, pining for Aiden, remembering sex with Aiden, being moved around by people who help Chromes but not always. I felt worse for Kayla both times reading this than I did for Hannah, although I was more detached from everyone. Hannah doesn't seem to learn anything throughout the novel. Lesbians are of course drooling over her, and female reverends only show up to help her. Both types of women also ultimately appear to only further her relationship with and examination of her Christian-coded god. She never really doubts her faith for more than a page or two. She's saved from every danger, and experiences the lightest forms of many hardships. I was glad to finish the book. I don't plan on reading it again.

Very powerful story

I loved the idea of this book, and expected so much more out of it than was actually there. I just kept wishing I was reading The Scarlet Letter or The Handmaid's Tale instead. It was incredibly preachy, and the obvious names like "Reverend Ponder" and "Reverend Easter" were too much. Gag. I truly wanted to love this one, but no such luck.

Very enjoyable read. I liked the controversial subject and the setting of a not-too-far-in-the future possbility in a dystopian society [our own]. Hillary should consider writing more fantasy-type novels! Some reviewers complained that it was preachy or against one religion or another; I disagree on both counts and thought she did a great job with a complex character who finally realizes that she can be right based on her own thoughts and values. It is a very timely piece of work as well, sadly, as we still can't figure out women's health care issues. If you enjoyed "Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood or anything by Sherri S. Tepper (my fav), then you would like this story.

Interesting! Not like "Mudbound" in any shape or form! I like the premise of a strict religious family whose daughter has become pregnant and then terminated the pregnancy and is now a different color to show public what she has done.... I am deeply intrigued!

If you liked "The Help" you would probably enjoy this book. I took it from a goodreads friend's recommendation and she was spot on! It goes into so much more detail and the characters are very full, even the ones who don't go deeper (the Jewish doctor, the "man-ish" store owner). Fantastic writing, I can't believe this is her first book. The setting is Mississippi post WWII, which is very interesting.

Makes me think of the book group I am in, "Banned Books" and their recent discussion of Mark Twain's use of the n-word. If anyone is not reading Mark Twain's stuff because of a word that was used in our history (and currently), then this book is not for you. I think the book (and any of Twain's literature) would be sorely lacking if this (ugly) word wasn't in it. It would be a false representation of the time.

Highly, highly recommend this book.