So, yesterday was the official kick-off of the Keep Portland Weird festival here in Paris, which meant that I had a reading/screening in the...
Continue »
I was pulled into this book because it won the Bellweather Prize for first time fiction with a social bent. Though I was not thrilled with Mudbound, another Bellweather Prize winner, I continued to have high hopes for this prize. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is better than Mudbound, its writing is more mature, it had less predicable characters and outcomes, and its voice was far more unique. But like Mudbound, it failed to serve up a satisfying end. (Other similarities to Mudbound; both are about black white relations, both deal with a relationship between a black man and his European lover/wife.) The Girl Who Fell From the sky tells the story from a more unique perspective - a mixed race child who has survived a brutal act by her mother, and it is told with a very unique voice, which ultimately is the books strongest aspect. This voice makes its characters believable, even though they are not fully flushed out. The weakness of the book is its ending, which feels rushed and weak, and asks readers to suspend their belief a bit too far.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
Don't Miss
Customer Comments
ireadalot has commented on (1) product.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow
ireadalot, March 25, 2010
I was pulled into this book because it won the Bellweather Prize for first time fiction with a social bent. Though I was not thrilled with Mudbound, another Bellweather Prize winner, I continued to have high hopes for this prize. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is better than Mudbound, its writing is more mature, it had less predicable characters and outcomes, and its voice was far more unique. But like Mudbound, it failed to serve up a satisfying end. (Other similarities to Mudbound; both are about black white relations, both deal with a relationship between a black man and his European lover/wife.) The Girl Who Fell From the sky tells the story from a more unique perspective - a mixed race child who has survived a brutal act by her mother, and it is told with a very unique voice, which ultimately is the books strongest aspect. This voice makes its characters believable, even though they are not fully flushed out. The weakness of the book is its ending, which feels rushed and weak, and asks readers to suspend their belief a bit too far.(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)