And the way it ended was over the top, cheesy. So much build up leading to their relationship and then the sex scene was chaste enough to fit in a Stephenie Meyer book. She wasn't particularly likeable (and so unprofessional, I might add!). For goodness' sakes!!! A very poor shrimping boat family has a Bengal tiger in their barn?įinally, the love story between Tom and Lowenstein did nothing for me. I felt like I was watching a terrible 1980s movie most of the time, with a showy, cinematic predictability.Īnd, believability went out the window with the TIGER. 'Are you enjoying this Tom?' 'Lowenstein, I really am not.' 'Oh, Tom, Tom, but why not?' 'I wish I knew, Lowenstein.' 'TOM!' 'Lowenstein!!!!' Once I noticed it, it was impossible not to notice it, and cringe. I found the dialogue to be horrid - characters constantly used each other's names in almost every line of dialogue. Once I started noticing the weirdness, I just couldn't stop. And so on, and so forth, and I could come up with many more examples. This is a book in which sisters kiss their brothers on the lips, where a brother carries his sister 'like a bride', where a mother tells a son if she was younger she'd 'have a go' at him, where a father chases 'lewdly' after his daughter after she shows him her budding breasts. I also found a very weird, incestuous tone cropped up dozens of times throughout the book. The aftertaste held like a chord on my tongue my mouth felt like a field of flowers. I tasted the wine and it was so robust and appealing that I could feel my mouth singing with pleasure when I brought the glass from my lips. The funeral parlour smelled like dead flowers and unanswered prayers. He was tall and thin and had a complexion like goat cheese left on the table too long. My first problem is that I found it incredibly sentimental, with prose as purple as can be. If you love this book, please just laugh and disregard my review and keep on loving it. I am bewildered how I received this book so off the mark from legions of other readers. However, I was fully expecting to love and revel in this big, romantic, Southern family epic. This book was at a disadvantage from the beginning, because the spectres of Babs and Nick haunted me continuously from the horrendous movie adaptation.

I'm wearing my softest, fuzziest slippers while writing this review - treading as lightly as I possibly can - realising that I'm on holy ground here, discussing a much beloved book among many of my very dear and respected Goodreads friends.

The river is wide pat conroy