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There are currently 19 member reviews
for How Far Is the Ocean from Here
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Kathy (Danbury CT)
How Far Is The Ocean From Here
Amy Shearn writes beautifully at times, however her sentences tend to be wordy. I often found myself lost midway through a sentence and had to back track to the beginning. As a result, I found this book very slow-going and never felt a connection to the characters or the story line. The ending was over-the-top in a way that I really dislike. Just when you think the story will resolve itself, the author throws in one more major crisis, then leaves the reader to guess what exactly happened between the end of chapter nine and the beginning of chapter ten.
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Michelle (Orlando FL)
Quirky cast....
Amy Shearn has a knack for description. As I read How Far is the Ocean from Here, I could feel the heat coming off the desert pavement and could easily visualize the quirky cast. However, as much as I wanted to embrace the characters, I couldn’t find any reason to particularly like them. Susannah’s choices seemed selfish, and I never really found it in me to root for her. Despite my neutral opinion of the characters, the faster pace of the latter half of the book compelled me to continue reading.
Even though Shearn's way with words is engaging, I never felt the emotional connection to the characters that I crave in books. Therefore, I can only give the novel 3 stars.
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Barbara (West Valley City UT)
How Far is the Ocean from Here
I thought the book was good. A little hard to follow at times. The ending was disappointing. The Author seemed to be in a hurry to finish the book.
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Jinny (Fremont CA)
What were you thinking?
I would recommend watching out for future works by this author, but I can only halfheartedly recommend this book.
The author's use of language is poetic and compelling, especially regarding a sense of place. However, I never really felt like we got to know the runaway surrogate mother, Susannah, even though we tagged along with her halfway across the country. The tension of wondering what she was thinking kept me from losing myself in her misadventures.
I also had a sense that, as John Irving sometimes does, the author tried to pack too many quirky characters into one place. I will still watch for Amy Shearn's next work.
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Linda (Palo Alto CA)
Too Old For This Book
Although the concept of surrogate motherhood is intriguing, this book is not compelling for me. There is no character in the book with whom I can identify. It seems every character is intentionally quirky, making the book unbalanced. There is no normal from which to play..
I'd call this a 'kitchen sink' book. Every simile, metaphor, descriptive phrase that caught Shearn's attention seems to be in included in this book. There could be several books among the ideas in this one book. One overriding theme is isolation.
Watch for this author. She has potential As she matures, so will her writing. Perhaps I'm too old for this book!
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