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There are currently 14 member reviews
for The Northern Reach
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Linda H. (Georgetown, KY)
Family drama across the generations
I can almost see and feel Downeast Maine in person while reading The Northern Reach. I found myself drawn into the characters and their lives across generations. You are drawn to the long history of the small towns and the coastal life in Maine. Written in a timeline form and skipping between families made me eager to learn what happened next. Edith and Alice were my favorites, secrets and all. I look forward to Ms. Winslow's next publication and hope it shares more of her love of Downeast Maine and its unique people.
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Amy (Boulder City, NV)
A Genealogical Masterpiece
Beautifully written prose introducing the reader to several generations of families, inhabitants of a small town in Maine. The family trees at the beginning of each chapter were very helpful in keeping track of the characters and the time frames with the story bouncing back and forth between families and generations. The grim reality of life's hardships around the Northern Reach was illustrated perfectly. The characters were believable, multifaceted, and haunting in their attempts to survive the small town everyday life, and leaving this reader wanting to know more about key family members. This is a genealogical masterpiece.
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Colleen L. (Casco, ME)
A view of Maine
I chose to review this book because the setting was Maine. It basically is a story of an extended family living in fictional Wellbridge Maine. Since I live in the state, I was interested in how the author described it.
First the pros - (1) the author clearly has visited here or lived here at some point. His descriptions of down east Maine are on point and I felt like I knew a few small towns that could clearly be Wellbridge. I loved his descriptions. (2) The interactions between characters was interesting and I greatly appreciated the family trees that the author posted in the start of each story. Since there were a large number of characters, the Family tree was helpful. (3) I loved the cover. I don't normally comment on covers but I thought this one was especially well done. It drew me in.
Cons - (1) I felt like I was reading a sequence of short stories. Yes, the characters were related in some way but the stories were very short and I would loved to seen one or two of them expanded in more detail.
All in all, I enjoyed the book and it moved along quickly. The book reminded me of "Olive Kitteridge" in the way it was written. All in all, a good debut novel that I would recommend to my friends and book clubs.
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Viqui G. (State College, PA)
The Northern Reach
This was a delightful novel of extended families and their interactions living in a small town in northern Maine. The author gives us snapshots of these families in the novel's chapters. Some characters we meet several times such as Edith Baines who is introduced as a bitter old woman initially. However, in a subsequent story we meet Edith again as a very young, impressionable girl from a poor family. I enjoyed following these families throughout the span of the 5 or so generations that W. S. Winslow included in her novel. This novel is an enjoyable literary stroll through a town which is a microcosm of small town America in the past century.
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Jane D. (Cincinnati, OH)
Portrait of a small town
It's hard to describe this quirky book - it would be a terrific book club selection and I would love to hear the discussions - bet they would go on forever! While I got bogged down in all the characters ( the author provides a family tree for each family he writes about in order for you to keep track ) I really enjoyed the book.
The Northern Reach is the biography of a small town on the coast of Maine where the long winters are bitter and so are the citizens are equally nasty.
The author strips away everything to expose the painful and raw short comings of rich, poor and founding families . They are all intertwined through marriage, lust, divorce, mental illness, greed, abuse and even murder. Parents and children dislike each other and brutal relationships abound among siblings. BUT - Winslow has laced this novel with some hilarious material as well. The funeral scene is just one of the many sections of the book that made me laugh out loud - a much needed balancing of all the ugliness that takes place among these folks.
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Joan B. (Ellicott City, MD)
THE NORTHERN REACH
I just love reading the fascinating way authors put words together. They express my thoughts and feelings better than I ever could. A favorite example is as Lilian described a trip to Foodland for groceries. It just made me laugh. There were so many descriptions that were patterns of my life. Beautiful and nostalgic.
All of this nostalgia from the many memorable characters living in Wellbridge, Maine. I wanted to know all of those people more intimately. This is the thought that earned a 4 rather than a 5 evaluation. There was so much more than I learned from each of the plethora of characters. Happily Winslow included a family tree for the groups of small town residents.
When I googled W.S. Winslow, I was delighted to read that she has thoughts of introducing my friends in further novels. That has to validate my opinion of the book as I closed the cover. There has to be more coming!
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Sandra G. (Loveland, CO)
Lives of Quiet Desperation
This book is full of characters whose lives are as grim as the bleak landscape they inhabit. There are a LOT of characters for only 228 pages. I was grateful for the family tree diagrams to keep track of them all. The book reads less like a novel to me than a group of loosely connected short stories. I wish the author had spent more time fleshing out the stories of fewer characters. I did enjoy the quirky segments when newly-deceased characters watched events unfolding and commented on them.
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