While some of the scenes are interesting, most never seem to lead to anything bigger and by the end of the book I felt like I'd just started getting to know these people.Ī side note-there are several slips between past and present tense, sometimes in the same paragraph. Instead the story wanders through disconnected episodes of peach selling, confrontations with friends and relatives, gossiping over the new white woman in the household, and scenes of Sara Kate trying to mother Clover as well as she can. Many of Clover's observations felt clichéd and rote, and she never seemed to suffer shock or grief over the sudden loss of her father. And there are some moments of personality and humor, like when ten year-old Clover observes her white stepmother struggling to adapt her palate to a rural southern African-American diet (read: pigs' feet, sweet tea, and everything cooked in grease.)īut Clover herself, her stepmother Sara Kate, and her father Gaten never really came alive for me.
There are passages that stood out for me-moments where Sanders creates interesting, distinct characters, like the old woman who has no foil in her house because she uses it to wrap endless five-dollar bills to send to television evangelists. I wanted to like this one more than I did.
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