Mudbound
Ratings14
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings14
Average rating4.1
"It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm; a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not; charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale."--Jacket.
Reviews with the most likes.
Interesting and believable characters for the most part, and yet . . . the story seemed awfully familiar, the plot without surprise (it's not hard to guess even from knowing the premise what's going to happen), the dialogue not completely convincing. And maybe my biggest complaint is that agenda-driven fiction (here: racists are evil) is so hard to pull off. Kingsolver can do it, which is maybe why Jordan won Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize, but few others can. The character of Pappy is as flat as a character can be because he represents the evil racists. Henry, on the other hand, isn't a bad man, but he's interesting because he's still racist. Even Jamie isn't flawless.
I also didn't care for the multiple first person points of view. It made the narrative much too diffuse. Six of them? Or more? And I occasionally lost track of which section I was in, a danger with this approach.
Love it !
Book definitely has some amazing quotes :)
“But I must start at the beginning, if I can find it. Beginnings are elusive things. Just when you think you have hold of one, you look back and see another, earlier beginning, and an earlier one before that. Even if you start with “Chapter One: I Am Born, “ you still have the problem of antecedents, of cause and effect.”
