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Thursday, March 23, 2017

A Graceful Journey Through Small-Town Intrigue: Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Ordinary GraceOrdinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Year read: 2015

“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” Ordinary Grace follows the lives of two young boys in small-town Minnesota in the summer of 1961. Death comes often that summer, and Frank and Jake find themselves more and more thrust into a grown-up world as they navigate the dynamics of their family and their town.

My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. In the sense that this book also focused on the kids' perspective in a small town in a "simpler" time, Ordinary Grace reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird. My enjoyment of Ordinary Grace benefited from my love of the Harper Lee classic. This book was, at its core, a who-dun-it - an enjoyable one. Some "conclusions" were evident initially, but many twists and turns surprised you.

The father, Nathan, was almost unbelievably gracious and forgiving, while the mother, Ruth, played foil with significant emotional instability. My favorite character was Gus, a friend of Nathan's from the war, who was constantly a rock upon which the boys could lean and a lighthouse in the dark to help Frank and Jake navigate challenging issues. Yet, he was flawed in authentic ways.

The one distraction for me was the layout of the town. The author didn't use a real town or a map of his imaginary town, or he was terrible at describing directions of things. I often found myself "lost" in town (no, the trestle is the OTHER WAY!). Or a description that something was past the edge of town, with a real sense that it was far away - tucked away on purpose - but then it was only a 5-minute car ride later. Or a bike ride in the middle of the night from the poor part of town to WAY up in the high-rent area - again, earlier depicted as far away - that takes very little time. Given how I mentally "Google map" my books, these discrepancies were jarringly noteworthy as I read.

All in all, an engaging read. This was a book club selection, not something I would have likely picked up.




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2 comments:

  1. Luckily, I have no sense of direction so I probably wouldn't have noticed the continuity errors about the town! Lol

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  2. That might make it easier for me. Alas. I'm always curious if authors actually pay attention to the directions and layout of the area of their books or if they just wing it.

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