Helpful Score: 2
I think the point of the review is to help other PBS readers decide if this is a book that they will enjoy. Life is too short to read bad books. This book is set in Alaska, and really makes you feel like have visited Alaska both past and present. This is a great complex story about the women of Alaska. You get a history lesson without feeling like you are getting a history lesson. The style of the author is not zippy, or zany, but it is deep, thinking, symbolic,and moving. It is 1986, Brandy our main character is new to Alaska, and needs to find some answers in her life. She is having sex by page 6 and doing coke by page 8. She does drugs often, and many others do as well. No one is ever accused of having a drug problem but they are often called Coke whores, which Brandy is not she claims. So really the issue with Brandy isnt that she has a drug problem, but more of a Who am I ? problem. Of course she will figure it out, but she has learn a few things from some natives, and their ancestors before she can do that.
So yes, this book is really worth reading if you can get past the constant partying.
So yes, this book is really worth reading if you can get past the constant partying.
Helpful Score: 2
I loved this book. At first I thought it was chick lit which I hate but I realized it is about the spiritual evolution of a superficial cocktail waitress with a history of a mother unable to love and the alcoholic father who is destroyed by her mother. In reaction, she avoids loving anyone. She sees people able to love as weak. She has no deams and is only interested in the next snort of coke or man to screw. She comes to the Aleutian islands following a man. She doesn't love him but she needs him to help her define herself. She can't tolerate being alone by choice. She comes across the dark secret of 4 Aleutian women who are the decendants of 3 women who took control of their lives by breaking an Aleutian taboo of women hunting 250 years before. Breaking the taboo saves the lives of the children and villagers. These women continue the tradition by empowering their daughters with the secret even though the secret exacts a terrible price. Eventually, Brandy figures out their secret and that loving others isn't weakness. The secret empowers her to make her own decisions and makes choices about a future for herself without a man. The information about the culture and history of the Aleutians is fascinating.The characters are well drawn.I wish there were more books like this about women.
