Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay is one of Oprah Winfrey's book club selections. Although many are a tough read because of gritty reality or very serious themes, I usually enjoy them very much. Not this one. It was just too depressing and there wasn't enough light in it for me to enjoy it.
Ellen Grier and her family are forced (because of financial circumstances) to move in with her husband's parents. Was there ever a grimmer, more dysfunctional couple? I might say Frank and Marie Barone from TV's Everybody Loves Raymond but at least that couple was darkly funny. This couple made me want to run screaming in horror from the room whenever they entered the scene.
Ellen's husband is totally subservient to his parents and seems to have no ambition with getting out again and getting their own place. The two children are trapped, helpless, in all that misery and dysfunction. The one glimmer of hope is...will Ellen be able to break free of all this and free herself and her children?
I wondered how she got herself in such a fix in the first place. I could understand why the husband, James, was so screwed up. Look at his parents. But Ellen? She seemed to have a loving family. Maybe it was the religious rigidity of the times? Whatever it was, I found it grating.
Maybe it's because I am from a dysfunctional family. This one was just too screwed up for me.
Reading this book fit these challenges:
2010 Mixology
New Authors Challenge
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2 comments:
Too funny - I LOVED Vinegar Hill. In fact, I recently bought another of her books off a $1 rack simply for that reason. I haven't read it, but did lend it to my mom who loved it - she hasn't read Vinegar Hill yet. Sorry you didn't like. I know the disappointment that comes from closing a book & wishing you could get that time back.
I didn't hate it, but yeah when you've had trauma in your life it really can be painful to read a book like this one.
I loved it because it made me feel that anxisety, not something that I want on the regular.
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