Advantages: A well researched read, and something I could not put down. Disadvantages: Half way through the book when you momentarily jump in time.
apparent. One day though her Father comes to take her back to her family in Andover, against the deep wishes of Sarah, who would long to stay with her Aunt's family.
The book continues with Sarah and her family, with some quite ordinary day-to-day events, however the book is great to read and I did find it very interesting to read how life could have been back then (in my opinion, very boring and very cold!). The author, Kathleen Kent, has done a great job of describing how cold the winters were, struggling to keep warm using straw, to the point where it made me feel quite cold and wanting to cuddle up underneath a warm blanket! Kent also described just how warm and uncomfortable the summer is when working in the fields wonderfully, along with how exhausting it must have been harvesting those fields by hand.
You read about Sarah growing ...
Advantages: Explores the murkier side of the alt-country experience Disadvantages: May be too depressing for some in places
If I had to ever think of a Canadian alt-country version of Liz Phair, I'd probably come up with Kathleen Edwards. Whilst she's nowhere near the kind of 'sweary-mary' that Liz Phair is, nor do her track titles evoke blushes if your parents happen to read them, she does come close to the borders of respectability. "Failer", her debut album released in 2003, is raw, edgy and earthy yet surprisingly good, telling tales of screwed-up people from back-roads Canada - well, at least the ones skipped over by those responsible for the glossy tourist brochures....
Kathleen Edwards might not set the world alight with her vocals judging by the first few tracks - you could even say they're rather depressing at times, but with a title like "Failer", depressing is pretty much apt and in keeping with the subject matter. Yet they've got a curious ...
Advantages: Good characters, fun story, well written Disadvantages: Crude in places (for me anyway!)
characters also, as I found no immediately following chapters followed the same characters. It is well-written, witty and funny to read and thoroughly enjoyable. I also found that this being written in the third-person made it easier to read, given the scope of characters, first person would have been just too confusing!
Again though I must point out excessive, and unnecessary use of, in my opinion, the most awful word in the English language, the C-Word. I don't think it is nice, it didn't add anything to the book and seemed out of place coming from the mouths of these well-off characters. It is actually this which has caused the book to lose 1 star from me, as if she had not written in this way, it would most certainly warrant 5 stars from me!
So overall, I think this is a very good introduction into the works of Kathleen Tessaro if you ...
