Jennifer McClelland McClelland itibaren Texas itibaren Texas

Jennifer Thompson was a senior in college planning to get married when the unthinkable happened. One evening a man broke into her apartment and raped her at knifepoint. Jennifer memorized his face and her quick thinking allowed her to escape. She was able to come up with a composite drawing with the police and later was able to pick out Ronald Cotton in a lineup. Her testimony put him away in jail for a life sentence. A later re-trial would give Ronald two life sentences. After eleven years Cotton was allowed to take a DNA test which cleared him. Under overwhelming evidence, the perpetrator eventually confessed. Two years later Jennifer met Ronald and forged a friendship. This may all seem like a great plot for a fiction book but this is an amazingly true story. Jennifer and Ronald come together to tell their sides of the story. Jennifer's account shows how frail eyewitness accounts can be. She was totally convinced she had the right man. The justice system unfortunately does have flaws and Jennifer and Ronald are aiming to fix some of them. Jennifer's account also shows how hard it is to find 'closure'. Even though the trial is done, there are appeals and appeals and it never goes away. This book is about faith and forgiveness. Ronald had faith he would be found innocent and his forgiveness of Jennifer is uplifting and touching. He does speak about his initial rage but he overcomes this and never loses hope. I was amazed by the forgiveness by Ronald. He is an unbelievable person. Both Ronald and Jennifer speak of being the victims of the perpetrator. Jennifer and Ronald show us all what human grace is all about.

2.5 Stars The start was great with the tension, PTSD, and the angst but then it smoothed out to something typical and predictable. Nothing wrong with it really. Just smooth sailing when I wanted something more.

I actually really enjoyed this book. It made me laugh out loud a lot. I thought that this was one of the more satirical Austen novels, with the "heroin" (as Jane explains to be of an atypical sort) creating much of the story in her head. It completely reminds me of how I was as a teenager... okay, of how I still am in some respects. I realize the writing is not quite as "refined" as in her later novels, but I that supplies a lot of the charm of this book. It's unexpectedly fun!

Written by a tarot reader, so comes with the obvious biases. The chapter on quantum physics is a joke.

This was my first Philip Roth novel. The title "American Pastoral" hints at the surface of the story, the idealic setting of the New Jersey countryside. The main character seeks an explanation at a personal level for why his daughter whose priveledged childhood some how leads to committing violent acts to protest the Vietnam War that result in the deaths of four innocent people and her subsequent life hiding from the authorities. His conclusion is that he was not aware enough of himself, his wife, or his daughter when they lived together to really know any of them, most importantly himself, thta the potential for these circumstances always exist. If it can happen to the husband (handsome, great athelete) and wife (beautiful, intelligent) in this story then it is easy to imagine why disadvantaged youth could be talked into committing terrorist acts. I loved the following line which is about a quarter of the way through the book: "The daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral -- into the indigenous American berserk." The story is told through the eyes of a writer who grew up with the main charters' and his image as a great athelete. You know redemption exists for the hero because very early in the story you find out that he ends up leaving his first family and starting a new one where he has three sons and you guess he pays close attention to all members of his new family.

All my college friends have read and lauded this book, so reading it myself felt a bit like visiting a place about which I'd heard lots and lots of stories. I think that if pagans were the type to write evangelical novels, they would read just like this book. At the outset, the world and characters seem so intriguing that you don't much care if there's a plot or not, as long as you get to learn a little more about them. Another interesting thing about this story is the way that Starhawk just plops you down into it, without giving the type of subtle explanation that other (more seasoned?) fiction writers include within the first few chapters. You have to read halfway through the book before even understanding exactly how Starhawk's utopic society works. I swayed between longing to live in this community (no poverty, no prejudice, lots of sex, and bisexuality as the norm) and feeling irritated that I had to spend 500 pages in some pagan woman's fantasy. Overall, this was one of those novels that cared more about the agenda than the story -- and that agenda was certainly not subtle. The heavy-handedness chafed me a bit, even if I do mostly agree with Starhawk's premise. I imagine that anyone who didn't agree with her premise wouldn't have the patience to get through the book, so it's destined to preach to the choir and no one else.