Garys Books: May 2021

Friday, May 28, 2021

Four Winds

Book: Four Winds
Basic Information : Synopsis : Characters : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : References

Basic Information:

Author: Kristin Hannah

Edition: ePub on Libby from the San Francisco Public Library

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

ISBN: 9781250178626

Start Date: May 7, 2021

Read Date: May 28, 2021

464 pages

Genre: Fiction, Fiction-History, Osher

Language Warning: Low

Rated Overall: 3 out of 5

Fiction-Tells a good story: 3 out of 5

Fiction-Character development: 4 out of 5

Synopsis (Caution: Spoiler Alert-Jump to Thoughts):

Elsa is an ugly duckling which her own family does not want. She meets an Italian guy who seduces her. She gets pregnant. Her family forces her to live with his family, never to see them again. The child is a daughter, Loreda.

Elsa learns to love her new family and they love her. The Dust Bowl hits. Her husband leaves them-there is another child by this time, Anthony. Because Anthony is getting “dust pneumonia”, they take off for California.

California is not the land of milk and honey, but of riches for a few and poverty for the immigrants. Elsa and children make a go of it. They meet a communist, Valen, who is trying to force the growers to pay more. When the workers strike, Elsa is shot, dead. The kids and Valen go back to Texas.

Cast of Characters:

Elsinore (Elsa) Wolcott Martinelli-protaganist. Born to a well to do family. Suffered some illness which forced her to be a recluse. Married an Italian. Stayed with their family. Moved to California during the Dust Bowl.
Eugene Wolcott-Elsa’ father. Owns a tractor store
Raffaelo Martinelli (Rafe)-Elsa’s husband. Eventually runs out on her.
Rose Martinelli-Rafe’s mother. came from Sicily with a couple of dollars. Made a go of it.
Tony Martinelli-Rafe’s father. Same as Rose
Laredo Martinelli-Elsa and Rafe’s daughter. Born 1922
Anthony (Ant) Martinelli-Elsa and Rafe’s son
Jean Dewey-Friend and fellow camp person. Dies due to typhoid.
Mrs Quisdorf-town librarian
Jack Valen-Union organizer, communist, lover of Elsa
Welty-Cotton farm owner
Natali-friend of Valen

Expectations:

Recommendation: Oher Book Group
When:January 2021
Date Became Aware of Book: January 2021
How come do I want to read this book: Book Group
What do I think I will get out of it? Hopefully a good read

Thoughts:

Would I have been able to survive the Dust Bowl? The move to California? Make a go of working in the fields in California? Makes me appreciate how easy I have it in this day and age. Also makes me wonder about the conditions in the fields.

Prologue

Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. This is a coin which will play a part in the story.

1921

Survived an illness. Elsa had survived it by being quiet, by not demanding or seeking attention, by accepting that she was loved, but unliked. Family told her she would never marry because she was so unattractive. At 25 she was accepting this. To her family, image was everything to the Wolcotts. Her parents prized it above all else. Elsa was intelligent, but was stuck in her room reading. What good came from all this unexpressed longing? …. There had to be opportunities out there, but where would she find them? The library. Books held the answer to every question.

Dalhart, Texas -real town, on the north western edge of the Texas panhandle. Talked about in Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time

Her grandfather told her: Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave. Elsa's hopes to rebuild herself with a new hairstyle and a new dress.

Books had always been her solace; novels gave her the space to be bold, brave, beautiful, if only in her own imagination. She felt afraid to face her family, particularly her father. But then she started working on a dress to make her feel elegant. … she sewed, she began to feel a remarkable sensation: hope. But when facing her family, she got rejection. She runs out, tries to go into an illegal bar. Then meets Raffaelo Martinelli. He thinks she is beautiful. They have sex. Her father beats her-because she ran off. But Elsa had a realization: she would do anything, suffer anything, to be loved, even if it was just for a night. But was she really loved by Rafe? Or did Rafe have as many needs as Elsa and just was satisfying them?

D’ya ever think life must be bigger than what we see here

Talks about Dalhart. Fourth of July celebration. She meets up with Rafe. More sex and at other times.

Lady of Shalott - poem by Tennyson

Elsa is pregnant. Her parents force her to leave and go to the Martinelli’s. Lived in Lonesome Tree, Texas (fictional place). Elsa’ father confronts the Martinelli’s and leaves her there. Her parents disown her. Elsa promises to become a Catholic-but she does not know what that means.The Martinelli’s had a dream for Rafe to go to college. But that ended it. On the other hand The dreams for your children are so … so…”

The Martinelli’s live a different life-no indoor toilets, they get up at the break of dawn. What time did these people waken? It was only nine. They are farmers. Mr Martinelli says that My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family. We plant, we tend, we harvest. I make wine from grape cuttings that I brought here from Sicily, and the wine I make reminds me of my father. It binds us, this land, one to another, as it has for generations. Now it will bind you to us.” Elsa had to learn how to work on the farm.

Shortly afterwards Elsa and Rafe get married. At first none of this [being a Catholic] made much sense to her, but in time it became both familiar and routine, a part of her new life. But there was comfort in what she was learning. There were dreams of a new life away from the farm.

And then the baby comes, a home birth. Rose cut and tied off the umbilical cord, then wrapped the baby up in one of the many blankets they’d knitted over the long winter and handed the bundle to Elsa. The daughter’s name is Loreda.

The story of the lucky penny which Rosa keeps. Tony found the penny right before leaving Sicily.

1934

see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.… The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, Second Inaugural Address

The Great Depression was on the nation. Drought had hit the Midwest. Rafe is turning into an alcoholic. With the children, Elsa had discovered within herself a nearly bottomless capacity for love. Loreda was Daddy’s girl-he could do no wrong; Elsa could do little right. Elsa waited, prayed, that both her husband and her daughter would someday see how much she loved them and they would love her in return.

The drought deepens. The key to life in this dry heat was conservation of everything: water, food, emotion. Certain people do better in these situations. Tony and Rose and Elsa were the kind of people who expected life to be hard and had become tougher to survive. On the other hand, Rafe and Loreda wanted out. How do you become that kind of person? hard work and the land had turned them into Tony and Rose.

Dust storms now played havoc in the region. Elsa repaid the love she got from Tony and Rose. A wind like this could blow whole farms away. Hannah describes how the dust would get into everything, no matter how much you sealed up a house.

Loreda didn’t want the kind of love that trapped.

Loreda had soaked up his praise, grown to fit it. This was when she first started to ride a horse, Rafe gave her this praise. She would accept his praise, but not her Mom’s. He’d taught her to dream.

the land breaking open from dryness,

Mother-in-law to daughter-in-law talk about child rearing. The love, it comes in the beginning of her life and at the end of yours. God is cruel that way. Your heart, is it too broken to love.

Things are pretty desperate. But Rose and Elsa have turned individual optimism into a communal hope, stronger and more durable in the combination.. Rafe was breaking. Tony and Rose held on to the unproven hope/belief that more work might save them

Loreda’s best friend is leaving.

Talk about leaving Lonesome Tree. But Tony, Rose and Elsa are not wanting to leave. This among many other things was dividing Elsa and Rafe. Elsa had thought that making a perfect home was the answer to making a marriage happy. Discussion on leaving. California is the dream state.

Tony played the fiddle-this was his way of saying I love you to Rose. how he reminded them of their past and their future, how he said, I love you This raises the questions of what non-verbal ways do I communicate my love?

Elsa stopped in front of Rafe. All it would take was the smallest movement and she could rest her hand on his shoulder. We have two people who could have loved each other, but was afraid to make the first step. Instead they were drifting apart.

Rafe leaves for California. This is the last which we heart of him.

After 13 years, Rafe leaves not only Elsa, but his parents. He was not alone. Hannah says that Men all over the county been leavin’ their families. Families been abandonin’ their kids and kin.

The children’s lives would never be the same after today. Their opinions of everything would change, but especially their opinions of themselves, of the durability of love and the truth of their family. They would know forever that their father hadn’t loved their mother—or them—enough to stay with them through hard times. It is staying through hard times which is the measure of a marriage.

Rafe walking away affected Lodera greatly since she felt she had a close father-daughter relationship with him. Elsa goes into depression. Rose encourages her.

Winter comes, a bit of snow brings hope. People are leaving. Talk about leaving. There is a comment when the store owner gives the kids licorice. Kindness made the whole thing bearable. Meeting with Hugh Bennett. He wants to show them how to conserve their soil. The farmers take offense. Bennet outlines the plan. The farmers reject it.

Plywood - introduced into the United States in the 1860’s. I was wondering when plywood was made since Hannah talks about boarding up windows with it.

Hugh Bennett - a real person who headed the Soil Conservation Service. Started being influential in this area in 1920.

Elsa thinks about what Bennett said. Have people like the Martinelli’s misused the land? In a lot of ways this shows Hannah’s judgments looking backwards at what happened rather than being in the current times. Discussion with Loreda about her father and the land. Elsa coin;ldn’’t remember the last time this house had filled with her children’s laughter. It was a gift from God, just like the good weather. Rain came. Out comes the lucky penny. With the rain came green fields. The land was everything to Tony and Rose. Tony standing at the altar of his land

The rain was only one day. It was followed by eight days of 100+ degree days. Every thing was failing. Animals were dying. And then the wind came up Anthony got sick.

Storm is over. Anthony is still sick, now with a fever. They go into Lonesome Tree to find the doctor. He will be in the hospital for a week or two. Elsa comes to the conclusion that their home is killing her son, and probably them. They will need to leave.

The decision was made-leave the farm and head to California.Anthony is getting better. Bennett came back and held another meeting. A new and more powerful dust storm hit. After the storm passes, Elsa decides they need to leave now. Just like when she’d left her parents’ home, she could only take a few of her treasured novels with her. Once again, she was starting over. Tony and Rose tell Elsa they are staying. They give Elsa the penny. This means the Elsa is now the hope for their family. It was up to Elsa now, her alone, to keep them alive

Flashlight - invented in 1877. By 1922 they were portable,

1935

Elsa is now getting concerned about going it alone. She remembers what her grandfather said: Be brave, into her ear. And then, Or pretend to be. It’s all the same. She goes past her house in Dalhart, but it is all boarded up. Elsa wondered why her parents hadn’t loved her, or why their version of love had been so cold and conditional. Instead of hurting to see the place, she felt a sense of freedom. First night, they get a lesson in what it means to be on the road. Camped on a side road. A man tried to steal their money and gas. When he grabbed Elsa, Loreda said she would shoot him. He decided she would. Elsa’s thought was They would be changed by this, all three of them

Long days of driving, over 900 miles. Her picture of cactus was: Some of them looked from a distance like thorny old men, raising their fists to an uncaring god. Elsa was stunned by the unexpected beauty of the morning. But she also noted the beauty of the morning.

They pull into town, needing gas. There is a mob attacking a grocery store. Hunger riots. In America. They are now driving across the desert, in the morning and at night. They pull out the penny and remember the hope which is leading them to a better life. They made it to Tehachapi. Then the wild ride down the mountain. This left them with a desire to see more: Seeing all of this unexpected beauty, such colors, such majesty, she wanted suddenly to see more. Hidden is the hope of finding Rafe. The first store they come to, they get gas, but the clerk and owner does not want them to touch anything and get out of there fast. Who does he think he is? Just ’cause he hasn’t hit hard times, the crumb thinks he has. This is the reception they would find throughout California.

They made it to Bakersfield and then out into the farming community. People would not rent to Okies (or other refugees from the Dust Bowl.) They end up in a transient camp. It stank. They meet a family, the Dewey’s whom they become friends with. They are close to Welty. (maybe Temecula). Elsa looks for work. She finds some work doing housework, for a day.

DiGiorgio Farms - a real farm corporation which owned much of the Central Valley at one time.

Loreda now understands that California is not the land of milk and honey. If there are no jobs, people live close to being like animals. When times is tough and jobs is scarce, folks blame the outsider. It’s human nature. Isn’t this what we go through? Blaming some other group, such as Blacks, Asains or Mexicans. For the day’s work Elsa did as a housekeeper, she got 40 cents. She realizes the new economics. She sends Loreda and Anthony to school-where she and they get a lot of grief being Okies. Elsa signs up for relief.

Loreda starts realizing she needs to grow up. flexibility of time-with nothing to do, time drags. Loreda has a hard time understanding the constraints they are under.She and Anthony get sent to school.

Both Anthony and Loreda ended up doing badly on their first day, due to harassment. They met other women who were in the camp. Weeks pass by and camp life become routine. Elsa goes to a PTA meeting where she is told what kind of place she has in the pecking order. But at camp, Jean and Elsa formed a friendship. Elsa hadn’t known until right then how much difference a friend could make. How one person could lift your spirit just enough to keep you upright

Elsa got up at 4am so she could work in the fields. She was working for 50 cents a day. Loreda also goes into the fields to work. They followed the Deweys and went north to pick fruit. Not only did they get taken advantage of on receiving wages, Welty Farms took 10% to cash out the chits they gave them. There was no choice. Occasionally they met kindness in the townspeople, but not often.

Welty Farms-I do not know if this is real or not. There was a Welty Store in what is now Temecula.

Elsa and Loreda go to a beauty parlor. Different people emerge. Loreda goes to the library and meets a friendly librarian.

Elsa had been brought up not to take handouts. Both Jean and Elsa felt the same way, but Jean knew it was not anything to be ashamed of if you are in need. They both knew better. It was something to be ashamed of. [if you have no place else to turn] Americans weren’t supposed to take handouts from the government. she knew how dangerous escape could be.

Elsa sees someone who is trying to rally the workers and gets picked up.

Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day.

Christmas came and they stayed at the camp. Hannah writes that by the end, none of them cared that the local churches denied them entry or that their clothes were ragged and dirty or that Christmas dinner would be small. If churches denied them entry, that is really sad.

Elsa knew that a library card—a thing they’d taken for granted all of their lives—meant there was still a future. A world beyond this struggle. For Christmas, Loreda and Anthony gave her a journal.

1936

Jean is having a baby and things are not right. The hospital will not help a non-Californian. The good, God-fearing folk of California don’t care about a baby’s life, I guess.”. The child is dead at birth. But Jean still names it. A name. The very essence of hope. The beginning of an identity, handed down in love. See Paul Tournier’s book, The Naming of Persons

Loreda runs away.

Jack Valen picks up Loreda on his way to a union organizing meeting. He makes her promise not to say anything about the meeting. Also not to come in. Valen confronts her about who is she really? She tells them and then she realizes how homesickness gripped her; not the kind for a place, but for people. I suspect this is true. We rarely yearn for a place, but the place where we have memories of people who we care about.

Police come and run Valen to jail. Upon release, he meets up with Elsa and offers her a ride. She refuses.

Jack Valen-made up person

Loreda returns to her mother and the camp. She tries to tell Elsa about the meeting, but Elsa cannot get beyond the word communist. The camp is flooded. But Valen and other communists help put them up.

Loreda helps those who came to the shelter. Seeing Valen play with Anthony brought back memories of her father. The drought and the Depression would end. Daddy leaving them in the middle of it would hurt forever. And then she compares her father to Valen: You could count on a man like that, she thought. A man who didn’t just spout ideas, but fought for them, took beatings for them, and stayed in place.

Hannah takes a dig at President Trump by saying: People get scared when they lose their jobs and they tend to blame outsiders. Also she goes on and says that people first start calling them criminals. This is a theme of the book-outcasts being used then discarded and dehumanized.

There are references to a 1933 strike by Mexican farmworkers which got real ugly/

wonder why his policies help almost all workers except farmworkers is this true? Also what was the rationale if so? I was seeing where racism was part of the reason. But there is a pretty good rebuttal to that. Hannah seems to be saying that it was because the growers supported FDR.

He [Valen] and his ideas came with violence, there was no doubt about that.

Valen knows of a safe and secure place to live-in a Welty Farm’s cabin. The catch is that they will need to pay rent to Welty and buy from the company store.

Discussion on why Valen is a communist.

The Welty Camp has its own school. Loreda goes, but quickly walks out and goes to the library. Elsa gets settled in. She shops at the company store and sees high prices. Everything is on credit. Elsa becomes an official resident of the state and can start collecting relief money.

It’s not weak, you know. To feel things deeply, to want things. To need.

Elsa goes to the fields with her guaranteed job of picking cotton. Loreda skips school and goes to a public meeting where they announce the elimination of relief. Valen speaks about living wages and gets beaten up. Valen takes the whole family to a park and a lake. Romance starts.

They call you names because they don’t want to think of you as like them. True-names differentiate people rather than unite them.

All are in the fields picking cotton.Wages are cut by 10%-too many workers and not enough cotton. There were words of hope of returning. But New words for an old, never realized hope. Valen wants to unionize the workers. Fear is in the camps.

. Ninety cents for a hundred pounds of picked cotton. Eighty cents

Sometimes a person had to stand up and say enough was enough

My notes from Chapters 31-35 and the finale disappeared.

Four Winds - title is used in Elsa’s journal. Such as : If a group of things or people are scattered to the four winds, they go or are sent to different places that are far away from each other.

Evaluation:

Four Winds is a book about a woman’s struggle to have her family survive the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s without the aid of a husband. As she struggles to hold her family together, there is growth in her. Also Hannah gives interesting color and background to the California immigrants from the Midwest.

But there are some flaws which hamper the book. The story drags on and on and on. I think Hannah could not decide if she wanted to tell the story of the immigrants or a woman who grew from being an ugly duckling. She has us watching the protagonist deal with adolescents alone. Next, this is a book written in 2020 with all of the retrospective looking back at a time. There is a certain amount of focusing on what happened then, there is the dropping of the sense of the drama of it happening now. Also there seems to be a few places where Hannah slides in commentary about current situations-she does not do this overtly.Most of the time the story is told from Elsa, the mother’s, perspective. But then Hannah shifts to the teenage daughter. There are times I had to go back and try to figure out who was thinking. Lastly, this may be a flaw of our age. I suspect any successful author has an eye on how a story will be told either on TV or in a movie. Generally the story on the written page suffers.

Am I glad I read the book? Yes. Would I want to read it again? No. Are there ideas which will change my thinking? Not greatly. If you read it, read it more with the mindset of picking up tidbits about the times which the Dust Bowl occurred.

Notes from my book group:

Why do you think Kristin Hannah wrote the book? What story does she tell? What story does she want to tell?

When you were younger, let's say, mid-30’s, would you have been able to survive the Dust Bowl? The move to California? Make a go of working in the fields in California?

Throughout the story, a penny which Tony found in Sicily plays a part. What does it represent? How does Hannah use the penny to tell a story? Why a penny?

Elsa loves to read. Early on she asks herself the question, What good came from all this unexpressed longing? What does she long for? Does any good come of it? Does Elsa’s longing ever get fulfilled? Do the books which she and then Loreda read hold the answer to everything she needs?

Elsa’s grandfather said to her: Don’t worry about dying, .... Worry about not living. What is the difference?

After Elsa’s first encounter with Raffeallo, do you think she felt fulfilled? Was she loved? Did she love? Did she know what love was? Was she willing to accept a substitute? What would have helped her to know the real thing?

When drought hit Texas, life became very tough. Tony and Rose and Elsa were the kind of people who expected life to be hard and had become tougher to survive. What made Tony, Rose and Elsa the kind of people who would survive tough times? Why was Rafe not one of them?

One thing Rafe did was to teach Loreda to dream. Why is this important? How did this turn dangerous? How does this complicate Loreda’s life?What dreams should be taught?

When Tony played the fiddle, Rose knew he was talking a language of love to her. How do you communicate your love to a person?

Rafe and Elsa were not able to do simple things like hold each other or say I love you. How did this lead to a breakdown in their marriage? What would have made their marriage stronger? Or was it based from the start on something unstable?

Why do Tony and Rose value staying and possibly dying on their farm rather than chase the promise of California? Do you think this was a wise choice for them? How come?

On the first night on the road, there is an attempt to rob them of their money and gas. Elsa thinks: They would be changed by this, all three of them. In what ways does the journey to California change her? Change the children? How did staying in California change them?

California is a different place than what they expect. What was different? How is it different from what you think of California?

When times is tough and jobs is scarce, folks blame the outsider. It’s human nature. Is this human nature? How accommodating do you think we as a nation should be to outsiders? How accommodating are you to someone different who moves into town? How does this blame become a political issue?

When Loreda meets Jack Valen, she turns homesick: homesickness gripped her; not the kind for a place, but for people. Is this how you picture homesickness? Do you associate homesickness with a place or people?

Why does Hannah pick the Communists as being the good guys? Were they? Does this story change your perspective on Communists?

Hannah says that People get scared when they lose their jobs and they tend to blame outsiders. Is this a rational way to view outsiders? What arguments are there for or against this view? Should anyplace allow in outsiders? What are the ramifications if we do not?

Do you think Hannah is right when she says that They call you names because they don’t want to think of you as like them.

How do you want your life to change because you read this book?

Osher Book Club

a 21^st century view of the 1930’s rather than a the person who was there view

What would we react having to leave our homes?

Was this intended to be a movie?

What is the place of owning land?

Just not one point of view to a storylines

Read an earlier Kristen hannah book and compare

Was their aid for a person for a year after they arrived.?

Migrant experience of those who went to other states

Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.

Why the title of Four Seasons?

Did the ending seem fitting? Satisfying? Predictable?

Which character was the most convincing? Least?

Which character did you identify with?

Which one did you dislike?

Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?

In what context was religion talked about in this book?

Was there anybody you would consider religious?

How did they show it?

Was the book overtly religious?

How did it affect the book's story?

Why do you think the author wrote this book?

What would you ask the author if you had a chance?

What “takeaways” did you have from this book?

What central ideas does the author present?

What implications for you, our nation or the world do these ideas have?

Are these idea’s controversial?

To whom and why?

Describe the culture talked about in the book.

How is the culture described in this book different than where we live?

What economic or political situations are described?

Does the author examine economics and politics, family traditions, the arts, religious beliefs, language or food?

How did this book affect your view of the world?

Of how God is viewed?

What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?

Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?

What was memorable?

Reading Groups General Fiction Guide

New Words:

Cloche: a small translucent cover for protecting or forcing outdoor plants.
bluebird day: denoting or relating to a period of time characterized by sunny, cloudless weather, typically after a night of snowfall.
Chilblains: Chilblains (CHILL-blayns) are the painful inflammation of small blood vessels in your skin that occur in response to repeated exposure to cold but not freezing air. Also known as pernio, chilblains can cause itching, red patches, swelling and blistering on your hands and feet.
bindle stiffs: hobo especially : one who carries his clothes or bedding in a bundle.
Serape: a shawl or blanket worn as a cloak in Latin America.

Book References:

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Tale of Little Pig Robinson by Beatrix Potter
The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene
The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene
Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb

Good Quotes:

First Line: Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love
Last Line: A girl.
Beginnings are only that. Chp 5
it was only possible to live without love when you’d never known it.Chp 6
Passion has a dark edge. Chp 11
Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day. Chp 23
Elsa[the mother in the book] knew that a library card—a thing they’d taken for granted all of their lives—meant there was still a future. A world beyond this struggle. Chp 23
What in the world was more restorative than a child’s love? . Chp 27
Courage is fear you ignore. Chp 32

References:

Publisher's Web Site for Book
Author's Web Site
Wikipedia-Author
Amazon-Book
Amazon-Author
Barnes and Noble
GoodReads-Book
GoodReads-Author
New York Times Review
Washington Post Review
Kirkus Review
YouTube
Bibliofile
SuperSummary
eNotes
Orange County Register’s review
Yahoo review
Book Club Chat blog
Literature Lust blog