"Dew's astonishing debut illuminates the varieties of romantic love and the unexpected rewards of family life as it tells the story of a woman whose husband stays behind in New England while she and their three young children return to her midwestern town to spend the summer. Weighing in at a slim 217 pages, Dale Loves Sophie to Death is a quick read. I picked this book up at the library on a whim, and ended up reading nearly the whole thing while standing in the aisle. If you enjoy Alices Munro's writing, you likely will enjoy "Dale Loves Sophie to Death". This reader came away with a lot of information and knowledge about the family and especially Martin and Dinah and the middle child, Toby.
, but rewarding with descriptions of characters and setting. When one finishes reading the novel, you have come to know this family and their issues quite well, as well as the small Ohio town in which Dinah lived until she went away for college. If I had to described the novel n a few words, I would say that it is a story about family, marital relationships and confronting one's past, present and future. Marin stays behind in their home in the Berkshires teaching at a local college and editing a periodical he and a friend founded a ew years ago. She returns to the town in which she grew up in Ohio, where her mother, father, and older brother live. Martin and Dinah, a married couple in their late 30s, with three children under the age of 11, spend each summer apart. I hope I can be a tenth the writer she is one day. And she remembers to love her characters even when they're wrong or lazy or average. I wish I had one, or that I could maintain that skill for more than a page at a time. Some books really do make more sense to adults, and this is one of them.ĭew has a very light hand with her prose, which I particularly appreciate.
I have watched how a hyper-critical group of outsiders can tear women apart for each and every decision they make as parents and wives and daughters. I know what it feels like to suddenly remember you're not still a teenager, and that your adult choices are yours even if they're not all perfect.
I know why people go to home instead of away from it. With some experience, and age, I get it now.
Oh, what a difference over a decade makes. I didn't understand the protagonist's need to spend time in her small home town when it obviously made her sick, or her need to reconcile with a father who was distant and trying I hated the husband for his disloyalty I blamed them both for all of their failings and failures, and I saw no reason for those two people to be married. I was 17 when I first tried to read this book, and none of it stuck to me.
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