Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsI Love Mitford...But Not So Much This New Book
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 18, 2017
If you like the Mitford and Father Tim books, you'll enjoy this next installment in the series. I've grown to love the town Karon has created and so many of the characters in it. I do, however, have three beefs with this book:
1) There are SO many characters (maybe 30 or more?) that I often have to think twice (or thrice) about who is being referred to, and what their connection is to the speaker, and what they were doing when we last heard about them.
2) Karon often begins chapters or sections by talking about people using pronouns instead of their names. So it can be several paragraphs before you figure out who the subject is from the context, necessitating going back and rereading w/that knowledge. Not a big deal, but why is it necessary to write in this way?
3) Mitford is a very Christian place, and Karon is a Christian writer, which is all fine. However, she seems to feel compelled to demonstrate some diversity, at least on the surface. To that end, she introduces the character of Abe, the Jewish man who owns the shoe store. I believe she brings him into the story three times, each time very briefly. And although I can't recall specifically, seems like two of the three vignettes were about money. Really? Talk about stereotypes! If you can't flesh out a character fully beyond one stereotypical dimension, don't bother including him! As far as I can tell there are only two African-American characters in Mitford's works: Louella and Father Tim's brother Henry. But in both cases Karon has created living, breathing characters, so they don't feel like they're there for token diversity sake. Karon can and should do better, IMO.
