Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Coming Home
Book Review: Another hit for the "queen" of England!
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh how I love to read ANYTHING by Rosamunde Pilcher. When she writes I can smell the flowers in the hedgerows and hear the gulls off the Cornish coast! She makes me homesick for a place I've never been. My only complaint is that its too long in between booksBook Review: As Pleasant as Pleasant Can Be
Summary: 3 Stars
I read this as a 17-hour audiobook and concluded that the entire tale could be abridged into no more than 17 paragraphs. There is so little dynamic tension in the story that perhaps a better title for this would have been "Happily Ever After" since this is a long and winding tale of predictable banality. No mystery, no murder, no mayhem. Hints of tragedy and unrequited infatuation are soothed with endless cups of tea. (It makes me wonder if I might have had a better life if I had been a tea drinker instead of coffee.)
The visual imagery is pleasant and so are all the characters, pleasant, pleasant, pleasant. The plot is almost entirely devoid of grit or traction. But still pleasant!
The reader of this audio edition offers an excellent rendering of the characters and the narrative. Her delivery was what kept me in the book until its end which sadly failed to deliver any catharsis or closure.
The title "Volume 1" suggests sequels which may or may not be as pleasant as this one. I'll never know.
Book Review: Below-par writing that fails to enchant
Summary: 1 Stars
As soon as sufficient characters are introduced in "Coming Home", any reader with her eyes open (I must say her, because who could imagine any male ever suffering all the way to the end? even I couldn't manage that) can predict just what the resolution of the novel's relationships will be. Unfortunately, in a novel populated with "Diana"s, "Athena"s, "Loveday"s, "Rupert"s, and "Carey-Lewis"es, the plot can rise no higher than the silliness of its character names. Look out for the plain, Anglo-saxon names-- they'll be the tolerable characters. I tried, I really did, but I couldn't get interested in the people and events of this book. They fell flat, somehow: to me Pilcher's storytelling was too obviously invented. The moments designed to bring readers to tears evoked laughter. And despite a clear facility for language and vocabulary, Pilcher's paragraphs left me bored and reduced to skimming. Perhaps I didn't thrill properly to descriptions of Cornish lifestyle and atmosphere, but what a hoot were the meticulous descriptions of how each room was furnished, each character attired, and how each garden lay! Lines of extraneous minutiae to set each scene; I'm no expert, but "show, don't tell", Ms. Pilcher, for greater effectiveness in writing. But my favorite was the description of alcohol! It added humor, if no visible plot advancement, to be frequently enlightened that so-and-so had sherry, X had cider, Y had whisky and soda, and Z had beer. I don't lack heart and I recognize the drama of the WWII backdrop, but the novel falls sadly short of potential. Also it's hard to take seriously a wartime novel with a pale pink cover, floral script, and embossed roses on the jacket. Perhaps better as a film in which the scenery of Cornwall could be seen and not described, and the men and women could be visibly proven to have substance. How highly amused am I that my copy was a respectable-looking, hardbound edition, instead of the paperback novel which in all rights it ought always to be.Book Review: By far one of the best books I've ever read
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is incredible! It should be made into a mini-series. I've never read a book that made me feel so much for the characters.Book Review: Can we expect a sequel?
Summary: 5 Stars
I hated to get to the end of this story, I have reread "Coming Home" three times and each time I have found details that I had previously missed and each time I have gotten lost in the story all over again.