Wish You Well by David Baldacci Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wish You Well
Book Review: A Visit to the 1940's!
Summary: 4 Stars
I read all of David Badacci's books no matter how good or bad it could be. I do not know what the book is about until I pick it up and read the flap. Imagine my surprise when I read that this is not a thriller but about 2 young children and their invalid mother being transplanted from New York City to the mountains of Virgina , to live with the children's great-grandmother. There is no electricity, no running water, no telephone, etc. etc. I initally was ticked off and disappointed that he choose this this topic to write about. I read his books for excitment not to read about kids growing up in rural country.
Since I read all of his books no matter what, I slowly pushed through. Then I realized how interesting it is the life the children are leading. It helps that I grew up on a farm, but it was not in the mountains and definitely not so primitive. The detail he gives is so informative that someone who has not lived like that would call that ficton and/or boring. I felt it was very invigorating, stirred up a lot of memories of so long ago but not forgotten.
The more he wrote the more the children came to life. To see their growth in sprit and mind was very comforting. Eventuallly, I could not put the book down. It was very easy and enjoyable to read.
As much as I like this book, PLEASE David, stick to exciting thrillers.
Book Review: Peter Pan in Virginia
Summary: 4 Stars
"Wish You Well" starts slow, weighted by pages of description. I'm not sure why we need to know how many nails hang a picture on a wall. After the children move to the mountains, the pace starts to pick up. Lou and her little brother Oz, their condemnation as "damn Yankees" and eventual finding a place in the mountain's social order entranced me. The supporting characters are interesting. Diamond is a wild child surviving by wit and cunning, almost a Peter Pan in Virginia. Louisa Mae is a resolute woman. She represented for me the American desire for independence. Cotton Longfellow as the lawyer who reads to the comatose mother Amanda and does his best for the children was a real hero. I did wonder why he seemed to pick this particular family to help, when there were so many on the mountain in need of similar assistance. The courtroom showdown with the coal company may have been predictable, but brought the action to a climax. George Davis as the villain was a problem for me. He never seemed to get his comeuppance. His treatment of his wife and children required intervention that I was unable to understand why the mountain society was unable to impact his behavior. I found that aspect of the story very disturbing. Eugene's role and the theme of racial discrimination in the South gave a sense of reality and respect to the story. By the end, I felt I'd been touched by characters that had added to my life. This was one of those books that I was glad I stayed with from cover to cover. Enjoy! Book Review: A Balanced Perspective That Suggests the Capacity of a Classic Novelist
Summary: 5 Stars
Political interest in coal mining has changed dramatically since this novel was published. Many major coastal communities wrestle with a similar challenge to local and traditional life --- only today it is from the Liquid Natural Gas companies.
Baldacci's novel presents the coal mining interest in a precarious balance with the farmers'. Cotton Longfellow's reaction, in town after Louisa Mae's stroke, to the farmers who side with the coal company is stubborn, without reason. One of the heroes suddenly seems a villain. If he had been in a more poetic mood, Longfellow might have defended the farmers' true interests well. He might have spoken to them of Virginia mountain charms, stirred in their hearts some of the feelings the farmers have had but forgot. He could have made their desires for financial security seem like greed. Longfellow suddenly forfeits his greater qualities in this scene, grows mean, with Louisa's insistence on keeping her land seeming selfish.
An effect of this balanced view is that the readers can look at the political conflicts in our own day with some perspective, some balance. The Not In My Backyard local political leaders whom we know might be motivated by narrow, parochial interests. Perhaps the financial losses prevented by LNG requires of citizens that they scrutinize claims of lost environmental esthetics and of safety risks, especially in a day when energy is getting scarce.
We know Louisa has a legal right to her land; she does not, however, articulate her moral right to it.
In this novel, the theme of mining versus farming is mild, not the major theme, until after Diamond enters the coal mine. Its arisal is a surprise. Distance in the point of view enabled the transition to this theme. It is a novel that crams several major themes together. The mind of the preadolescent girl who's come from New York City, her interior life, is much missed . . . until the rapid events comprising this new theme arise. Still we wonder what memories of lively Brooklyn life Lou must have had to deal with while carrying out her duties on the farm! How could she arrive at the conviction that she must look forward, which she articulates in reaction to her superstitious little brother?
Having faith in Baldacci still leaves us craving for perhaps a Naturalist presentation of the person's interior life, a craving for a deep portrait of Lou's interior life and for a narrator's theory explaining it. Readers who come from reading deeper writers, like Isaac Baashevis Singer or Stephen Crane, sorely feel this lack. When those writers took to pen, they suffered, living either in close proximity or within their main character. Baldacci's narrative instead flows through more actions and events, from a safe distant perspective. This enables him to, instead, suggest the connective tissues between events that give rise to them.
Diamond's passing is easily understandable as part of the tradition of artists, to present the good hearted as doomed to early demise. Life, in literature, is supposed to be tough on the generous and sunny, particularly if they aren't the central character in the story. His passing is also understandable in the immediate. Diamond has just told Lou that he will consider moving into her home, when he turns and runs into a coal mine, just the opposite of that warm, friendly home.
Description of the plant life in the novel is precious and too rare. Plants, their names and certain features, must be to the countryman what businesses, their names and their features, are to the city dweller. Emphasis on the value of that life would have involved, among the arduous chores, appreciation that is a kind of interaction with the plants. Lou might notice a weeping willow after observing her mother's long illness. These interactions might work to effect an appreciation of the nature in the mountains that otherwise eludes us, that seems so integral to a presentation of life there.
If Baldacci's principle aim was to defend, protect, and preserve Virginia mountain life, his attorney character would have spoken out well about its intrinsic value and his characters' interactions with the peculiar plant life there would have dramatized it.
Although Judge Atkins, Cotton Longfellow, and Lou are basically disembodied voices in this narrative, their resonant voices and their self-consistent action serve to present some of the reality of human being. The theatre of the courtroom is straight out of Hollywood's early days (perhaps Inherit the Wind, perhaps from Frank Capra's movies). There is also something out of clairvoyance literature. The way events weave tightly together is admirable to view. At the same time, classic literature devotees wish the broad reading audience would have more patience with character development so our best-selling American writers could write to their greatest potential.
Book Review: Brilliant First Half/Melodramatic Ending
Summary: 3 Stars
I loved this book as I was reading it. I mean - I LOVED IT! I thought the characters were vividly painted, the descriptions of the setting were extraordinary, and I was sucked in by the whole aura and atmosphere. I was carried away, transported to a different time and place. It was a great evocation of Virginia in the 1940s. So imagine my surprise and horror when the book's last act becomes a hackneyed court room drama replete with that old chestnut about the "surprise" witness appearing at the last minute. The book degenerates into ridiculous, sentimental theatricality in the courtroom sequences, right down to moustache-twirling villains. And then the revelations at the end about where the characters end up as grown-ups are pure Hollywood contrivance. Not to give anything away, but characters don't just do well, they succeed beyond wild probabilities and circumstances to become national heroes! I still can't believe such a great, nuanced book devolved into such an unintentionally funny series of black and white cliches.Book Review: A different Baldacci
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not a huge Baldacci fan, but I've read few books and this one is just stunningly beautiful. Baldacci paints a vivid and heart tugging picture of life in the Virginia Mountains for two young nearly orphaned children. The writting is poetic and beautiful and will send your heart through a roller coaster of emotions despite the Hollywood ending. Highly recommended.