A Slender Thread
This is not what I thought it was going
to be. I expected a more crafty type of book, still, this one had
some pretty powerful themes and messages going on. And it did pull
you in.
Margot is an artist that works in a
gallery, having given up her own art. Her older sister Lacey has
settled down, had twin girls, and is a weaver and teacher. But when
Lacey is diagnosed with a progressive illness their lives change.
This illness will take away Lacey's speech, and her capacity for
understanding language, and she's already showing numerous symptoms.
Margot is torn between wanting to help her sister, who has always
been there for her, and her relationship with Oliver, a man she's
been seeing for awhile and who's a temperamental artist himself. Not
to mention Lacey's husband Alex has become very needy, and he and
Margot have some history. Add in the twin daughters Toni and Wink
and their assorted issues with graduating high school and getting
ready to go to college and the family has found themselves very out
of sorts in a time where they just want everything to be normal.
I like Margot. I think she's got a
mind of her own and she's learned not to let anybody push her around.
That being said she does tend to be overly dramatic and gets sucked
in by other peoples problems sometimes. It's like she never gets any
rest. Lacey, because she is the sister losing her speech, I didn't
feel as attached too. We only get a few glimpses into her
personality really and it just makes it hard to relate. Sure I felt
sorry for her, but it was a detached sort of sorrow. I did like the
twins, Wink and Toni, they seemed to be the most realistic of all the
characters. Alex and Oliver, the men of the novel put in a poor
showing as they both seemed very ego-centric. Which I thought a
little unfair since they were the main representation of the male
characters in the book.
Since I thought this was going to be a
more craft-centered book judging by the cover and title, I was a
little disappointed at how little weaving actually played into the
book. Each chapter had a little line about weaving, and occasionally
it mentioned Lacey's projects. But that was it. The main focus of
the book was rather the “slender thread” between the two sisters
and their relationship growing up through the years. But there was a
lot of drama in this book. I did think that some of the
relationships seemed a little unrealistic, especially Margot's and
Oliver's. They just didn't seem well suited to each other even
though the book tried to convince you that they were. And the ending
of the book was just a little too neatly tied up for my tastes.
A sad read but it does have a lot of
emotion. Not a bad one if you're into a book that's mainly about
characters and their relationships.
A Slender Thread
Copyright 2010
321 pages
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