From: fairrosa
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 09:12:08 -0500

Re Ruby Holler: I'm in the "liking this book a lot" camp. And, actually,

Melody Allen wrote:


These two adults don't come off as "sensible" at all -- they bury their money under two piles of stone! They went and got themselves 2 13-year-old trouble-makers to nurse! They wanted to go on adventures for very childlike desires!

They seem to me the artistic, "sensible" only in a very spiritual and loving way but possibly not in the practical everyday way. To me, it seems that they quite keep to their characters when they forget stuff like that.

Re Dillon Dillon:

I found the parallel stories between the new born loon and Dillon quite trite. I also found the voice of the narrator shifting -- a very mature 3rd person voice, lyrical and wise most of the time. And yet, there are times when this narrator also tries to tell us how Dillon feels, through his 10-year-old mind. So, it is jarring to read sentences like this (on page 48) "Dillon sighed deeply. So life and circumstance had conspired to keep this knowledge from him. Well, that explained why Daisy and Didier were tongue rollers and he wasn't." The narrator is reflecting what Dillon is thinking, "life and circumstance had conspired" just doesn't cut it for me as a 10-year-old's way to describe such occurrence.

I also found the obsession and the suffering he has with his double name not entirely convincing. And, I can't get over the name of his older brother, Didier Dillon -- maybe I am culturally ignorant here -- is this a common name for a boy. If not, it re ally is an odd name and I would be less happy to be called Didier Dillon than Dillon Dillon. <-- entirely subjective and arbitrary. It's just that Dillon is an ok first name -- if their last name is Applewhite and his name is Applewhite Applewhite... or

McClintock and his name is McClintock McClintock....

So, you see, I'm not as taken with this book as so many others are.

-- fairrosa
Received on Tue 31 Dec 2002 08:12:08 AM CST