Author: Ann Patchett
Begun: Feb 15th 2025
Finished: Feb 17th 2025
Type: Audiobook on Libby
Narrator: Meryl Streep
Rating: 6.5/10
A gentle book that quietly leads you through the story, utterly ruined near the end by an addendum which doesn't add to the characters but is instead unnecessarily tears down and eviscerates the lynchpin of the tale. It serves no real purpose to the story. It's just the author's opinion outside of the novel that is shoehorned in there destroying the integrity of both author and character.
There are a couple of foreshadowing sentences that worried me for a while but it turned out ok. The ending is...happy? Lara is content while telling the story, though her daughters find it hard to believe. I totally understood it though, and was glad Lara felt it too.
I listened to the audiobook and Meryl Streep was fantastic. She disappeared into the story, and you never had to think about who was saying what: she made it seem effortless. Audiobooks are made and broken by the narrators. I've come across some books (MurderBot, Wolf Hall) that I would LOVE to listen to, but the narrator ruins it. Not the case here.
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