CoffeeAndThorn reviewed 50 States by Richard R. Becker
Review of '50 States' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I listened to the audiobook, over a week or so, while walking many many miles delivering leaflets . Each day kept disappearing into the stories, and each time I got to the end of the book, I just kept going back to the start. Some of the stories certainly washed over me the first time, so the second time they seemed new. Some of them meant more the third time than the first, some seemed to mean something different at each hearing, some came to feel like old friends.
I don't know America at all. It didn't seem to matter that I barely knew the names of the states: all of the people felt real to me.
The third time through, I thought, "well, I'm going to have to review this and I can't review fifty stories separately, I'd better find a theme". It was hard, but then I thought …
I listened to the audiobook, over a week or so, while walking many many miles delivering leaflets . Each day kept disappearing into the stories, and each time I got to the end of the book, I just kept going back to the start. Some of the stories certainly washed over me the first time, so the second time they seemed new. Some of them meant more the third time than the first, some seemed to mean something different at each hearing, some came to feel like old friends.
I don't know America at all. It didn't seem to matter that I barely knew the names of the states: all of the people felt real to me.
The third time through, I thought, "well, I'm going to have to review this and I can't review fifty stories separately, I'd better find a theme". It was hard, but then I thought of the story "The Best Life", and then "Forget me nots", which speaks about "the best day", and then "The Engagement". And it came to me. These are stories about coming to terms with, coming to celebrate, the fact that the life we have is the best life we're going to have, so we need to be ready to grasp hold of it, whatever it is, whatever its constraints and disappointments, long or short, and make the best we can of it. I was pleased with this, it seemed, curiously, a good message for me just then.
But then the fourth time through, that didn't seem right at all - this was a book about something altogether different... There is so much in this book. It will be about something different again when you read it. Enjoy.