Search - The Book of Ruth

This was an wonderfully written book with a shocking ending. I suggest you reread the first few pages after you finish the book.

This book was a very insightful account of a young woman who'd been "different" all her life. Made to feel unworthy and unwanted by her mother--especially when compared to her accomplished younger brother--Ruth embarks on life after high school at a dreary job in a dreary town. Her life is changed in many ways--not all positive-- when she meets, marries, and has a child with Ruby, an immature, impulsive boy in a man's guise. A tragic series of events changes Ruth's life forever and, it seems, puts her on a better path after all.

Our narrator tells a simple yet emotionally moving tale of a life filled with quiet desperation and infinite dreams. I was moved enough to write a review, which I never do. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys challenging their perception of what defines a normal family.

Not the book for me. Waaay to hard to get into.

I worked in a group home for mentally retarded men while I attended college. There is (was) a very large mental institution in my hometown that had mainstreamed most of it's almost 15,000 residents (in it's hey day) back in to the community. There were multiple group homes for men and women and I often supervised parties and dates for the clients. This book brought all of this back to me. Ruth and Ruby are both fairly high functioning retarded people. This relationship got out of hand mainly from May's iron-fisted way of dealing with her daughter and her constant comparison of her with her genius son Matt. There were parts of their relationship that I thought were beautiful, but most of it was like the beauty of the vibrant patterns on a rattlesnake's back; beautiful but dangerous. This book brought all the sadness back to me that I felt watching people with little or no control of their life attempt to have a relationship.
This was certainly a worthwhile book to read and I would recommend it to anyone.

I absolutely loved the story that main character Ruth tells about her pathetic family in rural Illinois, I can't believe this was the author Jane Hamilton's first novel, it's brilliant and made me laugh and gasp in horror too. Ruth's mother May had a hard life - her first husband and love of her life was killed at war, her brilliant son Matt never returned her love, her second husband abandoned her, she's alienated her entire family, and as far as she's concerned her daughter Ruth can't do anything right. Ruth grows up trying and failing to please her mother; and settles on Ruby, the first man to pay her the slightest attention. Ruby, like everybody else in this book, is damaged; also he can't keep a job or his clarity, even after they have their baby Justin. Ruth and Ruby together are completely headed towards catastrophe but she tells the story with such love and conviction it's never difficult to read at any point... eventually it all comes to a shocking head, and then she just continues on telling it until I'm sad the book ends.