Helpful Score: 2
It wasn't a bad book, obviously, as so many loved it. Great writing, too. I just couldn't form any feelings for the characters. Didn't care what happened to any of them. I didn't finish the book.
Helpful Score: 2
From Library Journal
This first novel explores the stickily enduring bonds of love. Nine characters speak in alternating chapters: a reluctant psychic; a selfish, philandering husband; a sensitive, eccentric one; a finicky undertaker; a young soldier; an unhappy little girl; a Haitian migrant; and two widows, one merry, one grief stricken. This unlikely cast inhabits a narrative spanning 30 years. Some, like Soleil Marie, a sugarcane laborer, or Inez, who can't avoid seeing the future, speak with startling vividness. Others, like the child Luella, are less convincing. All are trapped behind the sweetly poisoned bars of the "sugar cage"--a "sign" in the dregs of one character's glass. Inez spots it: "bars glistening like white sand," a sure sign "she was going to let love eat her up." Runaway emotions devour some, others struggle to both love and survive. A Southern gothic tale, magically imaginative, yet harshly real.
This first novel explores the stickily enduring bonds of love. Nine characters speak in alternating chapters: a reluctant psychic; a selfish, philandering husband; a sensitive, eccentric one; a finicky undertaker; a young soldier; an unhappy little girl; a Haitian migrant; and two widows, one merry, one grief stricken. This unlikely cast inhabits a narrative spanning 30 years. Some, like Soleil Marie, a sugarcane laborer, or Inez, who can't avoid seeing the future, speak with startling vividness. Others, like the child Luella, are less convincing. All are trapped behind the sweetly poisoned bars of the "sugar cage"--a "sign" in the dregs of one character's glass. Inez spots it: "bars glistening like white sand," a sure sign "she was going to let love eat her up." Runaway emotions devour some, others struggle to both love and survive. A Southern gothic tale, magically imaginative, yet harshly real.
Helpful Score: 1
Connie Mae Fowler writes a book rich in character about people from Southern Florida. You can almost sense the cane fields of Florida, the jungles of Vietnam, and the voodoo ceremonies of the cane workers.
