Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

This is another Amazon Vine book review. I had rather skimpy pickings last week and this book looked to be one of the better bets. Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman was a lovely story that for the most part I enjoyed very much. I gave it four stars.

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This was a story of two families thrown together due to their children’s marriage and then those children’s death one hour after their marriage. The story is set in Maine and is divided into four summers starting with the wedding and ending with the two families acceptance of each other and each other’s strong and weak points four years later. I felt that the story was well told and included many human emotions of sadness, grief, sorrow, love, happiness, beauty, musical appreciation. Every once in a while though, I felt I was hitting a jarring note in the book when I came across a crude word that did nothing for the story except make you wonder why that word had been included in this story in the first place. Yes I am a bit of a prude, but reading a book that is tender and lovely and then running into words that should only appear in sleazy novels was inappropriate and unnecessary. Other than that, I enjoyed reading this book and could also see that it would probably make a terrific movie with the family conflicts, the conflicts within the families, seeing the growth of a musical prodigy, it even had a lovely story setting which would make for great viewing.. It was an interesting and a bit different story.

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The child prodigy was Samantha in the book, a young girl that at age three had been adopted from Cambodia and then due to unforseen circumstances wasn't living a life of the great American dream. At the time of the story her prowess at musicwas discovered and her violin playing became a theme throughout the book. Her story in itself would make a great novel.