Review: Judith
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 17, 2013
You will read a lot about Jasper's physical problems: coughing up blood, dark colored urine, difficulty with bladder (including shaking his member and zipping up), aches and pains, muscle spasms and cramps. At length and in detail. Repeatedly.You will be treated to guy humor--see loc 380 "I gotta fresh one in my pants pocket if you wanna go fishing". And a few words misused--e.g., yellow jacket sting described as "exquisite", like being "bludgeoned" with a needle.You will enjoy(?) lengthy (and accurate) descriptions of house in Maine, the yard and barn, boats and seashore, cove and bay, lobstering and fishing, engines and emergency equipment. There are pages and pages of description: smoking, shopping (including grocery list), meals (at home and in resturant), storage in loft, setting bait and gutting fish, the proposed power plant and arguments against it, the unfulfilling marriage of one of the secondary characters now divorced. Some of the descriptions are lovely and evocative and germane to the story; others not so much, seemingly fillers.Memories, flashbacks, dream sequences come without warning, and it takes a few sentences before the reader realizes that the story has been put in hiatus while one character retrieves a memory or the story is recreating the past. POVs shift rapidly, sometimes disconcertingly so.Two protagonists introduced by 10%--Jasper and Ray, each damaged in his own way. There have been a few hints of the story line to come. Dialog is very realistic when men talk to one another, but cross-gender dialog seems a bit artificial, while descriptions tend to be more like a travelogue, with subject-verb-object sentences, one after another. The third, Dale, enters the story as a fully realized character at the 33% mark.At last! At location 2270, the 53% mark, the story finally goes into action, with the context for the prologue revealed. I had almost decided I had had enough of the Maine Travelogue (and was going to give it 2 stars) and wasn't going to finish the book, but I'm glad I persevered, because it was interesting enough to warrant 3 stars. I think the author has the potential to write an excellent book, but this is not that book. This one is more like half travelogue, half novella.FINALLY, at location 2734, 64% of the way into the novel, the supernatural background and the structure of the tale is revealed. Sure, there were earlier hints, but they were lost in the deluge of descriptive prose. At times it was difficult to figure out what was going on. If you read this book, start making notes of character names, because a whole bunch of new people get introduced.The end of the tale had a lovely lesson about sin and redemption; loss and recovery, though I disagreed with some of the underlying philosophy and in a couple of cases thought the ultimate outcome for a character was not in alignment with his behavior earlier in the book.Though I gave the book 3 stars (average, not exceptional), I would read any further books written by Mr. Cobb. As he learns his craft, he will be a writer to watch.