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Review title: Overrated sap
Product review: Have we bought into the consumer culture so deeply and removed ourselves so far from an awareness of self and others that a novel that reads like an extended high school composition--dressing up common sense as some sort of homespun wisdom--is able to touch us so profoundly? Contrived, predictable, sentimental, and poorly written (good writing suggests, it doesn't bludgeon), Tending Roses never once surprises, and with its stock characters, wooden dialogue, and lame family anecdotes that the Vongortler clan inexplicably find so humorous, it rings false from page two (starts with an enticing first paragraph) to end. For agrarian fiction that truly resonates, may I suggest Wendell Berry's The Memory of Old Jack, A Place on Earth, or Jayber Crow--fiction to be read slowly and savored.
