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Title: Sinclair Lewis meets Oprah
Review: This novel is really just an 'Oprahization' of the tradition of Babbitt, Main Street and Elmer Gantry--it's fundamentally a screed against the smothering hypocrisy of a midwestern town that fails to understand its most hip, sensitive residents. Frankly, Jane, it's been done, and without resorting to the emotionally manipulative story and characters you've concocted here.As several reviewers have mentioned, Hamilton is capable self-absorbed characters bring this book down, especially Alice's tedious expositions of just how *remarkably* sorry she is for herself.Also, the devices Hamilton uses to prove how her bohemian family stands out from the hoi polloi in that heartless (and obviously soul-less) Wisconsin backwater are both tiresome and ridiculous. The farm as an island of Eden in the subdivisions? Mommy's folk dances in the attic? Daddy's clarinet serenades to grieving, confused daughters? This stuff is fodder for the Simpsons!
