People in the book blogging community are likely already familiar with The Shore by Sara Taylor. In my little corner of the blogging community it seems to be the most talked about, tweeted about, and reviewed book that came out this spring.
Here are the blogger reviews of The Shore from my network (if I missed yours, please comment with the link and I’ll update the list!):
- Backlist Books
- Bookish Tendencies
- Books and Bowel Movements
- Books Speak Volumes
- The Daily Dosage
- Gun in Act One
- Outlandish Lit
- River City Reading
- Sarah’s Book Shelves
- Shaina Reads
These awesome bloggers have shared great reviews & thoughts about The Shore, and that makes it a bit intimidating to try to add to the conversation at this point, but I decided to throw my 2 cents in anyway.
For those not familiar with The Shore already, it’s a novel told through a series of interconnected stories spanning multiple generations of two families living on a group of rural islands off the coast of Virginia. Also – and I guess this is ever so slightly spoiler-y – there’s a very controversial last chapter. Some people liked it or didn’t mind it, some people hated it. I’ll talk a tiny bit about my thoughts on it below, while trying to tiptoe around any spoilers.
What I loved about The Shore:
It’s southern fiction at its best. The setting is as much a character as any of the humans. It’s gothic. It features incredible strong female characters. It dabbles in magical realism. It’s sultry and rich and full of humanity – at its best and worst. While I was reading it I felt like the great southern women writers of the past had been summoned and were nodding their approval.
What The Shore left me thinking about:
First of all – it left me wanting more. I would have happily read twice the length. As I reflect on it more though, I realize that it probably works better at the length it’s at. The last chapter surprised me, I wasn’t expecting the novel to go in that direction. It felt like it was decidedly one thing, and then suddenly it was something else. For a few days I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But the more I reflected, the more it worked for me. It challenges us as readers: it challenges our ideas of storytelling, our understanding of how characters and events relate to each other, and how far we’re willing to follow the author away from what we thought the novel was. It’s good to be challenged as a reader, and as I’ve thought more about it I’ve realized I haven’t encountered a novel that has challenged me in those ways in quite a while. It felt extremely refreshing.
What you should know before reading The Shore:
It has moments of darkness, violence and descriptions of domestic violence against women. It features strong women who overcome oppression and the hardest of circumstances – some more successfully than others, but it also shows them at their lowest moments. It’s honest and real about human behavior.
Once you read The Shore, be sure to check out the discussion breakdown (including spoilers) on the Socratic Salon – there are so many awesome insights shared as readers reflect on this one.
Affiliate links to buy this book: IndieBound | Amazon
The main image of this post features the UK cover, which I think is beautiful. But the US cover, displayed within the post, more appropriately captures the mood of the book.
A hundred times YES to being challenged and loving it. After settling into it, I loved the switch at the end for that very reason…it made me (continues to make me) think and I absolutely love that in a book.
Agree completely – it’s such a good quality in a novel. I’m going to try to push it for my book club because I want to keep talking and thinking about it.
So glad you liked this book! I love what you said about it feeling “like the great southern women writers of the past had been summoned and were nodding their approval.”
Thank you! It was such a good read. :D
It really can be wonderful to be surprised by how a novel turns out. Certainly there are times when you want the predictable formula (especially for lighter comfort reads), but we need books like this to shake things up and remind us of what books *can* be, not just what they have been. Awesome review!
That’s so true. I’ve always enjoyed books that do this so much, but I don’t seem to read them much. I think I need to seek them out more.
I agree it can be challenging to review a book that “everyone” else already has, but I think you did a great job here! I totally agree, I could have kept right on reading, but also am glad it is just the way it is.
Thank you! It was a bit challenging to review, but also really fun to be reading something that so many other people were reading and talking about too. :)
I love how you did this review – and thank you for linking to mine! I love how she left us wanting more – and I agree about the setting…I tend to love books where the setting becomes a character.
I was one of the naysayers about the final chapter. I read it late at night and probably didn’t have the patience at the time to really work through it. But, the book challenged me (both structurally and topically) even without the final chapter…so I kind of just felt it was disjointed.
Thank you – and you’re welcome! :)
The book was challenging – did you have one of the ARCs without the family tree? I read a finished copy from the library, and I thought the family tree helped a lot, but even then it was still challenging!
Great review! I love that everyone seems to walk away from this book still thinking so much about it – and about more than that last chapter. I’m glad my sister took my copy or I’d still be ruminating over that family tree I think
Thank you! I love that too – it makes it really fun to all be reading it and talking about it at the same time.
You’ve hit the nail on the head with “challenging.” That is definitely the one word I’d pick if I had to describe this book in one word. I wasn’t as crazy about it as most other bloggers, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate what it had going for it. I also feel like if nothing else, this is a book pretty much guaranteed to evoke a strong response, whether positive or negative. I think you did a great job here summing it up, and thank you for the link!
Thank you! I agree – it’s pretty much impossible to not have feelings about this one. It would be a spectacular book group discussion – so much to think and talk about.