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The Sentimentalists Johanna Skibsrud Books

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The Sentimentalists Johanna Skibsrud Books

This book is set partly in the scarred minds of Vietnam War veterans and tackles the truth from their perspective. There is objective truth, which is the one that relates the facts as they happened, the one that cannot be found or told since the very act of telling it imposes a speaker bias. The subjective truths are the ones we must confront. Who is telling them and how old are they? How many layers of denial and forgetfulness have covered up the various perspectives of the truths?
The physical location of much of this book is a part of Ontario on the shore of an artificial lake that was created by flooding good villages in order to build the St Lawrence Seaway. The rising flood obliterating but also covering all in its path becomes a symbol of this inexorable covering up of all perspectives under a smooth sheet that hides and makes us forget all that was beneath, except for tantalizing hints that poke out of the water. In this context, the reader is asked to determine what was the truth and what exactly matters and to whom. The struggles of the vets and their families in their journey to recall and justify just what exactly happened in Nam were interesting, but there were too many flashbacks and flash forwards that left me reeling and forgetting at times where and when I was. Perhaps that was the intent but it does take away at times from the story.


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The Sentimentalists Johanna Skibsrud Books Reviews

Yes, the rambling writing gets lost at times and makes little sense at others. The writing could definitely be tightened up for clarity and flow. The messages, however, are important ones.

The primary epiphany for me was understanding once and for all, deep in my gut, that sometimes early events in a person's life can so captivate them that they are unable to set them aside to function well or fully in any of life's roles - parent, spouse, friend.Their good intentions to do so cannot help but fail, hurting consistently those they love and who love them.

Research has shown that 22 U.S. veterans a day (yes, each day) commit suicide. An alarming and tragic figure. This book illuminates for us one of the motivations that lie behind that statistic.

But the destruction of the soul that haunts many vets is not their story alone, as this book is not the story of the reverberations of The Vietnam War alone. It could be a book about someone who was horribly abused as a child, someone who caused a terrible road accident with fatalities or any other significant life event with unexpected, traumatic results.

I bought this book at a used bookstore where I know the owner well and buy hundreds of books each year. She recommended the book to me and I was not disappointed. Not your average book. And isn't that a welcome departure!?
a bit too introspective for me...the internal monologue seemed to drag on and on. However, there was one beautiful paragraph on page 84 about one's intuition for a sense of place that was worth reading the entire book.
Did not like this book....spent too much time on endless drivel which had little relevence to the story or people...I ended up skimming through much of this book. It really turned me off this author....will not buy any more of her books.
I can’t give this book less than a one, although I truly wish I could. Seriously, I would like the 8 hours I spent reading this book back. I fought through it (a self-inflicted crusade), with hopes of some sort of redeemable point to the whole, rambling mess. Sadly, it was not to be so.

If you’re thinking of reading this book, go for a walk. You’ll be a better person for it.
I, too, found some of the prose in this novel difficult to wade through. Especially in the first half of the novel, the long, wandering sentences often felt imprecise and clunky. Yet, as I continued reading, I was able to find a beautiful sense of longing in the meditative, meandering voice of the narrator, which, in turn, subtly established the novel's thematic underpinnings. Skibsrud invites us, as readers, to sift through what is murky on the surface and to piece together meanings and truths that lie beyond what is visible. And as we read, we mimic this search alongside the characters within her book. Ultimately, our--the characters' and the readers'--experiences dovetail into a beautiful and haunting story about the power of the unseen, of the past, and of narrative itself.
This book is set partly in the scarred minds of Vietnam War veterans and tackles the truth from their perspective. There is objective truth, which is the one that relates the facts as they happened, the one that cannot be found or told since the very act of telling it imposes a speaker bias. The subjective truths are the ones we must confront. Who is telling them and how old are they? How many layers of denial and forgetfulness have covered up the various perspectives of the truths?
The physical location of much of this book is a part of Ontario on the shore of an artificial lake that was created by flooding good villages in order to build the St Lawrence Seaway. The rising flood obliterating but also covering all in its path becomes a symbol of this inexorable covering up of all perspectives under a smooth sheet that hides and makes us forget all that was beneath, except for tantalizing hints that poke out of the water. In this context, the reader is asked to determine what was the truth and what exactly matters and to whom. The struggles of the vets and their families in their journey to recall and justify just what exactly happened in Nam were interesting, but there were too many flashbacks and flash forwards that left me reeling and forgetting at times where and when I was. Perhaps that was the intent but it does take away at times from the story.