PUDDLES
By Lynn Barry
AmErica House - November 2001
ISBN: 1588511391 - Paperback
Reviewed by: Nancy
Marie, MyShelf.com
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a Copy
PUDDLES is a soap-opera
in paperback form. It tells the story of one woman's journey through heartache
and betrayal to healing and reconciliation. Beginning with her teenage
daughter's sexual indiscretion to her neighbor's hidden secrets to the
trials of having a husband that is a weekly commuter, PUDDLES takes the
reader on a journey into the daily life of a soap-opera style housewife.
It is complete with all the twists and turns of any television soap, but
moves much more quickly.
PUDDLES is extremely
easy to read, and Barry seems to have a natural gift for story-telling.
The characters, for the most part, are well developed, and the dialogue
is realistic and believable. However, unlike some of the more famous story-tellers
such as Ernest Hemmingway, Barry does not appear to have had the benefit
of a good editor. There are a couple of plot problems and numerous mechanical
errors which range from improper usage of quotation marks and capitalization,
to poor word choices, to verb tense confusion, and sentence structure
inaccuracies.
As a writer, I must
admit that these errors were distracting. However, as a reader, I also
have to admit that the story caught and held my attention, and that I
read the whole book in about five hours. The ease with which the story
reads makes it an ideal book to take to the beach, or on a journey where
one needs a light, entertaining distraction rather than a heavy tome to
meditate upon.
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Nancy Marie is the
author of When You Wish Upon A Star.
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