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Nov 04, 2017mslighthearted rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
70 words, six commas, four dashes, one period. That is the opening sentence of Bonnie Burnard's "A Good House." People laugh whenever I describe a book as having simply-too-many-words but I will forever be able to present this book as the ideal example. Burnard writes in two extremes: painfully describing every minute detail of the setting while managing to withhold more than the starkest insight into any of the character's thoughts and motivations- a rather impressive feat for a book written in the third person omniscient and filled with so many other banal descriptions of place. There is a great story to be found amidst all the clutter. Sadly, one has to sift through so much chaff to get to the wheat that the pleasure of reading is quickly turned into work of the hard-labour sort. The character of Margaret is the one thing that kept me even remotely interested in reading the story; she quickly became my favourite female character of all the books I've read this year. She is an everywoman with whom I easily identified. Margaret is the reason this book gets two stars instead of the one star that I am so tempted to impart on this bit of prolix prose.