Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: strong start; very disappointing fininsh

I purchased this book on the strength of the first chapter, excerpted here at amazon.com. That chapter, and the succeeding 50 pages or so, were funny--a great read. Ms. Lipman's portrayal of the protagonist as a young girl infuriated by the "genteel" anti-semitism of a Vermont innkeeper really resonated with me, a transplanted Mainer who happens to be Jewish. But following a significant plot twist (which I'll not reveal here), the book goes decidedly downhill. The story becomes very formulaic, the characters introduced beyond that point are predictable and unidimensional, as is the rest of the story. It was as if Ms. Lipman lost interest in writing this book and was doing as little as she could to please a demanding publisher. If she could have sustained the energy of the first chapters, this would have been a great summer read. As it is, forget it.