Sharp story dulled by excessive summarizing.
589502
In the late 1700's, Irish seven-year-old Lavinia loses her parents on the voyage to America. As they were indentured to the owner of a Southern plantation, she finds herself living in the plantation's "kitchen house" with the slaves, who become her family despite her white skin.  The novel alternates between the retrospective point of view of Lavinia and the real-time point of view of Belle, a half-white slave who becomes a surrogate mother/sister to Lavinia.  Through multiple tragedies and fewer triumphs, Lavinia and Belle remain loyal to each other despite the dangerous dynamics of relationship between free and slave, white and black.

Given some of the reviews, I half expected the conclusion to annoy me with utter, excessive tragedy.  Personally, I found it mostly inevitable.  Sad, yes, but realistically so, and not without a few hopeful spots.

The author's research is meticulous: not only physical details like the food and furniture of this time period, but also the assumptions and attitudes of the people who lived then.  I did feel a bit of a vacuum concerning the politics of the time.  Surely even an insular plantation would have been at least somewhat concerned with national events?  The dialects don't utilize gimmicks like dropped g's and phonetic spelling, so I was able to hear the characters' voices without laboring to sound out what they said.  Also, especially given the size of her cast, the author makes her characters surprisingly sympathetic, though some remain more archetype than individual.

Unfortunately, the writing style prevents this book from achieving greatness.  Lavinia's method of looking back isolates the reader from the action of the story.  She summarizes huge sections of her life, which is necessary to a point, given how much time passes during this novel (about 15 years).  But she also summarizes conversations or events that should be structured as immediate scenes with action and dialogue, such as (p. 20): "I began to keep aside a bit of my evening meal, and in the morning I could hardly wait to give Ben my offering. He never failed to show surprise and always ate it with a great show of pleasure. One day, in return, Ben presented me with a bird nest he had found."  Also (p. 194): "...[H]e ... announced his disfavor of women studying Latin. Meg quickly replied that immature men with strong opinions were, by her estimation, very dull indeed.  There was a long silence ... I fought unsuccessfully to recall a favorable subject to engage our stunned guests."  Summaries like this occur throughout the entire book and deaden the tension.  Even the final page suffers from this technique.

Had Lavinia's point of view been styled more like Belle's, I might have loved this book.  None of the characters is flawless, yet they face abuse with grace, predicament with resourcefulness.  They outwardly fight for their humanity when they can and inwardly cling to it when they can't.  The historical setting is well drawn.  But the excessive summaries kept pushing me away from the characters and dulling the power of the events.  When I finished it, I realized that THE KITCHEN HOUSE had interested me but never fully engaged me.  If Ms. Grissom writes another historical novel, I won't rush to purchase it, but I might pick it up to scan a few pages and see if I can put it down.
4632499
The initial chapters should have given a summary of the overall history of that period. It was not until the end that I valued what the author was reporting. Too much of the book just reported what the various politicans literally said.
4389599
An interesting story that probably made a great magazine article (Saturday Evening Post).  Unfortunately, the book contains an abundance of details that are only marginally related to the story.  I found the last two-thirds to three-fourths of the book to be pretty tedious reading.
4551693
This book could have been fascinating and captivating because it centers around a true story of an extremely haunted house.  But instead it is way too wordy and becomes boring and tedious.  There are far too many trite sayings, coming at the end of virtually every sentence.  It would have been better if the author had taken the events in order and let the horror build.  Instead Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 both cover the same period of time, the story jumps back and forth between; for that  reasons, I'm not sure if I will buy vol. 3.  Will it end up being more of the same?  The one thing I love about Volume 1 and 2 are the quotes from other authors.  Perron has chosen some thought provoking quotes to introduce and conclude each section.
966129
This could have been a great book. Gripping story, very good character development and a page-turning suspense building up to an expectation of a dramatic finish...I could hardly put it down. What a disappointment! Some slack immature writing in the early chapters was excused due to the interesting characters and the suspenseful story. However, the end of the story is far too long and drawn out and becomes boring in extreme. This writer is very talented, but he must learn to tighten up his writing style.
3315323
The facts were interesting, but the writing style was tedious.
1461505
The story was interesting but the writer is prone to providing excessive amounts of expository information in the beginning of the book instead of showing the reader through dialogue or even flashbacks.  The author's use of expository information does decrease about halfway through the book, but the continuity of the storyline begins to falter a bit because the reader is not provided with enough action or dialogue to adequately follow the decisions and post traumatic events holding the main character back or propelling her into action.  As noted in the title there are noticeable errors in word selection, grammar, and punctuation that detract from the book and give it an unpolished amateurish feel.  I do believe that with some professional editing and critique the work would be much stronger.
649684
The book is well written, and is mostly interesting, but there simply isn't sufficient story to fill 248 pages.  So the author goes off on EVERY possible tangent, like page after page on the details of the lives of individuals who have very little to do with the murder or forensic science.  And equally so on other subjects.  Several times I almost tossed it aside because I was tired of yet another page of barely relevant material.
123530
This is a good book that could have been a great book had it been edited with a sharper scalpel. The story of the Ephrussi family is incredibly compelling and the book gets better as it progresses into the propulsive stories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, WWI, and WWII and the annexation of Austria in 1938 with all its attendant horrors. But the book has too many self-indulgent show-offy apropos-of-nothing passages. I had to chuckle at the author's use of the word "longueur" in multiple places because his book sure suffers from such passages in too many places. Just because an author spent much time on something--such as his hands-on research into the Ephrussi's family's art--does not mean that memorializing such work should make it past the second draft when one is writing for the public. This is not to say that side stories are not important or that this reviewer does not like them. In fact, on issues the uninitiated would want to know about, such as what exactly a netsuke is, and how they are made, and whether men or women in Japan wore them, he leaves readers in suspense or to fend for themselves to learn.  The narrative about the author's great uncle and post-war Japan was wonderful and heartfelt.
676769
I truly looked forward to reading this story, as I am a lover of historical fiction and the Roman period has always fascinated me.  The story began well enough, but then historical detail began to overwhelm depth of characterization, and my interest waned.  Ultimately, I prefer stories that are a crie de cours, not just a restating of historical facts.  Sorry, but for that reason I had to score this low.
4531953
Of what would have been an exceptionally unique concept with a male-muse, the story got lost in the most excruciating details of music, songs, songwriters and singers.  As an avid reader, I love a good, engaging story and truthfully towards the later half of the book the author relates a story from the characters past (drunk piano player) that is intriquing and adds a touch of humanity to the character and a long-lost memory, however to get to this point it is preceeded by a lengthy narrative of this person that got so relentless and mundane, I skipped ahead and found that little was lost when I got to the main point.  This is my primary complaint, the details, the constant need to take a story too far, pushing your readers to that limit of "are we there yet?" muddled what was otherwise a decent story. Truthfully, I felt as though the author was "showing off" and we've all been at the dinner party with one of those people who have a whole lot to say about nothing.

Additionally, I found the characters sterotypical and predictable while the leading man, Julan, painsakingly one-dimensional and bland.  Nothing about him - even his 8,000+ ipod playlist and his developing staulker-ish actions surprised or awed me in such a way that I felt connected to him or at the very least to his story.

Overall, I was so disappointed that this is the first time I'm posting a review.  Sorry all you five-starrers out there, I can't say agree.  I honestly think this is a great first-draft and with a little heavy editing of those weighed-down details and a little more thought to character development this novel could go much further.  Now I'm off to read a classic or two to restore my faith in the written word.
501713
The writer used a lot of words to say very little. Good story line, but too much in the way of descriptive narratives. Don't have time to sit and read a book that I have to wade through the bs to get to the story. Not impressed!
29047
overly detailed and repetitive the story could have been told in180 pages. Wanted to love it but could not deal with the endless minutia.
4436447
Too long.  Story could have been conveyed in 2 hours.
1131001
This is a difficult book to review because it is essentially two books in one. There is an interesting story with unique characters and some memorable set pieces.  Unfortunately the author goes on long tangents about marine life and technology without warning. It seemed like whenever things were getting interesting the story would abruptly stop. The sad part is that not all the facts presented here are true, and the author spends the bulk of the book throwing fact after fact at the reader. Honestly, any reader would be better off buying a biology textbook and some other fiction novel of their choosing. I think if you were to cut out the textbook like narrative this book would only be about two hundred pages.
3445241
This is a true story - a good story.  I liked the substance of it.  But Im not sure I liked the things the author chose to put in the story.  It was more like journalism than a story.  Ive read other authors who take facts and make them into an engaging story.  This one needed some changes if thats the goal.  But I was very engaged during the last 2/3.

My complaints:

1.  The author did too much background detail on various characters who were not the main characters.  It was kind of boring in the beginning.  It was hard to keep track of the many characters.  Some of the back stories were about people who died in the plane crash.  That was a nice thing to do, but it didn't help the story.  He did a back story about women who died at other times and places during World War II - that did not interest me.  However I did enjoy his story about the history of gliders starting with Hitlers use.  Although it was a tangent from the main story.

2.  I wish the author talked more about the natives and their beliefs and habits.  One thing that continues to trouble me:  at various times during a females life the men chop off her fingers.  By the time they are old, some of them have only thumbs left.  And they wanted to chop off Margarets fingers.  She was one of the plane survivors.  She got away before they could.  Apparently this was a way to appease the gods.  The men fought other men with spears.  If you don't have fingers you cant hold a spear.  Was this a way to keep women from having power over men?  Another horrible custom of men subjugating women.

3.  There are pictures in the paperback book.  The author should have made a PDF of those pictures to go with the audiobook.

4.  The author should not narrate his own book.  He is not a professional narrator.  He read it like he was reading an encyclopedia - at times like he wanted to get done with it.  At times his voice had a whining quality.

DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person.  Unabridged audiobook length: 8 hrs and 32 mins.  Swearing language: none.  Sexual content: none.  Setting: mostly 1945 in Dutch New Guinea.  Book copyright: 2011.  Genre: nonfiction.
2788616
The story line was good, but way to much detail on little things in the book that become pain stakeingly boring.