Unconvincing sad sack self pity story
592030
There are 2 sides to every story, but this book is unconvincing.  I did give Betty's book 5 stars and I do believe her side of it. Still, Dr Mahmoody had the right to tell his story. But he fails at being believable at all.  All he says is 'I did not do this, I did not say that, blah blah blah.'

For the real truth, I recommend 'My name is Mahtob.' She is the telling one in this. She backs Betty.  Mahtob also could have chosen to meet him at any time, but never did.  It's a shame he didn't get to see her but  it was Mahtob's choice.

Dr. Mahmoody never expressed regret for his actions. This isn't about reconciling with Mahtob, it's about making himself look good. Moody died in 2009, but this book was published in 2013. Makes me wonder...
550209
Descriptive,depressing and no socially redeeming message.
1010198
Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" is a depressing diatribe describing the plight of the Lester family living in Depression era southwestern Georgia.  The Lesters headed by the lazy, procrastinating Jeeter are a group of dirt poor, illiterate and depraved  sharecroppers living in a squalid, crumbling shack on land that was once a fertile family tobacco plantation.

Year by year parcels of land would be sold off to pay for taxes leaving the Lesters in a position where they would work the land that no longer belonged to them.  Seven years ago their landlord Captain Jack no longer able to make a profit from the cotton crop that was now the staple abandoned the Lesters and other families leaving them with no means of sustenance.  The Lester family of 17 children had been winnowed down to two that still remained on their dilipidated homestead, Ellie May, an 18 year old cleft palated eyesore and Dude, a 16 year old dunderhead.  Jeeter and his wife Ada, their two kids and his aged mother lived a hardscrabble existence of constant starvation.  Through the years Jeeter made overtures to plant a cotton crop but could not establish credit for the seeds and guano fertilizer to actualize his pipe dream.

The Jeeter's seemed to destroy anything they put their hands on. They lived a hopeless existence with lofty aspirations but no action in large part due to Jeeter's refusal to work in a cotton mill and give up his dreams of farming.  The Lester's neighbor Bessie a promiscuous widow of a preacher who took up that same calling decided to marry young Dude Lester.  She promised to buy a brand new car with the $800 in life insurance as a dowery for Dude.  Within days the car used for joy riding and to cart wood to nearby Augusta was a wreck courtesy of the Lester touch.

Caldwell's book is the furthest thing from a feel good story as could be created.  It's disheartening conclusion intimates that Dude is more than happy to follow in the footsteps of his father Jeeter to continue the circle of this despondent and dreary life.
4701458
Nothing says you have found a good friend, when your friend gets you pity laid. This story was pretty weak to me. I can't say that it was even a good time killer, either.
2680057
Kind of a depressing story. Poor Maude she was selfless n always thinking of others not  herself. I guess women of her era accepted life as it was n didn't think of challenging society, their families, their lovers, husbands or male children.  She had few joys n lots of pain and lots of disappointment s
2222017
Talk about someone on the pity pot!!! I cannot recommend this book to anyone. It begins with her mother deserting her, and ends with her being cheated on a real estate deal. The rest, in between, is all about Betty. And her awful life.
2602701
Because I almost always end up disappointed. Poorly written and crammed full of semi-believable tales of sex and debauchery.  Name-dropping expedition to rival any wannabe scenesters. There. Is nothing even remotely redeeming about this girl's stories, the saddest part is, she wasn't anywhere near as hot as she thought she was, and was clearly being used while looking for a real relationship on a tour bus. Sad.
212265
This is the story of a boy who goes through life using all the benefits of a tree (that no doubt is a "mother" figure) who gives exhaustively at the expense of her own well-being basically until her "death" as a stump.  The boy grows up showing no empathy for all the horrible things that happen to this tree.  The tragic fate of the tree triggers no emotions from the part of the boy, who has a psychopathic personality of sorts.  Also he does absolutely nothing to stop the tree from deteriorating and meeting death.  And when it turns into a stump he still finds a way of using this motherly figure to sit on.  His is an absolutely cold-hearted mean person who only gets all he can from a pitiful tree who doesn't know how to set boundaries, who is weak, masochist and co-dependent.  I don't understand at all its success and praise.  The strong feelings that it elicits are about how NOT to behave and how a relationship should NOT be.  Because theirs, is a very creepy, pathological relationship and it's much better to work with positive premises with children.
3420229
It is difficult to read a story where the main character is totally unlikeable. I kept hoping he would over come his difficult childhood but it never happens. It was very depressing to watch a boy who had potential and the opportunity to make a better life for himself waste it all on self pity and drugs.  The author must believe that heretitary traits over ride one's ability to make good choices.
This was not entertaining and I almost din't finish it. I kept hoping for a better ending. I assume we are to think that he was as chained to his destiny as was the Goldfinch. Where does free will come into the picture?
725122
I'm missing what others liked about this sad and depressing tale. All the characters are messed up; There is not one redeeming quality about any of them.

Therese senses things about people and used that to finally get what she wanted. She quickly was soon gravely disappointed. There's spineless Tim who Therese falls for, for some reason. What was she thinking? Tim's mother - a controlling literal force of nature. Matilda became rebellious but who could blame her. Every relationship was messed up beyond belief. At times the story made me think of of a child's movie with the big bad controlling mother and the spineless son who can't stand up to her. All we need now is a visit to Oz for a miraculous change of heart.

At about 75%, I had figured out correctly about Frannie and why she was left at Leah's. The only thing to draw the reader in is why she was left behind and that wasn't earth-shattering. The tension between Matilda and her mother would have been greatly lessened had Therese told her why she left her sister with her friend.

A bit of a twist at almost book's end but nothing remarkable.
1562179
I wanted so hard to like this book, but it was just too sad. I don't know anything about the welfare system, much less the foster care system in the UK and how it works, but if this book is anything to go by, I'd say that system badly needs an overhaul. This book is about an orphan who was born into that system. Taken from her institutionalized biological mother at birth, efforts to have her adopted were unsuccessful as she is soon described/tagged as someone with "violent" tendencies, instead of an orphan trying to get away from successively bad foster parents. The system's efforts to get her placed resulted in a late-age adoption by a prostitute single mom. I didn't know that was even possible, especially as the adoption process here in the US is pretty stringent. Molded by the one person who was her moral compass, Anais spirals slowly out of control, especially when her new mom is murdered a few years after she is adopted, pushing Anais back into the system where she now knows she's in it for the rest of her young life--what is called a "lifer--until she turns 18 and the state has to turn her loose. Anais expects she'll go to jail soon after she turns 18 because of who she has turned out to be, but there's a strong force in her that doesn't want to. She is put into the Panopticon where she can stay until she's 18 if she's got good behavior. She dreams of escaping it all, the Panopticon (a residence for orphans in their teens), the drugs, Scotland in general where she's already labeled as a social welfare kid with all its apparently bad connotations for people of that country, including the lack of good future prospects and the expectation that these kids are unable to better themselves either through studying or good behavior.  No matter what they do, their society has already judged them and found them lacking, including the police who apparently aren't ready to give any of these kids the benefit of the doubt when they get into fights. This book is well worth reading, if only to see Anais eventually rise above her lot and finally exert a superhuman effort to finally escape her situation.  If this is what Scotland's child social services (or the UK's in general) looks like, then I salute Jenni Fagan for having the guts to expose the truth about it and not mince any details about what happens to these poor kids. Let's hope someone in their country takes notice.

I rated the book 4 stars only because of too much sexually charged language, the slangs and cursings, and it being classified as a young adult novel. If it had been classified as a book for readers over 18, I would have rated it 5 stars only because then the audience would be in a better position to appreciate it and the message Fagan is trying to send out.  For it to be a YA novel with that kind of language, young adult readers will only be wanting to read it on the surface for the graphic sex and sexual language and the drugs and seemingly youthful rebellion in it, and they will most likely marvel at how kids in the UK are "allowed" such freedom as to have all that without getting caught--instead of truly appreciating it as a work of literature that addresses the inhumanity of the social welfare system and the rebellion of kids within that system against it, as well as their efforts to survive and form bonds with each other no matter how frail or easily broken they are. Other than that, this is a very mature, bitterly realistic book that should be read if only to understand the plight and psychology of orphans.
4965007
Such compassion from my fellow reviewers..not! This woman found her mother's dead body at the age of six after her mother committed suicide. She was then abandoned by her father. Exploited, belittled, controlled, ridiculed by several of her husbands. One mocked her weight so much she became anorexic. One left her after almost dying giving birth to his child leaving her unable to have any more. The majority were penniless, aristocrats who saw a vulnerable woman and MONEY. Money is the only thing she had. She had a loveless bleak existence which she tried to fill by spending money.  Isn't that what drug addicts, drinkers, food addicts do?
I have read various accounts that this woman should have been happy because she was had money. Superficial, shallow vacuous views of of an unhappy, rejected woman who then lost her only child and descended into a downward spiral.
I fear for humanity when selfish people with no humility truly believe that money makes you happy.
3460309
Somehow, I thought this was more a children's story. Maybe the movie was handled that way.  Anyway, Gilbert is a disaffected 20-something in small-town Iowa, living a horrible home life.  His father committed suicide when he was young, when the father found out that his youngest son was mentally handicapped.  The father's death left the mother literally eating her emotions, trying to cope with losing her husband and dealing with several small children, including the newly diagnosed one.  Gilbert has one dutiful sister, one horny little sister, and a now-adult, handicapped brother.  My husband and I lost a mentally handicapped and physically frail daughter 6 months ago, so reading how Gilbert and his family treat their handicapped brother was like pouring rubbing alcohol into an open wound - very painful.  I kept waiting for life to get better for Gilbert, but honestly, it never did.  The ending was expected, yet even more painful.  This whole family needs years of therapy, and the handicapped brother needs to be employed/in adult day care and living in a disabled-adult group home where he can receive more care.  Needless to say, I sobbed in places in the book that I probably wasn't supposed to.  Even w/o this personal tragedy, this would have been a real downer of a read.
4198096
I read The Alchemist a few months ago and posted a glowing review of it on Amazon. I don't know what I was thinking. I must have been temporarily insane or something because looking back on it, I can't believe I fell for such a hollow load of rubbish. There were no real revelations to it at all. It's just a childish story with delusions of grandeur.

The idea that we are all looked after by the universe, if only we let ourselves go is a joke. Don't get me wrong, I know it sounds like a great idea, but let's face it, life's a lot more complicated than that.

Basically, The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die has about as much wisdom as you'd find in a fortune cookie. It's all just stuff to make you feel better about yourself even if your life is rubbish. What it comes down to is the idea that everything's fine as long as you're happy. So as far as my ex-girlfriend was concerned, she was happier spending time with some actor she met at her book group than she was with me, and that justifies her dumping me. I saw him as well. He was the usual type of scruffy look-at-me-I'm-so-dark-and-deep loser women always seem to want, even though they always say they want a nice guy in all those polls I read in their magazines. But hey, as long as she's living for the moment, and seizing life, then it's all fine and she can't possibly be wrong, can she? And she had the nerve to suggest in the letter she wrote to me that I should read Veronika Decides to Die and embrace my destiny. And she won't answer any of my calls because "now we need space to find ourselves", in other words, because she doesn't want to. She probably doesn't even know what she's done. And she definitely doesn't care. These books and this philosophy is so selfish and blinkered. Most people give up all this stuff when they leave university. Grow up and try living in the real world for once. This philosophy's only about looking after yourself at the expense of others.

I really think these books are dangerous. They fool people into thinking they're making the world a better place when really they're just acting like children. I feel really sorry for people who have bought into this. I just resent falling for it, and I'm angry at myself for having believed in it at the time. It makes me feel used, if you want the truth. I really feel like warning as many people so they don't make the same mistake that I did.

At least I can see it for what it is now. A complete waste of time. I just want my time back. I want it all back. Every last minute, every book I read, every film I saw, everything. But life's not like that. And it'll never be like this book either.
2028903
I was left feeling unsatisfied by the book overall. The writing style is very descriptive and shows great skills with every word in the dictionary. The story highlights someone with a superior mind who cannot see his way out of a terrible event that many with lesser gifts have survived.  Indeed many become greater and stronger in the broken places than they would have been with out the terrible event in their lives. I know ,I know everyone says this is a rare jewel of a book. How does it celebrate human character? It does not. It shows a nhileistic whining young man who double crosses a good man who try's to help him. He ruins his mentors reputation and violates his trust. The book celebrates the drug addict Russian mobster. Our story focus continually makes bad choices and does not appear to learn from his past mistakes. The drugs are in your face, and do nothing but illustrate him wallowing in his self pity. In the end he is working to buy back the furniture he sold under false claims but we still see no pursuit of a better life. He stays around the false people who were part of his early life. Not looking for a fairy story, but this story line, although having many twists and turns is like a snake eating its tail.
3104734
Sorry, but if the main character spent 1% of her efforts resisting the rape versus the 100% of her efforts documenting how mistreated she felt this might make me not hate her.  I truly fear for a world where my sons have to deal with crazy, narcissistic girls like this.  This is a terrible indulgence for self-pitying girls dying to call attention to themselves.  It's a grotesque endorsement of today's PC culture.
710864
The book was just a mindless collection of stories of people from the old days. The ridiculous thing is that the hardships that supposedly shaped their characters were self-inflicted based on the belief that people do not deserve much. This is totally not true in today's world. Instead of reading this book and thinking that hardships are to be appreciated, I would rather think of what hardships are created by my dumb mind based on old conditionings, and life a free and happy life :)  I did not like this book.