The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I found this book to be too all over the place for my liking. It says it’s all fiction but parts of it rest heavily on historical facts. To me, it felt like a decent fiction story stuck in between a lot of historical documents. The story of Jordan and his mother didn’t have enough substance to stand on its own, but the historical aspects have already been done in other books. I seems like the author just decided to throw them both together and hope they’d fill each other out.
I find the topic of polygamy fascinating, especially now in the days of Big Love and Sister Wives, where we get more of a Hollywood view of what it’s like now.
That said, I still struggled to get through this book, really struggled. In the end I started skipping entire sections (like the bit Brigham wrote from prison… snore).
((( This was a test, I have recently started using Goodreads to keep track of my books since Now Reading Reloaded, the plugin I was using for my library on my blog, has stopped being updated. I wanted to see how their “share on your blog” option works! If I like it I’ll continue posting the reviews in the future! )))
I use Goodreads too. It’s a nice way to keep up with what you’ve read and see what others recommend.