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Jul 27, 2017darladoodles rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I was beguiled by the premise of the book, but found it to be a bit of a cumbersome read. The POVs switch so quickly at the beginning of the book that I kept going back to Amelia's report to McBurney on the students of the school to try and straighten out who was who. As the book moved along, the chapters got too long and we were belaboring tiny details yet we still could hardly distinguish one character from another. Only Amelia stands out as a paragon of virtue especially where nature is involved. She seemed to value McBurney for who he was and not for what he could do for her. Mattie was also a character who stands out from the pack. Her comment early on is a fitting epitaph for this book: "I didn't have any notion then how much evil we got in us, all of us. Seems like none of us every stop to think how evil can collect in us. . .how one little mean thought can pile on another 'til finally we got a mighty load of badness stacked up inside us. . .and then all it takes is maybe one nasty word to set off the trigger in us. . .and maybe that's some little triflin thing that wouldn't even have raised our tempers in a calmer time. . .and then we rush ahead and do things we coulda sworn to the Lord Almighty in the beginning we never had in us to do” I don't think the movie seems as interesting now -- Nicole Kidman as a dried up old maid? Kirsten Dunst as an 18-year-old girl of mixed race? And Colin Ferrell seems a bit too much of a hunk to play a scrawny 21-year-old soldier. I was trying to picture them in these roles while I was reading the book and I just couldn't do it.