Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Bloodroot by Amy Greene


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book brought an interesting question to my mind: Do you blame bland story telling on the writer or the character when the book is told in first person? Okay, so I only entertained the question as a way of explaining how the first part of this three sectioned book could be so engaging, so vivid, and the rest of the book almost mind numbing, even with a plot straight out of my favorite genre, Southern Gothic. Yes, it is the author's fault if four of her six characters almost ruin a great tale when they spend too much time retelling without bringing anything new to the story, develop and lose personal insight for no apparent reason other than ease of story telling, and worst of all, don't follow the beautiful rhythm set up by the first section of the book.

Greene knows her setting and that is one of the saving graces of this book. The towns and isolated cabins of Bloodroot Mountain enliven the slowest moving parts of this book. The idea of weaving together each of the characters own narratives is intriguing, and the first third of the book shows that Greene knows how to tell a good Southern Gothic story without literally telling the story.

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