Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book should have been more interesting and moving than it was, given its subject: hardworking and basically honest people who can't seem to get ahead no matter how hard they work. It wasn't. Smarsh's description of her family plods on with monotonous (and repeated) descriptions of their characters, daily lives and predicaments, but never comes close to creating any emotional engagement with them. Smarsh's narrative device--telling the story as if she were talking to a spiritual unborn baby, or her own second soul instead of her readers, it's not clear--was phony and distracting. It doesn't add to the narrative and she sometimes drops it in favor of addressing her audience directly. Smarsh's attempt to ascribe mystical or spiritual powers to her family, as opposed to the dry intellectual power of academic elites, is just silly: women who can tell which apples are crisp simply by holding a hand over them? Seriously? For a deeper and more searing look at poverty in the US I suggest Nickel and Dimed in America (Ehrenreich), Deer Hunting with Jesus (Bageant), or New American Blues (Shorris). They are well written, biting, and engaging books. They make you care about the people they describe as well as about how their situation might be changed. Smarsh's book doesn't. I'm sorry I wasted my time and money.