Review: Eight Hundred Grapes

Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave
Genre: Literary Fiction

Rating: 8/10

“Be careful what you give up...because eventually, you get it back any way you can.” 

In Eight Hundred Grapes we see a family falling apart, a crumbling foundation where the cracks have been growing insidiously, hidden, for years. What seems at first to be a daughter running home to escape her problems soon grows more and more complicated, as secrets come out, and every sure thing seems to falter.

This book oscillated from philosophical to faltering. On one page I wanted to write down certain lines, certain wisdoms that caught my eye. On the next page I wanted to shake sense into the characters, or, at the very least, shake them out of their uncertainty, out of their wavering. Like the main character, I just wanted everything to be fixed, I wanted everyone to be happy. However, one of the main themes of this book is how messy and complicated that happiness can become and how you can search for it in the wrong ways.

This isn't the type of book I typically go for. I like to call its genre literary fiction, even though that's not how the powers that be aka Goodreads, labels it. (they call it chick lit which I think I have a moral objection to, I'll let you know when I decide) Whatever you wanna call it, it is a book focused on relationships and character development over a fast-paced plot. I felt like I should have been bored while reading it, but I never was. The writing won me over, not making me an wildly enthusiastic fan by any stretch of the imagination, but enough of a fan to recommend this book. It has its own quiet beauty, quiet introspective quality that kept me interested enough to finish this book in just a couple days.

I loved the complicated characters, loved how they made the wrong decisions for sometimes the right reasons. I loved that their actions made sense, that they felt real, even if I was frustrated.

While it's not the type of book I would want to pick up next-- I'm a sucker for a fast paced plot and strong characters, call me unrealistic-- it was a nice change of pace. If you like books that focus on relationships, all the ways they can break, and more importantly, all the ways that they can mend, then you should give Eight Hundred Grapes a shot. You might be wooed by its quiet beauty too.

Let me know-- have you read Eight Hundred Grapes? If so, what did you think?