[.uk] Appearances (ISBN 1932727035)

Moving Novel About a Difficult Subject:
I took APPEARANCES with me on a train ride because the book I was already reading was too large to carry. I started reading and couldn't stop, and I ended up crying my eyes out. It's a very moving book about a difficult subject--a man discovers dark secrets of his father's past. We need more books like this for grownpups!

I hope she never stops writing:
Joanne Greenberg is a master of the human condition--but never slaps you upside the head with abject sentimentality. Moving moments sneak up on you. You find yourself remembering what it really means to be a parent, or, for that matter, a child. Awakenings has an added bonus: evocative scenes set in the Colorado mountains, in the kind small towns that are rapidly going extinct. The book bristles with a maturity you don't have to be mature to appreciate. Enough already with I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. More people need to read the rest of Greenberg's absorbing work.

Hurrah!:
Sheer delight to have a new novel by one of my favorite novelists--a novel that is moving beyond moving: intricate, intriguing, compelling, provocative . . . and, above all, a great Story! All fans of Joanne Greenberg's work--along with all readers who love good, unpredictable stories that are rich in character, plot, and resonant with all those elements that make us love reading novels--will rejoice in the appearance of APPEARANCES. A splendid meditation, and more, on the nature of family and memory, and of those actions/experiences which shape our lives.

Everyone should read this book!:
This book really hit me hard emotionally. I read it during my morning commute and there were a few times when I was on the verge of getting teary for my sympathy to the story's father-son relationship. And most importantly, I appreciated how this book does not end cornily.