- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company (Dec 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743245601
- ISBN-13: 978-0743245609
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.3 x 1.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,629,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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It was one of those utterances that sparkled-the very daring! Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
It was one of those utterances that sparkled-the very daring! Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
I read 'Our Kind' because it was on my reading group list. I doubt I'd have found it otherwise, as it's set in small-town East coast USA, and Kate Walbert is clearly writing to a home audience; the phrase 'two nations separated by a common language' came to mind more than once while reading it. If I were not obliged to discuss it I probably would not have persevered through to the end, though it did force me to some salutary mental effort to make sense of it. It's very literary and constructed, so if you enjoy that sort of novel, you'll probably like it. If you're looking for an easy read, and didn't grow up somewhere like New Jersey, you might find it hard going.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
22 reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
The Forgotten Women
29 Dec 2004
Format:Hardcover
I'm not sure why this book didn't win the National Book Club Award. I have read three of the other finalists and this is, by far, the best of the bunch. It is a "must read" for women of all ages.
I am a bit younger than these women - our age group spanned the time before the Feminist Movement and after. We were on the cusp. Therefore, some of the things which affected these women where "preached" to my age group, but many of us were lucky and escaped. We went back to school and finished our educations, and, when our husbands left or died and our children grew up, we had other places and things to which to turn, and now we have new memories to replace the old ones. I am surprised that, none of the reviews I have read mention Viv. She, of all the characters, is the most poignant for me. Viv is the brilliant, but poor girl, who is awarded a full scholarship to Smith. However, it is the time when young women went to college to earn their MRS. degree, and, in spite of being championed by a pair of women professors and pushed toward graduate school, she hears the "siren call" and marries a month after receiving her undergraduate degree. He is a non-entity and soon becomes colorless in her eyes so that, after he is no longer a part of her life, she can't even remember what he looks like. However, she remembers vividly, half a century later, the professors - how they looked - how they spoke to her - how angry they were when she gave up her birthright to get married. Now she runs the "book club" for the ladies and watches the sessions dissolve into "niggling" and nonsense spoken by women who will never be as bright as she, and who just don't understand the inner meanings of the books they read.
This is a book which should be on the reading lists of every Women in Literature class in this country, and it teaches lessons which should never be forgotten by any woman of any age.
I am a bit younger than these women - our age group spanned the time before the Feminist Movement and after. We were on the cusp. Therefore, some of the things which affected these women where "preached" to my age group, but many of us were lucky and escaped. We went back to school and finished our educations, and, when our husbands left or died and our children grew up, we had other places and things to which to turn, and now we have new memories to replace the old ones. I am surprised that, none of the reviews I have read mention Viv. She, of all the characters, is the most poignant for me. Viv is the brilliant, but poor girl, who is awarded a full scholarship to Smith. However, it is the time when young women went to college to earn their MRS. degree, and, in spite of being championed by a pair of women professors and pushed toward graduate school, she hears the "siren call" and marries a month after receiving her undergraduate degree. He is a non-entity and soon becomes colorless in her eyes so that, after he is no longer a part of her life, she can't even remember what he looks like. However, she remembers vividly, half a century later, the professors - how they looked - how they spoke to her - how angry they were when she gave up her birthright to get married. Now she runs the "book club" for the ladies and watches the sessions dissolve into "niggling" and nonsense spoken by women who will never be as bright as she, and who just don't understand the inner meanings of the books they read.
This is a book which should be on the reading lists of every Women in Literature class in this country, and it teaches lessons which should never be forgotten by any woman of any age.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Succinct and Perceptive
31 Aug 2004
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Although Walbert does not pinpoint her location, various clues lead me to believe that this book is situated around Wilmington Delaware or Philadelphia, a milieu I am very familiar with. The portraits of these women are drawn with such accuracy I feel I could provide their true names, including my mother. Since she still lives there with her cronies from her youth, husbands and children either gone or scattered, through these stories I have a truer insight into her life than I have gotten from the weekly telephone conversations we share. I know this is a very subjective review, but it is rare that a book has hit me at such a personal level.
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
A Delightful Gem
7 Sep 2004
Format:Hardcover
Kate Walbert's Our Kind is a delightful gem, a wonderful work reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, a novel several of the characters in this novel discuss at a book club. Both novels focus on the circularity of time, but Walbert's novel also focuses on the ravages of time, particularly on this collection of women in the novel. These women were married in fifties and now are all alone, deserted by husband and children by death, by divorce, by choice. Time is running out for them, but not many of them acknowledge that. Time swirls by them, the past comes back, they relive it, it repeats itself. These are wealthy women, not usually pitied, yet their stories echo with horrible tragedy, much death, many sadnesses. The narrative in the novel is lyrical without being too much or two twee. Walbert has done an excellent job; Our Kind is an excellent, moving novel.
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