this book tries to tackle a bit too much, but so much of it is so elegant that it's mostly easy to forgive. parts of it are a little too choppy, which i understand represents what's happening to these characters and their family, but i think it was a little overboard in places.one thing that really, really rang untrue to me is the way yvonne responded - even with 25-30 years of knowledge - to abby's rape and subsequent ruined life by her own lover. if i understood it right, abby is her daughter, so this lack of feeling around this is simply impossible.i'm not sure why it should bother me, but why is this not called *the* blue shoe? there must be something to that that i'm missing...it made me laugh that there's this part in the book where a character is talking about his favorite book, revolutionary road by richard yates (also one of my favorite books) and he says: "'It's about loneliness,' Noah said. 'All these people in families, trying to connect and love each other, but they can't get it to work. It's about sad lies. You need to read it. Everybody should. It's the best book in the world.'" (i left that last bit in because i agree with most of it; if it's not the best, it's up there.) but i laughed at the rest because of course this is an exact description of what blue shoe is about as well, and like the insecure main character in the book who is actually doing an okay job, she went and pointed to a book that does a better job than hers at what she's trying to say.so i guess that while i liked this book and thought much of it was really well done, if you want to read a book about this topic, she'd tell you to read revolutionary road instead.that said, here's a nice line of hers that really stuck out for me:"It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable."
