Oprah Book Club® Selection, November 1996: The Book of Ruth is a virtuoso performance and that's precisely why it can be excruciating to read. Author Jane Hamilton leads us through the arid life of Ruth Grey, who extracts what small pleasures and graces she can from a tiny Illinois town and the broken people who inhabit it. Ruth's prime tormentor is her mother May, whose husband died in World War II and took her future with him. More poor familial luck has given Ruth a brother who is a math prodigy; Matt sucks up any stray attention like a black hole. Ruth is left to survive on her own resources, which are meager. She struggles along, subsisting on crumbs of affection meted out by her Aunt Sid and, later, her screwed-up husband Ruby. Hamilton has perfect pitch. So perfect that you wince with pain for confused but fundamentally good Ruth as she walks a dead-end path. The book ends with the prospect of redemption, thank goodness--but the tale is nevertheless much more bitter than sweet.


From Publishers Weekly
"In her first novel, Hamilton takes on a challenge too large for her talents," said PW of this tale about a Midwestern woman who is loyal to her wounded and wounding family. "Hamilton evokes Ruth's character marvelously, but others as seen by her are incompletely rendered." Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
When a Wall Street Journal writer observed that "simple tales of life and sorrow in the heartland are red hot," he wasn't writing about Hamilton's (A Map of the World, Audio Reviews, LJ 7/95) novel, but he might as well have been. Ruth, an Illinois farm girl, gives a first-person account of her life in an effort to make sense of what has happened to her and her tragedy-prone family. The language of this novel, by turns naturalistic, romantic, and occasionally humorous, has a freshness and originality of expression, and Mare Winningham's vital and poignant reading makes Ruth come alive. Recommended for public libraries.?Jacqueline Seewald, Red Bank Regional H.S. Lib., N.J.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen
Ruth says right off: "I tell myself that it should be simple to see through to the past now that I'm set loose, now that I can invent my own words, but nothing much has come my way without a price." In Ruth's story, which takes place in a rural town in Illinois sometime in the mid-twentieth century, it's detail, not the big picture, that governs. There is her body that refuses to be beautiful like those the magazines show, her mother's unrelenting anger and bitterness, her distant and disturbed father, her handsome and heartless brother, her friends no one else likes, her love for a crazy man who loves her back like no one else ever did, her correspondence with Aunt Sid who believes in her. Telling her story is a struggle: "We were the products of our limited vocabulary: we had no words for savory odors or the colors of the winter sky or the unexpected compulsion to sing." With Aunt Sid's help, Ruth survives to recount her amazingly ordinary life-story - including relentless hours of unrewarding hard work, the pain of recurrent disappointment, and vicious violence - with extraordinary dignity and daring. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.


Review
"A sly and wistful, if  harrowing, human comedy. Hamilton is a new and original  voice in fiction and one well worth listening  to."--Boston Sunday Globe

"Ms. Hamilton gives Ruth a humble dignity and  allows her hope--but it's not a heavenly hope. It's a  common one, caked with mud and held with gritted  teeth. And it's probably the only kind that's  worth reading about."--New York Times  Book Review

"An  extraordinary story of a family's disintegration... Will  be compared to Jane Smiley's A Thousand  Acres. Astonishingly vivid and  moving."--People

"An  enthralling tale of guilt, betrayal, and the  terrifying ways our lives"--Entertainment  Weekly

"Unforgettably,  beat by beat, Hamilton maps the best and worst of  the human heart and all the mysterious, uncharted  country in between."--Kirkus  Reviews

"Hamilton's story  builds to a shocking crescendo. Her small-town  characters are a appealingly offbeat and brushed with  grace as any found in Alice Hoffman's or Anne  Tyler's novels."--Glamour

"An American beauty this book... The narrator of  Jane Hamilton's sensational first novel is a holy  lusty innocent."--Vogue

ANNOTATION

A passionate coming-of-age story of an uneducated small-town girl with far more romance in her soul than she can ever hope to express in her life.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, this exquisite book confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which the author creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love.

SYNOPSIS

A standout in the crowd of first novels, Ruth narrates a story that confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which Hamilton creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion, and love. Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In her first novel, Hamilton takes on a challenge too large for her talents. Ruth, the heroine, tells her story in the first person, but her limited point of view cannot do it full justice. Born and raised in small-town Illinois by a mother whose life keeps splintering, Ruth blames herself for her troubles, from the cold-blooded brother who always outsmarts her to the ne'er-do-well husband who nearly destroys her. Considered slow-witted, she has a cussed strength. Like the biblical Ruth, the Midwesterner is loyal to her wounded family, and has a talent for "stepping into other people's skin'' while ignoring her own needs. Ruth's gradual self-discovery is often moving; her sharp-tongued vulnerability and whole-hearted hell-raising win our sympathy and admiration. But her transformation from victim to heroine is less convincing: Ruth's intelligence soars when she sneers, not when she mourns her errors. Another problem is uncertain plotting, with static stretches marked by obvious foreshadowings of events to come. The final violence that erupts seems exotic, not an inevitable product of clashing characters. Hamilton evokes Ruth's character marvelously, but others as seen by her are incompletely rendered.

Library Journal