What Hidden Prejudices Lurk in Your Heart or Community?

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved "Olive Kitteridge" which is why I was eager to begin another one of Strout's books. I am conflicted about the story though. On the one hand I liked it, on the other hand, I did not. It is very real and true to real life - no fairy tale, rose tint glasses views at all.

Strout does a good job of capturing our unconscious prejudices and judgments of people that are different from ourselves. She also captures the dysfunctional family dynamic really well. You know, how families seem like they just don't like each other, but, when push comes to shove, they are there for each other? She got that down--the dysfunction is always still there, but they come together.

Without giving too much away, I hated how Jim treated his brother Bob. I didn't like their sister Susan in the beginning of the book, but I was liking her at the end. Jim's wife Helen wasn't really likable either. Two of these characters grow into being more of their real selves, actually, I guess they all grow, just two positively and one not so much. The depiction of Susan's son Zach was a little heartbreaking. I loved the Somalian man, Abdikarim. His confusion, his compassion, his realization of Zach as a child who is afraid and not an intentional perpetrator of a hate crime.

This is what the story revolves around, Zach is accused of a hate crime, and the ripples that result from this in bringing his family together, and the Somalian community, and the community of his town, are what the story revolves around. Actually, there are two stories that come to fruition in the book, the story of Zach, and the story of the Burgess brothers and the accidental death of their father. For one brother, life unravels, but for the other, life becomes more solid. That said, the ending was very unsatisfying to me . . . I hate it when that happens.

It took me a while to get into the book - in the beginning I was mostly not liking it, but then, all of a sudden I was hooked and needed to find the time to finish it.


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