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    The Qualities of Wood
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    The Qualities of Wood
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    The Qualities of Wood
    Ebook381 pages5 hours

    The Qualities of Wood

    By Mary Vensel White

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 31, 2012
    ISBN9780007469505
    Unavailable
    The Qualities of Wood
    Author

    Mary Vensel White

    Mary Vensel White was born in Los Angeles and raised in Lancaster, California. She graduated from the University of Denver and lived for five years in Chicago, where she completed an MA in English at DePaul University. Her short fiction has appeared in The Wisconsin Review and Foothills Literary Journal. The Qualities of Wood is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Qualities of Wood

    3/5

    23 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      (Fiction) I read this on my Kindle over a period of three months; it just took that long to get through.There is some beautiful writing but, even though there’s a hint of a murder mystery, the story doesn’t go anywhere. I kept reading because I thought something must be going to happen, but I was disappointed. Nothing did. 3 stars
    • 3/5
      From the beginning, there is a perception of things being a bit out of sorts in the relationship between Vivian and Nowell Gardiner. They’ve been married for four years and she has now given up her job to come to his late grandmother’s country home [where Nowell has been ensconced for the past month, presumably writing a mystery novel] but when she doesn’t recognize Nowell at the airport, it’s a pretty obvious sign that something is amiss. Despite events that seem destined to steep the reader in a mystery [such as the discovery of a young girl’s body in the woods], a mystery never materializes. There is a lovely quality to the writing; ultimately, however, it is insufficient to overcome the story’s slow pace and unappealing characters. The disappointing denouement is mute testament to a story that promises much, but never delivers.
    • 5/5
      If you like psychological mysteries this is one you'll love, it's creepy and complicated. Guaranteed to make you stop for a moment and think about it. A great read for a debut novel, it will keep you guessing till the end. The kind of book I enjoy reading. Vivian and Nowell are preparing a house for sale when the body of a girl is found on their property. Police ruled her death an accident...but it wasn't. No one in the town trusts anyone, there are rumors and gossip going around that is very interesting. One is especially interesting to Vivian, it seems there are things about her husband she doesn't know. Is it gossip or truth? The book is so well written, many characters are mysterious or just plain strange. Do we ever really know one another? If you haven't guessed I totally enjoyed this book! I received a copy of this book free from Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      In THE QUALITIES OF WOOD we first meet Vivian, a twenty-something wife who is being picked up by her husband Nowell at the airport. Nowell has been at his grandmother's farm for the last month writing his second book. Vivian and Nowell had agreed to uproot their city life and move to the Midwest after his grandmother's death. Nowell planned to write while Vivian cleaned and organized the place to prepare it for sale. The story is told from Vivian's point of view and we are limited in the story to her perception of things, which at times is a bit skewed. Vivian isn't prepared for the quiet, country life and is startled to find that a teenage girl had been found dead in the woods behind the house on the day of her arrival. At once Vivian seems skeptical about the death of the girl and is suspicious of her new neighbors as well as her husband. When her brother-in-law, Lonnie and his new wife, Dot arrive, their lives get a bit frazzled and tempers flare. Vivian feels like people are keeping secrets and she is determined to find out what they are.The author does a great job of putting you in the setting of the story, describing the old house, the personal things left behind, the woods, the nearby small town and the people that live there. But, at times, I felt like she spent too much time on details and characters that weren't really relevant to the story, like for example, the men laying asphalt on the road near the house. I am always curious as to how the title of the book will be used in the book and in this case it set up how Vivian ends up seeing the people and the places for who and what they really are. Vivian remembered staring at her desktop in grammar school, during rainy-day, heads-down games or boring lessons and noticing the variety within the wood, the scant pencil remains from the students before her, the distinct markings of the grain. Like a fingerprint, each section unique to itself and to the seer. Eyes can become discerning, she thought, if you look long enough. The sky, the qualities of wood. Page 152-153As I moved through the book, I began to get more and more annoyed with the characters. It seemed all of them were selfish, whiny, and immature. The conversations they had with each other were dull and without purpose. All the while, I kept expecting some great lead up to the mystery that the back of the book alludes to. Sadly, the conclusion was a let down. I felt like I was led through the book with a promise of a big climax related to the death of the girl in the woods. Sadly, the "big reveal" was not that big of a deal. I do feel the author did a beautiful job painting a picture with words. I was engaged and read the novel quickly, but felt disappointed with the ending.
    • 2/5
      Anton Chekov is a favorite of mine whose gun is a valuable dramatic principle that resonates in good theatre, but in all other things as well. Chekov wrote:Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.I think of it often in terms of set design. A good designer knows better than to put anything on the stage that isn't communicative in relationship to the play, its action, and its characters. If s/he puts a lot of tchotchkes on stage they should be there for a reason and if there's something provocative on stage, say a gun or a chainsaw or a grenade launcher, then it should be used because these are items that draw quite a lot of focus. I bring this up because for me the flaw in The Qualities of Wood is that the author violates this principle in varied ways and it hurts her story.Whether or not good writing makes up for poor storytelling is an interesting question. I love good writing, strong voices, interesting ways of putting words together and, sometimes, that's enough, but not always and in Ms. White's case this is a problem. She writes well and elegantly, but stuffs her novel brimful of detail that doesn't feel connected to the story or its characters - it's all ornamental flourishes for the sake of ornamental flourishes and it bogs the story down. I had a very hard time connecting with the characters and caring about what happened in this story so it wasn't a great read for me. Ms. White has talent, but in her next novel I hope she learns to pare things down a little or just to connect them all to her story.
    • 3/5
      This book "The Qualities Of Wood" was a very slow going read for me. What happened in the woods behind the big old house where a dead girl is found? This book is about a young couple who after the death of his grandmother move into her old and rambling house in a small town to get it ready for sale. Nowell goes out first so he can have time to write his mystery novel and Vivian shows up later. leaving her job and moving to the house in the small town is hard for Vivian made even more difficult when a dead girl is found almost in their backyard, in the woods behind the house. it is ruled an accident but, from then on everyone in town is looking suspiciously at every one else. Was the girls death an accident or did someone in this small town kill her? There are mentions and thoughts of bad things happening and people who might have had something to do with the death of this girl including Nowell himself that makes you suspect everyone but, when I finally came to the end I felt somewhat let down ...