David Barringer

American Home Life - what a difficult book to review. It's not because it's deep in symbolism or philosophy (besides the day-to-day sort). No, it's difficult because it's an enjoyable book to read, but the reason it's enjoyable is the same reason I don't rate it very high.

The book is written by a father cataloging the daily happenings in the household. If the father was actually the one writing the book, it might have gained another 1/2 star. Instead, the father is fictitious. How do we know? Well, besides the name of the father being different than the author, there's a number of appliances and contraptions presented in the book that don't exist (yet) in today's world. That's probably where the book really lost that half star. The blurbs on the cover shout out "honest" look at "contemporary" family life. Yes, honest for fiction? And contemporary possibly for people in another 20 years? Ugh.

Overall, the writing while not dazzling, was perfectly echoing non-fiction books covering family life. It's interesting me enough that I'll track down one of his other books to see how good his writing really is when it's not formed into this particular mold.… (meer)