Book Review: A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

This book has had a lot of good reviews, so when I was offered the paperback edition ARC for review I was very pleased. And rightly so, as I loved this book.

A Land More Kind Than Home: What it is about

From the back of the book: “Adventurous and precocious, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can’t help sneaking a look at something he’s not supposed to – an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess’s. While there is much about the world that still confuses him, he now knows that a new understanding can bring not only a growing danger and evil – but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance.

Told by three resonant and evocative characters – Jess; Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife and moral conscience; and Clem Barefield, a sheriff with his own painful past. [...]“

A Land More Kind Than Home: What I thought

I loved this book from the very beginning. The book starts with Adelaide telling how she is waiting to see Pastor Carson Chambliss at the church. A church that she hasn’t set foot in for many years, after a meeting in which snakes were used had gone wrong. The church’s windows are covered up with newspaper and no outsider knows what is going on inside.

Adelaide is such a honest and thoroughly decent old lady that I couldn’t help liking her from the start. Jess is very likeable too. He is nine years old and he knows more about what is going on than the adults around him realise. The reader knows what he knows and hopes he will tell an adult already! The sheriff is a strange character but not unfriendly. He had had dealings with Jess’ family before which play a large role in how he deals with the situation at hand.

The book is a kind of Mystery, but just as much an observation of small town living. The reader doesn’t know exactly what happened but we do know that Jess has important information, if only he is willing to share it.

Well written, with a bit North Carolina flavor in the way the people talked. I liked the alternating of narrators, which meant that the reader saw the story from different viewpoints. The story picked up with each narrator where the other had left off (or sometimes repeated the descriptions of some of the events through their own eyes).

A wonderful read, from the first page to the end.

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Rating: 5 (out of 5)

Number of pages: 320

First published: 2012

I got this book: received for review from William Morrow (an imprint of Harper Collins)

Genre: contemporary fiction

Have you read this book?

What did you think?

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