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The Farm

Book Notes

What? Another book recommended by Mom? Yeah.

Again, not the book I was expecting. Again, a book that surprised me.

This book deals with an older woman's difficulties moving with her husband to a new location (back to her home country), depression, interpretations, and dealing with family secrets and the past.

A son's mother comes to him in a panicked, paranoid state, with wild accusations of what had happened with her move with her husband, the son's dad. The dad follows shortly, while the mother tells the son convincingly in chronological order of the events on the farm the parents had moved to. While the mother's interpretation of events is plausible, so are the father's rebuttals of what was happening. How is a son, who is also hiding his own secrets from his parents, to choose or know which is actually true.

Okay, yeah, that's the gist of the plot. The telling, however, is remarkable. We are conditioned to believe what we read, so of course the mother is telling the son what happened. Yet, interpretation, paranoia.

I wasn't expecting to like this story as much as I did. The ending is haunting.

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