Cheap Sweet Hearts (Book) (Melanie Rae Thon) Price

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Customer Reviews of Sweet Hearts

Sweet Hearts encompasses several generations of family history in compact prose. Thon mercifully provides a map of Montana and a family tree to help the reader keep track of the cast of characters. The characters' speech is also compact, demonstrating the strained communication among this family.

For the first fifty pages or so, my heart broke about once per page. An image, a turn of phrase, a single word would capture the bleakness inherent in these character's lives. I think that was necessary to open the reader up to the story, to prepare for what's to come.

This is a demanding novel in a number of ways. Most of all, the ending asks the reader to forgive the unforgivable. You can't just read this book as an intellectual exercise--you need to let it take you where it goes, to find compassion for all the characters. It is by no means easy or light reading, but I found it entirely rewarding. This book is worth all the effort.

One of the country's very best fiction writers
"Sweet Hearts" wowed me from the first pages--I loved the tension of the voices here, the mystery of the past, the delicate, deaf narrator who is yet deft and powerful and gorgeous in her understanding of her damaged people. I've never felt so connected to such hurt and harm--Thon has a way of making every human corner so accessible and understandable, all while making poetry of these lives. The book builds and builds and grows in subtle layers--lovely stuff, an experience more than a read. "Sweet Hearts" leads me back to my old favorite Thon books--she's a master of the short story, too. I've got to stop now, go back to the book--it's one of those you read and finish and just turn back to page one to experience again. Melanie Rae Thon is a national treasure. I want to give this one six stars.

Compassion and Culpability in Thon's Remarkable Storytelling
For those who have never encountered the work of Melanie Rae Thon, this book serves as a powerful introduction. Thon's characters are memorable, palpable reminders of our own difficult journeys through family and history. Marie, a deaf woman, retells the story of her sister's children against the backdrop of their own submerged family history. But Thon's storytelling isn't merely a fascinating tale of children turned criminal and abandoned by family and society; Thon's writing is marked by lyricism and grace. She brings us Flint and Cecile, children we have seen echoes of in our contemporary world--the ones we hear about before clicking off the television at night--and we see the family that shaped them, the family that refuses to accept responsibility for them. Marie is the novel's quiet conscience, assessing her own role in the children's crimes. The result: we, as readers, question our own culpability and our own capacity for compassion. Thon's characters jar us out of our own passivity, and readers emerge from the novel with a new sense of self. It is a stunning, remarkable book, and Thon is unlike any other living writer today.