Among the Ten Thousand Things: A Novel

I completely enjoyed this novel which chronicles the dissipation of a family after a sheaf of emails between the father and his paramour are given to the father's 12-year-old daughter, Kay. I am not a lover of domestic drama, but this book hooked me right away with its unique narrative style in which the 3rd person limited narrator devotes alternating chapters to the father, children and mother. No one is lovable, all are flawed, but we recognize them fully.The writing is terrific: somewhat colloquial and very fresh. The characters are compelling without melodrama, sentimentality or stereotypes. The novel employs a unique structure with the insertion (at a key moment) of a kind of look into the future which serves to both contextualize the story and to further engender the reader's involvement. You think this kind of thing would wreck the reading experience, but it does not. For me, this technique highlights the real randomness of the human experience alongside the real connections between people and their fates. Thornton Wilder, the great playwright did this very successfully in "Our Town" which managed to emphasize both the unique and universal aspects of human experience.

I saw that the professional reviewers said "lucious" and "insightful"... I don't agree with luscious and only partly with insightful. Her writing style mostly just annoys me...she never gets to the point. Her descriptions of the children are the most insightful part of the book, though even that part is slow. I could not empathize with the Deb character at all; any woman that puts up with the mistreatment she put up with from Jack, to me is not interesting or worth reading about. The descriptions of the place settings throughout the book are done well. Why not read Part Two? It tells ahead of time everything that is going to happen for the rest of the book. What possessed her to include that chapter? It ruined the book for me. I won't read another of her books.

I really wanted to like this book. I heard an interview with the author on NPR and immediately downloaded the book. Unfortunately, the writing style was difficult to follow. The author jumped around and seemed to start chapters in the middle of a thought. I also thought it was pretentious to make reference to other literary works without naming them. In this case one of the characters in the book was reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, but this author only mentioned the name of the main character of the Fountainhead. I thought it was pretty pretentious to not spell it out. It is not a very widely read book.

After reading the NY Times review of this book, I ignored the little voice in me that said "cliche" and read this book. It started out with a great conceit and a wonderful set up of adultery gone very wrong. When a scorned mistress sends her email correspondence to the wife of her former lover, and it gets instead to his children, the possibility for pandemonium is great. These children, though, are such caricatures that I wondered if the author had ever actually been around adolescents. While the examination of an imperfect marriage between imperfect people and the way a family implodes was entertaining, I felt I'd read it all before without having to suspend my disbelief regarding the characters. Definitely a nice plane book, in that it is diverting, but I found it too flawed to give it more than three stars.

This novel had potential but it just got lost about the middle. I know the what happened but not the why. It left me feeling incomplete never getting past the surface. I like the why the story was put together in bits and pieces jumping between perspectives and time. But by the end I didn't really know the depths of the characters.

Husband is having a secret affair (one of many, actually). Wife knows it. Wife chooses to ignore it, hoping it will go away. Mistress is eventually spurned and sends a box of very sexy love-letter emails to the wife. Before the wife even sees the box, it is opened by the kids, who read every one of them.That is the premise of this debut novel by Julia Pierpoint, which chronicles the implosion of a marriage and family--and how life somehow manages to go on amid the anger, grief and tears. The author deftly changes points of view so we know how each of the four main characters is feeling."Among the Ten Thousand Things" is like getting a voyeuristic peek inside another couple's marriage. Lots of drama to be sure, but it's also sophisticated and very well written. Still, the plot is a little worn and rather predictable.

The marketing for this novel was so over hyped it's no wonder the book initially disappoints. No, this is not Jonathan Franzen. This is a book about a family in the aftermath of an affair that comes to light in an unexpectedly shocking manner. It's also one of those New York novels full of bagels, Chinese food, doormen, and the usual landmarks that still manages not to be as evocative of the city as it could be. I almost stopped reading a third of the way in because I felt there was nothing new here and the storyline was just a little bit too sad (without any edginess or interesting plot twists) to justify the investment in time. However, I hung on a bit longer and eventually became interested in how everything turned out for the family. There are better books out this summer, but this is not a bad choice for vacation reading--especially if you end up craving something a little slow-paced and melancholy to match the mood of a rainy day.

I love reading and always appreciate good writing and a good story. Although this book started out well, the writing dragged on and it became anything but a fast read. But I continued on. Then, when I was ready to read another chapter, the book ended. I checked several times to make sure there weren't more pages that I missed. But it just ended. It seemed the author just basically stopped writing!! What a waste of time to spend reading this book. A real disappointment.

The author analyses the minute shrapnel left behind after this New York family's superficial cohesion is detonated by a parcel that gets into the wrong hands. As the reader is forced to look for 'big things in small places', it is hard to imagine anyone not finding some pieces echoing their own lives. It is a book that you cannot put down until the end - but beware: while neither depressing nor uplifting, the tale will leave you fully conscious of the futility of miniaturised individual lives and their personal struggles forever repeating and dissolving in time's passing.

If I could give this book a lesser score than zero I would! Boring doesn't even begin to cover it. It's the type of book which gives credence to the theory about monkeys and typewriters! And makes the reader think they too could write a better book PLEASE DON'T BOTHER READING THIS . You could always wash your hair or do the ironing!

arrived promptly

Excellent book the characters were believable and it was well worth reading

Good read, but was expecting a bit more based on the reviews. The beginning was better than then end

Started reading this 6 weeks ago, still trudging through it!!

Personally I found the book a little boring. Good idea for a story, but didn't suck me into its world.

Quite bored and agitated reading it as nothing really happened . Uninteresting characters

Boring, boring, boring!

I liked this book and the format. It was a little slow in the middle but finished well. However, i'm not sure it lived up to the reviews I read.

Pas vraiment convaincant. La révélation d'un adultère, par la maîtresse éconduite qui envoie sa correspondance à l'épouse trompée, trouble toute une famille, enfants compris. Soit. Mais pourquoi, à la moitié du livre, interrompre l'histoire pour en esquisser, à grands traits, la fin, pour ensuite reprendre le fil du drame filial? Je comprends mal ce plan bancal.

Dachte einige male abzubrechen und jetzt am ende hätte ich mir gewünscht es getan zu haben... Die geschichte fängt spannend an aber verliert sich irgendwo. Schade

This book was not what I expected. It was neither well written or engaging to the reader. It is a sad story that the author wanted to tell yet I didn't feel sad or connected to the characters at all.

Brilliantly written-good plot-good story. Suspense painfully slowly built up-extremely good reading.I hope to hear more from Mrs Pierpoint. Regards from a would be writer. A+++

shipping was fast. In terms of the book, I did not enjoy reading it