The Plain Sense of Things

The Plain Sense of Things by Pamela Carter Joern

The Plain Sense of Things is a series of 17 stories about the same family. I was hesitant to pick up this book, because I don’t usually like reading short stories, but since the stories were supposed to be all related to each other, I decided to give it a try. I think that was a mistake on my part. I had a lot of trouble remembering the characters. It seemed to me that none of the characters ever got developed enough to make them memorable for just the couple of days that it took me to read the book. I couldn’t keep them straight. That’s pretty bad. And I don’t think that it was me!

This is a story that covers about 50 years. In the beginning of the stories, the family is struggling living on the prairie in Nebraska. It seems that whichever family was being written about in any particular story continued to struggle through-out the 50 years. But I never really cared about any of them or their struggles, because one, I couldn’t figure out who was who, and two, the author never let me get to know any of them well enough to care.

Luckily, it was a quick read, and there may have been some good “lessons” or something in there, but I sure missed the point.