The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

I finished this today and have been sitting on it for a bit. It's certainly good, though I prefer Deacon King Kong to this. McBride is excellent at weaving together many characters and many plots into one cohesive picture, and I enjoyed reading this. I particularly enjoyed hearing Mr. McBride talk about the story and his experiences when he came to Sixth & I to talk about it.

That said, there were a few parts of the story where the pacing felt just a little off for me. This is a 3 instead of a 4 because I kept butting my head against the way McBridge describes female characters. Many female characters are described by their breasts or rears (“perky” was the word that threw up a red light for me). At one point, I started to go back and re-reading, wondering if this was a trait of a particular character so that it could be interpreted as that character's thoughts and views. I don't think that's the case, though. I didn't notice this so much in Deacon King Kong, and I wonder if it just flew past me because I found that story so engaging.

McBride also does a fair bit of sermonizing - particularly in the closing chapter or two. It's his book, and it's pretty good (and I agree with a lot of it), but in the same way that I complain about contemporary authors firing off tweets in their books -I'd rather be shown, not told. I'd probably have put it down if the book started this way (and it wasn't McBride). For better or worse, it is a part of how McBride wraps up this story and delivers his analysis of our times.