#3 (?) 2012

The Sausage Maker's Daughters by A.G.S. Johnson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I thought this book would be another take on KING LEAR....likeA Thousand Acres..a literate, "moving" take.....Not so...Shakespearian this is not....in tone or telling



Kip Czermanski was the eternal Black Sheep in her family of Breck Blonde sisters...and the strict Catholicism...Needless to say Kip was short and dark haired...Kip was the trouble maker..the wild child...the Counter Culture rabble rouser who loved to terrorize her family by indulging in such "nonsense" as anti-war activities..Feminist terrorism...never mind that she was blamed for the death of her mother...the "sainted mother" who died from complications of Kip's birth



A fact that older sister Sibely never let's Kip forget



This story starts where Kip is languishing in jail...charged with the murder of her brother-in-law...Sybel's husband...Kip's lover from her college days. The final straw for JJ Czwermanski..The Sausage King's...youngest daughter (herself a bother and,now, an Adulteress to boot)



Talk about family dysfunction.....this book is a Big Ass soap opera



Sisters pointing fingers and pulling their own hair



There is also a whiff of the AFTER SCHOOL SPECIALS....as far as the Counterculture aspect.....a "preachy teachy" tone (which leads me to think the Author didn't live through this era)



I tend to avoid books that deal with the 1960s-early 1970s...because I lived that era...the Anti-War/Feminist Movements...because my issues, within those Movements, were "class" related....I saw that most of the Movement Radicals were Trust Fund babies...dressed as Lumberjacks..driving snazzy sports cars.....kinda made me sour



That BS being said....I thought this book was a "guilty pleasure"....oddly compelling..if only for the fact that the "least" of the Czermanski sisters....ended up a murderess



Recommended to those who enjoy their Family Dramas as "soap opera"....and never really lived through the Counterculture of the 60s-70s



3 Stars



**this was a Net Galley**



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