The Blessings

There is so much grace in this novel. I really love it all--the joy and heartbreak of the Blessing family, the scope of each chapter's shifting point of view, the precise and detailed language, the compassion Elise Juska has for her characters. Each chapter reveals deeper layers of the Blessing fami......more

GUSH GUSH GUSH... this is MY type of novel. Domestic Fiction at it's BEST. okay, nothing crazy, no zombies, no end of the world or crazy explosions just your average family and getting the goods of what happens behind closed doors. So we have the Blessing family. They are big and sprawling and thing......more

My previous experience with Juska's writing is limited to one other book of hers and upon revisiting that review looks like my opinion of her works stands. Her writing is good, actually better in this book even, there is great humanity to it, her characters are very realistic. And yes, she still see......more

The Blessings is a novel about a large Catholic family in Philadelphia. Told from the perspectives of different family members, the reader goes back and forth in time as they share in the rituals, joy, and pain of this extended family. The novel begins with Abby, an eighteen year-old college student......more

I had been hearing some positive things about this book around the library and so I decided to give it a read, not knowing what to really expect. It wound up being a very relatable and enjoyable book. There isn't really much by way of a plot, rather each chapter winds up being basically a short stor......more