Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Believable March 18, 2010
Sharon D. Martin (East Coast, North Carolina)
This was a great book. Extremely easy to read and to believe. I was so not ready for the surprise ending. When I got to the end, I was so surprised that I wanted to go back and read the book again to see if it really could have happened that way. Awesome! Isn't is great when you get twice your money's worth out of a purchase?!?!
In this book love is trully blind March 16, 2010
C. Dela Rosa (California)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In this book love is trully blind. From the first pages of this book, I was already hooked. Such entrancing story !! The ending was a complete surprise to me and when I turned to the last page and finished it, I felt a glimpse of love, joy, and peace.
 Found this at my local library........... January 21, 2010
Cafe Lily (USA)
I strongly encourage you to find Beyond the Night at your local library or bookstore, and settle in with some Kleenex!
This was an incredibly powerful love story, with an ending that I did not expect. It's written in a way that moves seamlessly between the past and present of the lives of the couple - I didn't lose interest for a minute.
I am anxious to get my hands on another one of Marlo's books.
 Good but not great October 2, 2009
Michele
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I almost never read contemporary novels -- Christian ones because I generally find them to be poorly written, and secular ones because they dwell on themes that are contrary to my personal values. But every great once in a while I decide to give a contemporary book a try, which is what led me to read Beyond the Night, my first read by Marlo Schalesky.
Happily, Schalesky does a much better job than most writers of contemporary Christian fiction. With the few exceptions that I note below, her characterization and dialogue is realistic and believable. And for the most part, the plot and pacing of the novel was well done (also discussed further below).
A few of the characters displayed the flaws that I normally see in contemporary Christian fiction. Kelli, Jenny, even Isabelle at times, were all overdone to varying degrees. However, since they all played somewhat minor roles, they didn't ruin the book. The character of Marisol was especially awful -- not so much a character as a caricature of a Mexican-American, orange poncho, broken English and all. Thankfully, her appearance in the book was brief. The personalities of Paul and Maddie were very well done -- which is good, since they were the main characters. They managed to carry the story and help me overlook the others.
Schalesky sets this book in a hospital room, where Maddie lay dying, her husband Paul keeping vigil at her bedside. The majority of the book is taken up with Paul's and Maddie's flashbacks to their college days, when Maddie first began losing her eyesight and when Paul and Maddie discovered they loved each other. Schalesky tells of their unfolding love story made more complicated by Maddie's increasing blindness, and she interrupts this with frequent returns to the hospital room, where we see Paul, Maddie's mother, the doctors and nurses all monitoring her life supports as she hovers between life and death. While this sounds like a good concept, in fact I found myself getting impatient with it. It actually had the effect of making the book seem like it was going on and on and on. The constant references to Maddie's brother Malcolm had the same effect; rather than heighten my suspense about Malcolm, it made me feel like his story was being stretched out unnecessarily.
However........ once I got to the end of the book, then it all made sense. The ending is a surprise and I obviously don't want to give anything away, so I will simply sum it up by saying that reading this book felt like listening to someone take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to tell a story, making me wish they would just get to the point. But once they do finally get to the end of the story, then it all makes sense, I understand why they told it the way they did, and then I want them to tell it again so that this time I can appreciate it more.
That being said, Beyond the Night is not a book I would ever choose to re-read, and for that reason it is failing my bookshelf test (not a keeper). Although Schalesky has done a fine job of writing, the story just didn't grip me. The premise of the book was an emotional one -- a man and woman discovering their love for each other while she grapples with losing her eyesight -- and yet it evoked no emotions from me. When I finished the book it didn't linger in my mind and I was immediately ready to start something else. I like books that provide an escape -- they're someplace I want to be, someplace I can't wait to return to everytime I pick the book up. Beyond the Night just didn't do that for me. This perhaps has less to do with Marlo Schalesky's skills as a writer than with my own personal tastes as a reader. Contemporary novels just don't provide that escape, probably because they are not far enough removed from the everyday world I live in -- not even books set in the early 1970s as this one was.
Christy Award Winner 2008 August 31, 2009
Avid Reader
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was looking for something new to read and happened to find the Christy Award List for 2008. It is a special award for many types of Christian fiction. This novel won the contemporary fiction award, so I figured if a bunch of experts think it's good then it must be a good read. They were so right.
I haven't heard of this author before, but after reading this book I plan to read all her other writings as well. This is one of the best books I have ever read, definitely one that I will reread and think about for a long time. It's a story about Maddie, a woman who realized that she had Stargardt's, a genetic disease that rapidly causes blindness. It's also about Paul, a man who just realizes that he cares for her but is not sure how to deal with her disease without trying to rescue her.
The novel resonated with me on another level, because I have worked with people who are losing their vision. Maddie's response to her vision loss is true to life: a lot of grieving, a lot of questioning and denial. Schalesky was able to capture the process of learning to live with the loss of vision with compassion and not condescension, and give us a small glimpse of what it is like to learn to be blind. I admired how determined Maddie was to cope and live life to its fullest, and how she learned to hope amidst suffering. This is why the story will stay with me. It didn't offer trite platitudes for dealing with loss or suffering, it merely showed the courage to find hope.
I also loved the dialogue between Paul and Maddie. I have read so many books where the main characters are supposed to care for each other, but throughout the book you wonder what they saw in each other. With these two, their relationship was demonstrated through their teasing banter, and in the ways they took care of each other. Even though Paul was not someone who was known for commitment, for Maddie he came through when she needed him. They seemed like real people, not just characters in a book. I was really rooting for them. Although the subject matter may sound somber, the writing wasn't at all. There was a scene in a Chinese restaurant that made me laugh, having eaten in many Chinese restaurants myself, the scene rang true.
The storytelling was beautiful, done in flashbacks. Flashback storytelling can be confusing, but I found this novel to be clear and fluid. And it all clicks into place in the end leaving you with a feeling of joy and gladness. I have read many forgettable books, but I would venture to say that if you are going to invest time in reading a book then this should be on the list.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
|
