Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Sarah Crichton Books (2009), Edition: 1, 308 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML: Blame is a spellbinding novel of guilt and love, family and shame, sobriety and the lack of it, and the moral ambiguities that ensnare us all. Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her late twenties, has a brand-new PhD from Berkeley and a wild streak. She wakes up in jail after an epic alcoholic blackout. "Okay, what'd I do?" she asks her lawyer and jailers. In fact, two Jehovah's Witnesses, a mother and daughter, are dead, run over in Patsy's driveway. Patsy will spend the rest of her life trying to atone. She goes to prison, gets sober, and upon her release finds a new community (and a husband) in AA. She resists temptations, strives for goodness, and becomes a selfless teacher, friend, and wife. Then, decades later, another unimaginable piece of new information turns up. For the reader, it is an electrifying moment, a joyous, fall-off-the-couch-with-surprise moment. For Patsy, it is more complicated. Blame must be reapportioned, her life reassessed..… (more)
Media reviews
Huneven’s nervy third novel turns a potentially prosaic plot—vivacious, besotted intellectual blacks out, dries out, does time, changes ways, rebuilds life—on its head via zippy dialogue, smart pacing, and, most vitally, a third-act plot twist that magically avoids contrivance.
Associated Press
"Blame" is noteworthy for its sharply drawn characters, most of whom are neither good nor bad but struggling in between. But its true power is in the questions it raises about blame, responsibility and consequence. Implicitly, it asks the reader, what would you do in Patsy's place and could you
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User reviews
LibraryThing member brenzi
What if you were convicted of the deaths of two people because of your own negligence and inability to quiet the demons inside? How would you spend the rest of your life? Even after the two year jail term, could you return to the life you once led? What changes would you make? What about the
Patsy MacLemorre is a young history professor in a small California liberal arts college who faces these tough questions after blacking out (again) from another night of binge drinking and finding herself in the county jail with no recollection of what happened the previous night. When she is informed that she ran down and killed a mother and daughter Jehovah Witness team on her steep hillside driveway she is horrified. Overcome with grief and unable to remember any of the night’s details, she confesses and is sent to prison for a two year term.
Michelle Huneven’s novel, recently nominated for the National Book Critics’ Circle award, poses all the moral questions as she explores Patsy’s response to the unthinkable. In spare prose, the author lays out how Patsy takes on the blame and struggles to set her life aright. She makes great sacrifices in trying to do what she considers to be the right thing. Ttwenty years after the incident, a bombshell changes everything and leaves Patsy reeling, asking herself, “What now?” The way in which she accepts this new challenge is just as revealing as how she spent the last twenty years.
The author uses many metaphors to assign blame. She doesn’t use it exclusively for the protagonist, although that is the main theme of the book. When dealing with alcoholics, as this book does, there’s plenty of blame to spread around. But blame is also assigned to the lazy rich, the arrogant intellectuals and the hangers-on. And, of course, so is forgiveness.
Ittook a long time for me to get into this book, probably 200 pages (out of 291). It was not a “can’t put it down” type of read. And yet the questions posed are interesting and important, so I can’t put my finger on what failed to grab me early on in the book. The characters were kind of flat, rather two dimensional, to me and I guess therein lies the problem. The final third of the book though was compulsively readable and I would, in the end, recommend it.
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victims’ family? What is the morally appropriate way to conduct your life going forward? And most importantly, could you ever forgive yourself?Patsy MacLemorre is a young history professor in a small California liberal arts college who faces these tough questions after blacking out (again) from another night of binge drinking and finding herself in the county jail with no recollection of what happened the previous night. When she is informed that she ran down and killed a mother and daughter Jehovah Witness team on her steep hillside driveway she is horrified. Overcome with grief and unable to remember any of the night’s details, she confesses and is sent to prison for a two year term.
Michelle Huneven’s novel, recently nominated for the National Book Critics’ Circle award, poses all the moral questions as she explores Patsy’s response to the unthinkable. In spare prose, the author lays out how Patsy takes on the blame and struggles to set her life aright. She makes great sacrifices in trying to do what she considers to be the right thing. Ttwenty years after the incident, a bombshell changes everything and leaves Patsy reeling, asking herself, “What now?” The way in which she accepts this new challenge is just as revealing as how she spent the last twenty years.
The author uses many metaphors to assign blame. She doesn’t use it exclusively for the protagonist, although that is the main theme of the book. When dealing with alcoholics, as this book does, there’s plenty of blame to spread around. But blame is also assigned to the lazy rich, the arrogant intellectuals and the hangers-on. And, of course, so is forgiveness.
Ittook a long time for me to get into this book, probably 200 pages (out of 291). It was not a “can’t put it down” type of read. And yet the questions posed are interesting and important, so I can’t put my finger on what failed to grab me early on in the book. The characters were kind of flat, rather two dimensional, to me and I guess therein lies the problem. The final third of the book though was compulsively readable and I would, in the end, recommend it.
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LibraryThing member hankesj
So my review of this novel is kind of like reviewing an old friend because I’ve been reading this book over the course of the last couple months for my Novel Writing class. Reading something over a couple months span I’ve realized has its pros. I feel like I have a really firm grasp on this
The Good: Michelle Huneven really knows how to develop memorable characters. Joey, Brice, Patsy and Gilles are brilliant characters. Huneven takes her time developing them and by the end of the novel, Patsy pretty much jumps off the pages. I love the concept of Blame because it’s based on a situation that could (and probably has) happened. A woman gets black out drunk and runs over two people killing them. It’s not an overly abnormal situation, it’s happened and it’s not too hard to imagine a situation like that happening to someone today. Huneven takes this reality and really delves into the consequences with Patsy. We get a real sense of what prison is like for someone like Patsy and we learn how someone might handle their guilt and transition into society after their prison term has ended. We learn that Patsy settles for things in life that she normally wouldn’t have just because she feels it’s all she deserves. It’s a way to punish herself, to remind herself of the crime she committed. I love the slight but powerful nod to the gay community and the start of the HIV virus that Huneven slides into the story. She also throws an enormous wrench in the plot towards the end that is crazy awesome and makes the story that much more deep and meaningful. I also thought Huneven did well adding comic relief to the parts that were a little depressing. It’s not a book I felt utterly sad about when I was done. I felt a sense of accomplishment when it was over. I also thought the ending was very well done. It wraps up the loose ends but not in the “everything-ends-so-perfectly” way.
The Bad: Nothing really negative to say about the novel except that I HATE IT when authors don’t put dialogue in quotations. I don’t know why it irritates me as much as it does, but really…. That’s why the quotations were made. What is the reasoning behind not using them? It bugs the crap out of me. But that really is just a nit-picky detail. I really don’t have anything else negative to say about it.
Overall, I really thought this was a great book. It was well written, the plot and characters were fully and wonderfully developed and it was really a polished piece of literature. I give it an A!
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novel and the characters because I’ve spent so much time with it. For my class, I had to break down the novel and really spend an adequate amount of time with the chapters analyzing plot, character, pacing etc. Normally I don’t spend that much time with a novel so I feel like this might just be one of the most well informed reviews I’ll ever have up here. The Good: Michelle Huneven really knows how to develop memorable characters. Joey, Brice, Patsy and Gilles are brilliant characters. Huneven takes her time developing them and by the end of the novel, Patsy pretty much jumps off the pages. I love the concept of Blame because it’s based on a situation that could (and probably has) happened. A woman gets black out drunk and runs over two people killing them. It’s not an overly abnormal situation, it’s happened and it’s not too hard to imagine a situation like that happening to someone today. Huneven takes this reality and really delves into the consequences with Patsy. We get a real sense of what prison is like for someone like Patsy and we learn how someone might handle their guilt and transition into society after their prison term has ended. We learn that Patsy settles for things in life that she normally wouldn’t have just because she feels it’s all she deserves. It’s a way to punish herself, to remind herself of the crime she committed. I love the slight but powerful nod to the gay community and the start of the HIV virus that Huneven slides into the story. She also throws an enormous wrench in the plot towards the end that is crazy awesome and makes the story that much more deep and meaningful. I also thought Huneven did well adding comic relief to the parts that were a little depressing. It’s not a book I felt utterly sad about when I was done. I felt a sense of accomplishment when it was over. I also thought the ending was very well done. It wraps up the loose ends but not in the “everything-ends-so-perfectly” way.
The Bad: Nothing really negative to say about the novel except that I HATE IT when authors don’t put dialogue in quotations. I don’t know why it irritates me as much as it does, but really…. That’s why the quotations were made. What is the reasoning behind not using them? It bugs the crap out of me. But that really is just a nit-picky detail. I really don’t have anything else negative to say about it.
Overall, I really thought this was a great book. It was well written, the plot and characters were fully and wonderfully developed and it was really a polished piece of literature. I give it an A!
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LibraryThing member whitreidtan
I had seen this one around a few blogs but I was not looking forward to reading it at all when it arrived on my doorstep. I am the grandchild of an alcoholic and even went to an Al-Anon meeting as a teenager (perhaps this one time visit is the source of my long term distrust of anything that smacks
Opening with Joey's confused summer the summer her mother died of cancer, the novel introduces Joey's appealing uncle Brice and his good-time girlfriend Patsy, both of whom are so out of their league watching Joey and self-absorbed that they mistakenly allow her to get high. Cut to Book Two and Patsy, a college professor, is coming to with a nasty hangover. She's in the local drunk tank, a place she's been in before, but this time her drunken misdeeds are not being treated as lightly as usual. Apparently, during her blackout, in her own driveway, she hit and killed a mother and young daughter, Jehovah's Witnesses who were just leaving her house after dropping off some leaflets. Patsy does her time in prison and comes back to regular life having resisted and then finally surrendered to AA, filled with remorse and regret. She builds her life around the truth of her actions and the results of what she did that night still so troublingly missing from memory. Ultimately, Patsy meets and marries Cal, the local AA superstar, sponsor extraordinaire, and widower with children. She changes who she was in spirit and finds forgiveness even if her life still centers around her guilt and atonement.
The novel jumps in time from each situation in Patsy's life but the missing pieces are easily inferred and reasonable as the reader watches Patsy build a whole new life for herself. The secondary characters are well-fleshed out and realistic. Starting with the section on Joey is perhaps a mistake as she is mostly absent from the book, which she should be since the story is really Patsy's, but what Joey witnesses when she is stoned out of her little mind does come full circle in the end, neatly tying the book's beginning and ending together.
The revelation about Patsy's drunken accident, near the end of the book, is certainly cataclysmic but it is somehow not entirely unexpected by that time either. And the way it forces Patsy to reevaluate her life again, as the immediate aftermath of the accident did once before, lends a balance to the plotting. The book was a bit unrealistic and shiny, happy in its portrayal of recovering alcoholics but it was fascinating to see the way that Cal shifted his addiction to the rush of AA meetings and that Patsy never called him on it because she was so busy with her own repentance, feeling that she had to be perfect and non-confrontational. This is much more a character study, with Patsy examining her life and coming to grips with who she is, rather than the thriller hinted at in marketing blurbs. It is a rather quiet but thoughtful and well-written book that happens to hinge on an horrific accident. This book will stay with you long after you close the back cover so don't be scared off by less than appealing jacket copy or the idea that this is full of suspense. Rather it is an engrossing and compelling read.
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of self-help or psychiatry). So the whole premise of the book was a little close to home. That said, I ended up quite enjoying it.Opening with Joey's confused summer the summer her mother died of cancer, the novel introduces Joey's appealing uncle Brice and his good-time girlfriend Patsy, both of whom are so out of their league watching Joey and self-absorbed that they mistakenly allow her to get high. Cut to Book Two and Patsy, a college professor, is coming to with a nasty hangover. She's in the local drunk tank, a place she's been in before, but this time her drunken misdeeds are not being treated as lightly as usual. Apparently, during her blackout, in her own driveway, she hit and killed a mother and young daughter, Jehovah's Witnesses who were just leaving her house after dropping off some leaflets. Patsy does her time in prison and comes back to regular life having resisted and then finally surrendered to AA, filled with remorse and regret. She builds her life around the truth of her actions and the results of what she did that night still so troublingly missing from memory. Ultimately, Patsy meets and marries Cal, the local AA superstar, sponsor extraordinaire, and widower with children. She changes who she was in spirit and finds forgiveness even if her life still centers around her guilt and atonement.
The novel jumps in time from each situation in Patsy's life but the missing pieces are easily inferred and reasonable as the reader watches Patsy build a whole new life for herself. The secondary characters are well-fleshed out and realistic. Starting with the section on Joey is perhaps a mistake as she is mostly absent from the book, which she should be since the story is really Patsy's, but what Joey witnesses when she is stoned out of her little mind does come full circle in the end, neatly tying the book's beginning and ending together.
The revelation about Patsy's drunken accident, near the end of the book, is certainly cataclysmic but it is somehow not entirely unexpected by that time either. And the way it forces Patsy to reevaluate her life again, as the immediate aftermath of the accident did once before, lends a balance to the plotting. The book was a bit unrealistic and shiny, happy in its portrayal of recovering alcoholics but it was fascinating to see the way that Cal shifted his addiction to the rush of AA meetings and that Patsy never called him on it because she was so busy with her own repentance, feeling that she had to be perfect and non-confrontational. This is much more a character study, with Patsy examining her life and coming to grips with who she is, rather than the thriller hinted at in marketing blurbs. It is a rather quiet but thoughtful and well-written book that happens to hinge on an horrific accident. This book will stay with you long after you close the back cover so don't be scared off by less than appealing jacket copy or the idea that this is full of suspense. Rather it is an engrossing and compelling read.
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LibraryThing member CasualFriday
When a drunk driver takes an innocent life, there is a lot of blame to go around: the driver, naturally, the enablers, and the Demon Rum itself. I was all ready to bristle at an Oprah-esque cliché collection, but I found this book unexpectedly moving.
Much of the book is set in the early 1980s.
It sounds soapy as I write it, but the story had a lot of nuance. I can pick out some flaws: Patsy’s relationship with the victim’s husband could have been developed further. The fate of Brice’s boyfriend was obvious from the first cough. It’s impossible not to ponder how much more difficult Patsy’s journey would have been had she not been white, educated and middle class. On the balance, though, I really liked this one, and I cared about Patsy and her struggle.
Much of the book is set in the early 1980s.
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Patsy MacLemoore is a middle-class, middling professor and a drunk. When she pulls into her driveway after a binge, two hapless Jehovah’s Witnesses are killed in the act of leaving their religious tracts at her house. She pleads guilty to criminal negligence and serves a two-year prison sentence, then is confronted with the task of rebuilding her life, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, her ex-boyfriend Brice and his boyfriend, and an AA leader who becomes her husband.It sounds soapy as I write it, but the story had a lot of nuance. I can pick out some flaws: Patsy’s relationship with the victim’s husband could have been developed further. The fate of Brice’s boyfriend was obvious from the first cough. It’s impossible not to ponder how much more difficult Patsy’s journey would have been had she not been white, educated and middle class. On the balance, though, I really liked this one, and I cared about Patsy and her struggle.
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LibraryThing member bookworm12
Patsy wakes up in a jail cell to find out she's killed two people while driving drunk. After serving time in jail, Patsy must adjust to life after such a horrible experience and the guilt she feels.
One of my biggest problems with this book is the fact that it tells you there's a "huge twist" on
Other than that it was good. To me it really wasn't the book I was expecting though, because it deals with so many issues at once. Alcoholism, AIDS, adultery, prison, homosexuality, psychiatry, blended families, treatment of prisoners and their reintegration into society and more. It's a lot to take in, but it's a quick read and there are some great characters. I particularly loved Patsy's friend Gilles. There aren't any "good" or "bad" characters, instead there are flawed people who have all made mistakes. I liked this book, and it definitely made me think, but I had too many problems with it to rate it any higher.
One of my biggest problems with this book is the fact that it tells you there's a "huge twist" on
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the dust jacket. Once you start reading it you are just waiting for the twist, which is obvious from the start, but doesn't happen until almost the end of the book. I was incredibly disappointed that the publishers had decided to market the book this way. Other than that it was good. To me it really wasn't the book I was expecting though, because it deals with so many issues at once. Alcoholism, AIDS, adultery, prison, homosexuality, psychiatry, blended families, treatment of prisoners and their reintegration into society and more. It's a lot to take in, but it's a quick read and there are some great characters. I particularly loved Patsy's friend Gilles. There aren't any "good" or "bad" characters, instead there are flawed people who have all made mistakes. I liked this book, and it definitely made me think, but I had too many problems with it to rate it any higher.
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LibraryThing member pidgeon92
Loved it! It's been a while since I've been so enamored with a book that I stayed up til 4am reading it.
LibraryThing member PetreaBurchard
Huneven's writing blew me away. It almost doesn't matter what the story's about. She's that good.
Characters to care about, non-stock people and situations, beautifully told. I highly recommend Huneven's writing. "Blame" is a pleasure to read.
Petrea Burchard
Camelot & Vine
Characters to care about, non-stock people and situations, beautifully told. I highly recommend Huneven's writing. "Blame" is a pleasure to read.
Petrea Burchard
Camelot & Vine
LibraryThing member 4daisies
This was a book I could not put down. A story about great tragedy and lives turned upside down. It was a heartbreaking account of alcoholism, and living with guilt. Patsy had everything going for her- she was beautiful, smart (just received her PHD) and had a great teaching position at a local
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college when she found herself waking up in jail (again) after one of her blackouts to learn that she had been in a car accident killing 2 people. She had no recollection of the event. She went to prison for 2 years and the description of her ordeal with that experience was horrifyingly real. That is really only the first part of the book though- the main focus of the book is on her life after being released; her search for a way to live with the guilt and her efforts to atone for her crime followed. The end of the book has a plot twist that I never saw coming and added a whole new level of tragic to the story. It just made it all feel very real to me- no trite, tidy ending. Show Less
LibraryThing member jeffsdfw
One of the best books I have read all year!!! I can identify with the characters in this book. Huneven is a remarkable writer and had me turning the pages faster than I have turned them before.
Will make you think twice about drinking and driving.
Will make you think twice about drinking and driving.
LibraryThing member reina10
Contrary to most of the reviews posted on this book, I didn't find this story to be as spellbinding and thought provoking as other reviewers. The book has potential, but it misses the mark. The first chapter attempts to give background information for the main plot, but it focuses on the wrong
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character. After reading the first chapter, I thought the story was going to focus on Joey Hawthrone, but it turns out that it is really about Patsy, an alcoholic college professor who wakes-up in jail, from a drunken stupor, and discovers she is being charged with murder. Patsy goes to prison, begins her rehabilitation, and finds forgiveness in the most unlikely place. At this point, the story losses momentum and lingers on less "important" events in Patsy's life. The author tries to go for a surprise ending, but it was not believable. I gave it three stars, because I think the book has a good overall message- people can change, rehabilitate, and find forgiveness. However, I didn't find the characters engaging and thought the writing was a bit "scattered." Show Less
LibraryThing member hellonicole
'Blame' grabbed me from the beginning with its seemingly unrelated narrative about a young girl and her ill mother, and kept me turning pages to the end. I can't say exactly why I was so engrossed, because there were times when I just didn't care at all about Patsy, but I did finish in two days
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time. I really enjoyed the story, but didn't necessarily love it, but would recommend it. Show Less
LibraryThing member karieh
I liked this book. Yes, I liked this book and became far more engrossed in the last 1/3 of it or so.
The reason I start this review like that is that there are several things that normally would bother me about this book, yet I still enjoyed reading it.
It was something about the amount of time we
Pasty MacLemoore drinks. Drinks a great deal. And one day she wakes up in jail after a blackout and is told that the night before, she’d driven home and killed two people in her driveway. She can remember none of this, of course, and from those words on, her life changes completely.
She pleads guilty and is sentenced to prison, and her former life as a professor is put on hold.
“She stood before the court and touched the dark tumult, the awful thumps and booms, bodies on the ground, a wheeling of stars; with such images came the inevitable, engulfing nausea of knowing it could never be undone.”
“Yes, Patsy said, the word spanning a sea of uneasy feeling and linking death to blame like a stitch closing the lips of a wound so that healing could begin.”
But – although the reader is told many times that Patsy feels the blame of what happens, that she constantly deals with the guilt of what cannot be undone – I never really felt it. It seemed to me that she dealt far more with how to cope with prison life than with the idea that her actions resulted in the loss of two innocent lives. And she never really seems to wonder about the two victims. She thinks a great deal about their survivors (one of them a husband that is so forgiving that it borders on the ridiculous), but doesn’t spend much time thinking about what the mother and daughter were like, what lives they might have led were they given the chance to do so.
And her alcoholism is neatly dealt with in prison. With no access to booze, she has one or two passing thoughts of taking a drink, but she doesn’t seem to struggle much with this debilitating condition. She becomes an addict of AA but we don’t see much of the transition from one addiction to another.
But again, I did like this book. Though I had problems with many of the details of the story, the general fabric of these people, this place, this time was interesting to me. I fell easily into their lives and wanted the story to continue.
(Wait, one more critical note. The book purports to contain a bombshell turn of events. But since the back cover TELLS the reader what the bombshell is, and because there is so much foreshadowing of the bombshell, I found the actual event to be a huge letdown.)
While I still feel that much of the emotion is told to the reader and not shown, there are moments of the book that reach beyond the page. When Patsy is released from prison after serving her time and takes a bath for the first time in years:
“She got out of the tub and grabbed a towel all too quickly; the air burst into prisms, and she had to sit on the toilet, bent over her knees until the whirling bars of color subsided. Traffic rumbled outside, a bass note to the city’s hum, and above that, she heard a faint ringing, so high-pitched, steady, and beautiful it could only be silence.”
I will be very curious to see what others have to say about “blame”. After reading it, and reading my review of it, my words seem to conflict with my thoughts, but as I shelve this volume in my library, I will know that I liked this book.
The reason I start this review like that is that there are several things that normally would bother me about this book, yet I still enjoyed reading it.
It was something about the amount of time we
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have to observe the characters. I say observe instead of “get to know” because I still don’t feel that I know any of them particularly well. Even the main character, Patsy, remains a bit beyond my reach. But the reader is given 20+ years of her life and those around her, and the experience is a good one.Pasty MacLemoore drinks. Drinks a great deal. And one day she wakes up in jail after a blackout and is told that the night before, she’d driven home and killed two people in her driveway. She can remember none of this, of course, and from those words on, her life changes completely.
She pleads guilty and is sentenced to prison, and her former life as a professor is put on hold.
“She stood before the court and touched the dark tumult, the awful thumps and booms, bodies on the ground, a wheeling of stars; with such images came the inevitable, engulfing nausea of knowing it could never be undone.”
“Yes, Patsy said, the word spanning a sea of uneasy feeling and linking death to blame like a stitch closing the lips of a wound so that healing could begin.”
But – although the reader is told many times that Patsy feels the blame of what happens, that she constantly deals with the guilt of what cannot be undone – I never really felt it. It seemed to me that she dealt far more with how to cope with prison life than with the idea that her actions resulted in the loss of two innocent lives. And she never really seems to wonder about the two victims. She thinks a great deal about their survivors (one of them a husband that is so forgiving that it borders on the ridiculous), but doesn’t spend much time thinking about what the mother and daughter were like, what lives they might have led were they given the chance to do so.
And her alcoholism is neatly dealt with in prison. With no access to booze, she has one or two passing thoughts of taking a drink, but she doesn’t seem to struggle much with this debilitating condition. She becomes an addict of AA but we don’t see much of the transition from one addiction to another.
But again, I did like this book. Though I had problems with many of the details of the story, the general fabric of these people, this place, this time was interesting to me. I fell easily into their lives and wanted the story to continue.
(Wait, one more critical note. The book purports to contain a bombshell turn of events. But since the back cover TELLS the reader what the bombshell is, and because there is so much foreshadowing of the bombshell, I found the actual event to be a huge letdown.)
While I still feel that much of the emotion is told to the reader and not shown, there are moments of the book that reach beyond the page. When Patsy is released from prison after serving her time and takes a bath for the first time in years:
“She got out of the tub and grabbed a towel all too quickly; the air burst into prisms, and she had to sit on the toilet, bent over her knees until the whirling bars of color subsided. Traffic rumbled outside, a bass note to the city’s hum, and above that, she heard a faint ringing, so high-pitched, steady, and beautiful it could only be silence.”
I will be very curious to see what others have to say about “blame”. After reading it, and reading my review of it, my words seem to conflict with my thoughts, but as I shelve this volume in my library, I will know that I liked this book.
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LibraryThing member MsGemini
Blame is the story of an alcoholic history professor, Patsy MacLemoore and her attempt to correct the wrongs in her life. Huneven took her time with the first couple chapters introducing us to characters important in Patsy's life. While I felt it was a bit slow in the beginning the story does take
While this is a work of fiction it is very realistic and at times reads like a memoir.
I liked this book and I do recommend it.
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off and I found I did not want to put this book down. One accident really set the tone for Patsy's life. Huneven does a great job with the development of Patsy and truly caught me off guard with the ending.While this is a work of fiction it is very realistic and at times reads like a memoir.
I liked this book and I do recommend it.
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LibraryThing member ccayne
Huneven's depiction of Patsy's drinking is unflinching. After a drunken bender, she finds that she has killed a mother and daughter. She is sentenced to prison, negotiates her way in prison, makes a real friend and ends up on fire detail where she becomes strong and self-reliant. I admired Patsy
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and her capacity to go on with her life, be a friend and to be a person of integrity. I didn't feel that AA was her salvation but that it came from within and AA gave structure where it was needed. I like the book and admired Patsy for her ability to survive, reflect and end up strong but still vulnerable and caring. Show Less
LibraryThing member FearsomeFoursome
Interesting story about the effects of guilt and the struggle to find a new "normal" after you've caused the unthinkable. Patsy, by all accounts a happy drunk, wakes up in jail after yet another alcohol-induced blackout. This time, however, she is told she killed a mother and daughter in a car
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accident. Sentenced to prison, the book follows her time there and then her life after her release. After many years the complete story of the car accident is told, and Patsy must now come to terms with the new information. While I thought Ms. Huneven could have delved deeper in some places (After so many years of profound alcoholism, could Patsy really just decide to stop drinking and never be so much as tempted again?), I thought the book overall told a compelling, thought-provoking story. It elicits good discussion about guilt, regrets, and the pivotal moments that can define one's life. Show Less
LibraryThing member julyso
Patsy is a professor who teaches history at the local college. Patsy drinks alot and ends up killing two people after a night of heavy drinking. Patsy blacked out and remembers nothing of what happened. She goes to prison and reluctantly becomes involved in the AA group there. She does her time,
I really wanted to love this book and I started out really liking it. I had a hard time believing the man whose family she killed would forgive her so easily and start a friendship with her. Patsy was also hard to like sometimes, as was her jerk of a husband, Cal. There is a twist towards the end of the book, which I liked, but it was also rather frustrating. The ending just didn't work for me, but I liked the book....just didn't love it.
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gets out, and starts a new life for herself. It is difficult, but she manages to start over. I really wanted to love this book and I started out really liking it. I had a hard time believing the man whose family she killed would forgive her so easily and start a friendship with her. Patsy was also hard to like sometimes, as was her jerk of a husband, Cal. There is a twist towards the end of the book, which I liked, but it was also rather frustrating. The ending just didn't work for me, but I liked the book....just didn't love it.
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LibraryThing member mlanzotti
Huneven's story of an alcoholic and her redemption years later is excellent.
LibraryThing member Ccsilk
I loved this book; the main character was very well drawn and the writing was excellent. The story draws you in from the first page to the last.
LibraryThing member acook
I agree with several of the reviews below. I liked the book, couldn't love it. I enjoyed the interplay among several of the characters, especially Gilles, and Joey. I saw the ending coming a mile away. It did stay with me a while, as it did cause me to ponder what roll Patsy did play in the deaths.
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Worth reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member GJbean
Patsy has been a drunk all her life. She is rich and spoiled. She wakes up accused of murdering two people and goes to jail. Really good coversations and cool gay friend. But, looking just for love in the end gets hard to believe.
LibraryThing member tjsjohanna
Ms. Huneven puts her main character, Patsy, in an untenable situation - arrested for the deaths of a mother and daughter that she hit while driving drunk. What follows in the novel are Patsy's ways of trying to make her life something meaningful to make up for this horrific fact. The novel covers a
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large chunk of time - practically a lifetime - which I really appreciated, as it gave me a chance to see how Patsy's choices play out, for good and bad, over the course of her life. I liked Ms. Huneven's depictions of the various characters - they are all flawed but very human and real. The ending of the book puts a twist in the tale and presents a whole new set of questions - and calls to mind the questions that most humans face: what if life events had played out in some different manner - then how would my life have turned out? I really enjoyed how Ms. Huneven explores these issues. Show Less
LibraryThing member momofthreewi
Blame is a very interesting look into how a person's entire life can be affected by one event, from the people they meet to the life choices they make and how they develop as a person because of them. It really makes you think about how one incident can re-frame your life in a completely different
At times I found myself frustrated by the choices Patsy was making in her life, but then I realized that if I were placed in the same circumstances, I would likely be making different decisions than I would if I hadn't experienced a traumatic event.
Blame is about human behavior, about the way we interact with each other and how that changes as our circumstances change, about being true to ourselves and forgiveness, both of others and, ultimately of ourselves. I liked the character development in the novel, the variety of people Patsy interacted with over the years and how they each affected her life.
Blame kept my interest and was a well-written novel with themes we can all relate to in some way, either because of personal experiences or reminding us of someone we know. I recommend it.
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way than you might have experienced otherwise. At times I found myself frustrated by the choices Patsy was making in her life, but then I realized that if I were placed in the same circumstances, I would likely be making different decisions than I would if I hadn't experienced a traumatic event.
Blame is about human behavior, about the way we interact with each other and how that changes as our circumstances change, about being true to ourselves and forgiveness, both of others and, ultimately of ourselves. I liked the character development in the novel, the variety of people Patsy interacted with over the years and how they each affected her life.
Blame kept my interest and was a well-written novel with themes we can all relate to in some way, either because of personal experiences or reminding us of someone we know. I recommend it.
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LibraryThing member lfoster82
Great book, quick read. I really enjoyed this book. I didn't see the point of some of the characters- Gilles, Audrey, Sarah- but they provided some entertainment. However, with a long list of characters, I did get them all confused and couldn't remember who was who!
I also didn't understand Mark
I also didn't understand Mark
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Parnham's actions and why he acted as nicely he did. I kept thinking it was because he knew something we didn't- and it would come out later in the book- but that wasn't the case. It was an unanswered question for me throughout the book and confused me. However, this book kept me reading and I especially enjoyed the twist at the end. Show Less
LibraryThing member reader1009
Adult fiction. Recovering alchoholic makes peace with her unspeakable crime, only to discover, decades later, that she never committed it in the first place.
LibraryThing member RoxieF
Patsy, a history professor with a drinking problem, wakes up in jail and has no memory of the previous evening. She ends up going to prison because of her actions. She's not very likable at first, but you grow to root for her. She tries to turn her life around after priso,n but the guilt weighs her
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down for the rest of her life. It shows how your life can change in an instant based on one decision or action. Show Less
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2011)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2009)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2009)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Longlist — Fiction — 2010)
Language
Original publication date
2010