[CQ5]≡ Read The Forgotten Hours Katrin Schumann 9781503904170 Books

The Forgotten Hours Katrin Schumann 9781503904170 Books

Download As PDF : The Forgotten Hours Katrin Schumann 9781503904170 Books

The Forgotten Hours Katrin Schumann 9781503904170 Books

I bought this book from the blurb.

It was touted as a book of the year, and held the promise of so much, and in parts it did deliver, but overall it wasn't anywhere near as satisfying as I expected and giving it three stars is being generous.

I found Katie, the main character, tiresome and incredibly juvenile with her constant introspection and total self absorption.

As a teen this seemed reasonable, if tedious, but for a woman in her twenties, too damn naive to be believable, the deliberate way she hides her head in sand is not credible, especially as she goes to university and gains a degree, yet she doesn't mature and completely fails to gain any sense of self - she is still so naively trusting as to be convinced of her father's innocence and this really stretched my credibility, and began to annoy me.
I kept thinking, hell at Katie's age I was a mother who had buried a child - and here's a university educated woman who deliberately shuns learning the truth of her father's trial and conviction - and I'm shaking my head. Sure in all fiction a reader needs to suspend a certain amount of belief, but for me this only works up to a certain point - at times I was tempted to put the book aside- Katie annoyed me so much.
The other characters, Katie's mother and her brother could both have contributed so much richness to the story were mere cardboard cutouts, cyphers, without any real substance of character or presence, and yet properly developed they could have added so much more if they'd been woven into the tapestry of the story and brought alive on the page.

The only character that did come alive on the page was Lulu, and she was painted with such vivid strokes that showed up all the other characters as cutouts.

This book holds the threads to be so much more but for me it fell sadly flat and left me disappointed.
At times I wanted to shake Katie and tell her to grow the hell up, and to kick her mother in the shins and wake her up out of her apathy, she was certainly sadly lacking as a parent.
What message is she sending her children with her weak enabling a narcissistic Peter Pan, a serial adulterer, a man who never wanted to grow up and be a father to his children. She didn't possess enough strength of character to see her husband for what he is until her own father, Katie's grandfather, took a hand. To quote Katie's Grandfather “Get evidence to present to Charlie. [Katie's mother] So she could see what she was dealing with.”
After she's been married to the man and has two almost grown children? Really?
All in all very disappointing.


Tags : The Forgotten Hours [Katrin Schumann] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>An Amazon Charts and Washington Post</i> bestseller.</b> <b>“A relevant, compelling, and compassionate look at the torture of conflicted loyalties and the slipperiness of truth.” —Jenna Blum,Katrin Schumann,The Forgotten Hours,Lake Union Publishing,1503904172,FICTION Coming of Age,FICTION Literary,FICTION Women,Fathers and daughters,Fiction,Fiction-Literary,FictionComing of Age,FictionWomen,GENERAL,GERMAN NOVEL AND SHORT STORY,General Adult,Judicial error,Life change events,New York,Psychic trauma,United States

The Forgotten Hours Katrin Schumann 9781503904170 Books Reviews

Very good family drama, Katie loyally stands by her father when he is accused of rape and subsequently goes to prison. She starts questioning everything six years later when he is about to be released. She starts realizing what she perceived at the time might not be true. A very emotional story, well worth the read.
Absolutely riveting story centered around truth and loyalty, reality and perception. The smoldering structure of the novel was perfect for the story, alternating between the protagonist Katie's current life in New York as she prepares for her father to be released from prison after serving a six-year sentence for statutory rape and her time at the family's summer retreat ten years earlier, where she and her best friend--a local girl named Lulu--stumble into their sexually charged teenage years together yet heartbreakingly separate. When Lulu reveals a sexual encounter with Katie's father, what seems like a stable family structure falls to pieces. In the weeks before her father's release, Katie must reconcile what she remembers with what she was told and what she decided to believe. An important story about sexual consent, honor and decency, and the nature of shame that needs to be told (again and again). Bravo to Katrin Schumann for telling it and telling it so well!
It took too long for things to get moving. The book is so focused on Katie, and she's such a frustrating character! It would have been better for the story to be set further in the past, it just didn't seem believable that Katie was so sheltered and naive about everything that happened. As it was, the chapters set at the lake house felt like they could have been from the 70's.

Katie's a woman in her mid-20's, a college graduate, and yet she comes across as someone unable (maybe just unwilling?) to think like an adult. She never heard anything about the trial? She never looked anything up online? She never once thought to not blindly trust in her father? She was exhausting!

So much focus on Katie meant that other interesting characters got shortchanged namely Lulu, Katie's mom and Katie's brother. I would have liked some chapters from their POV.

I'm a little disappointed in the ending, I thought what happened with Katie's dad was kind of taking the easy way out.

* first pick
So much waiting, so little pay-off.

I truly wanted to love this book. The powerful #MeToo movement our country has seen surface the past few years had me desperately wanting to root for Lulu...but it was so hard. Her character was fake, belligerent, and a tad narcissistic. I know others will disagree, and that's okay. I just had a hard time feeling anything about her at all.

As for Katie...yuck. She was aggravating. In this day and age, when EVERYTHING is splashed all over the internet, we're really supposed to believe she didn't even know who testified at her father's rape trial? Really? Unless she's an ostrich with her head buried in the sand, it's simply not plausible. I don't mind suspending belief a bit, but come on.

Charlie and David could have added so much texture and insight, but the author instead chose to make them meaningless, secondary characters who added nothing at all to the tapestry of the story.

The main problem for me? The book was just horribly boring and anti-climatic. Nothing happened except page after page of Katie's internal dialogue--long, rambling, tedious passages. The story also jumps back and forth over multiple time periods, but the changes aren't identified in any way at the start of the chapters. Makes for a bit of confusion.

Overall, I give this book 1.5 stars. I had such high hopes, but what a disappointment.
I bought this book from the blurb.

It was touted as a book of the year, and held the promise of so much, and in parts it did deliver, but overall it wasn't anywhere near as satisfying as I expected and giving it three stars is being generous.

I found Katie, the main character, tiresome and incredibly juvenile with her constant introspection and total self absorption.

As a teen this seemed reasonable, if tedious, but for a woman in her twenties, too damn naive to be believable, the deliberate way she hides her head in sand is not credible, especially as she goes to university and gains a degree, yet she doesn't mature and completely fails to gain any sense of self - she is still so naively trusting as to be convinced of her father's innocence and this really stretched my credibility, and began to annoy me.
I kept thinking, hell at Katie's age I was a mother who had buried a child - and here's a university educated woman who deliberately shuns learning the truth of her father's trial and conviction - and I'm shaking my head. Sure in all fiction a reader needs to suspend a certain amount of belief, but for me this only works up to a certain point - at times I was tempted to put the book aside- Katie annoyed me so much.
The other characters, Katie's mother and her brother could both have contributed so much richness to the story were mere cardboard cutouts, cyphers, without any real substance of character or presence, and yet properly developed they could have added so much more if they'd been woven into the tapestry of the story and brought alive on the page.

The only character that did come alive on the page was Lulu, and she was painted with such vivid strokes that showed up all the other characters as cutouts.

This book holds the threads to be so much more but for me it fell sadly flat and left me disappointed.
At times I wanted to shake Katie and tell her to grow the hell up, and to kick her mother in the shins and wake her up out of her apathy, she was certainly sadly lacking as a parent.
What message is she sending her children with her weak enabling a narcissistic Peter Pan, a serial adulterer, a man who never wanted to grow up and be a father to his children. She didn't possess enough strength of character to see her husband for what he is until her own father, Katie's grandfather, took a hand. To quote Katie's Grandfather “Get evidence to present to Charlie. [Katie's mother] So she could see what she was dealing with.”
After she's been married to the man and has two almost grown children? Really?
All in all very disappointing.