This is the first book I've read by this author, and it will be the last. Although some of the scenes were engaging and well-written, she really shows her northeast provincialism by painting characters from new Mexico as utter good-ol-boy stereotypes. To top it off, after creating a pile of characters who are uninteresting and dull, she tries to ratchet up the emotional involvement by tossing in Sept 11: "Oh gosh! I hope so-and-so wasn't caught in the WTC!" or words to that effect. This is the c...

When I plucked this from the sidewalk clearance area of my favorite U.S. bookstore, all I knew about it was that it featured a chef and was set in New York City and New Mexico. Those facts were enough to get me interested, and my first taste of Julia Glass’s fiction did not disappoint. I started reading it in the States at the very end of December and finished it in the middle of this month, gobbling up the last 250 pages or so all in one weekend.Charlotte “Greenie” Duquette is happy enough with...

I remember loving Glass' previous book, Three Junes, so was excited to finally get her newest novel from the library. And mad props to Glass, b/c it did not disappoint--even though it's mainly the story of a bunch of New Yorkers just before 9/11. It revolves mainly around four characters--Greenie, who is suddenly being wooed by the governor of New Mexico, who needs a personal chef; her husband, Alan, a failing shrink; her friend Walter, a flamboyant restaurateur who takes in his teenage nephew;

I loved the descriptions of food in this book as the main character is a successful pastry chef in New York. I thought that the relationship between Greenie and her husband was interesting and several of the other characters in this book were really intriguing, especially Saga who is a survivor of a traumatic brain injury from a fluke accident. I felt, however, that the author included way too many characters and therefor didn't do them enough justice throughout the book. I get that she was tryi...

As a former New Yorker now living in New Mexico, I could not resist this novel about a Greenwich Village chef (who lived around the corner from where I lived) who relocates to Santa Fe. Although the book was engaging enough for me to want to finish it, it never took off. The problem for me was that the main characters were never interesting enough to engage me with their marital problems. The lesser characters were more interesting but they were off stage more often than not. And as others have

bleh. what an annoying pile of drivel. what a disappointing read by the author of Three Junes, a book I very much loved! gah! i was just so utterly disinterested in the characters in this book and even less interested in what they were going to do next - probably nothing - oh, wait, maybe they'll mull and think and wring their hands and still do nothing or maybe they'll actually do something and.... still, nothing will happen as a result. the real icing on the cake was my realization in the last...

What luck to read two wonderful novels in a row. The more I read, the more finicky it seems I am becoming. Well, what initially drew me to this novel were the realistic characters that Julia Glass brings to life within the first few chapters. Greenie is a woman a bit lost in her sedated marriage. Walter, my favorite of the characters, is candid and quirky and someone I knew I could be friends with. He struggles in his search to find love. Saga is a sweet and naive character that needs to find he...

Some great characters, strong moments, and skilled writing, but the whole never rose above, or even equaled, the sum of its parts. Much of it just didn't hold my attention or interest. I found the multiple narratives distracting and not particularly well done (I felt like the characters got unequal amounts of narration, but this might just be my perception because some were much more interesting to me than others) or illuminating. The intention behind this seemed to be to represent the intersect...

It took me a long time to finish this book (2 times out of library). A story that begins in Greenwich Village. Greenie Duquette has a small bakery in the West Village that supplies pastries to restaurants, including that of her gay friend Walter. When Walter recommends Greenie to the governor of New Mexico, she seizes the chance to become the his pastry chef and to take a break from her marriage, a psychiatrist with a whole other set of problems. Taking their four-year-old son, George, with her,...

The local library was throwing out dozens of audio books so I took whichever ones had interesting blurbs or covers. I really liked the cover of this one. It's rather pleasant, wouldn't you say? As for the audiobook itself, I'm DISGUSTED it's abridged, as the story seems LONG ENOUGH and I can't imagine what more the book could contain. There is a nice tranquility to Denis O'Hare's reading, and I always marvel at how many separate voices can be inside of a person, but his voice for the character S...

Who are you? Are you the same person you were when you were 17? Has being married changed you in a fundamental sense? Has parenthood? Has love or the lack of? These are the undercurrents of themes Julia Glass embroiders around her characters in "The Whole World Over," which is a great follow-up to "The Three Junes."In TWWO, Glass builds storylines around a handful of Manhattanites who are loosely connected through acquaintances and proximity in their neighborhood. In many ways, the cast of chara...

Julia Glass' book "The Whole World Over" celebrates/honors relationships with family and friends in age of post 9/11. Taking place a year and half before 9/11, Glass weaves together a tale about Greenie and Alan, a couple with one son, whose marriage is on the rocks; Walter, a sassy gay restaurateur and Greenie's best friend; and Saga, a drifting woman who loves animals and has suffered from a terrible accident. Fenno McLeod, the center of the triptych of "Three Junes," appears throughout this n...

A novel by the author of "Three Junes," and for which I traded a Vanity Fair and "The Stone Diaries" so I'd have it for plane reading back from the Congo. As with "Three Junes," Julia Glass has created a story of interlocking characters all pursuing happiness as best they can. Glass is talented at creating likable people facing identifiable crises: I went from story to story rooting for the people involved (main characters: Greenie the pastry chef, her depressed psychotherapist husband Alan whom...

I read/listened to this. The narrator was not great at all. She was so-o-o-o-o-o slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-w.The book? Meh. I read it because it followed up on some characters from The Three Junes which was maybe a bit better for me. There were a bunch of intertwined narratives of people who spent a lot of time shining and who were way more introspective than was interesting. There was only one character I remotely cared for so I finished the book to see what, if anything, happened to her. I think overall...

Took me a few minutes to get into it but I ultimately enjoyed her observations, the exploration of relationships, and her wonderfully brief descriptions: "The sun faced precisely down the center of the street. Her shadow, when she looked backwards, was long and elegant..." I have seen my own shadow like that and "elegant" is exactly the right word, but I never would have thought of it. She does this throughout the book, and I wished I'd marked more of them - puts two simple words together which

”Greenie was thrown off by the way in which the caller addressed her – for Charlotte Greenaway Duquette had an assortment of names, each of which identified the user as belonging to a particular period of her past.” p. 12It has been many years since I read Three Junes by Glass. I had enjoyed that novel and my book group had a good discussion. So as I was packing for my beach books, (twice as many books as I could possibly read) I threw this one in the pile. It turns out the cover is a bit mislea...

This is the first book I've read by this author and I'm not sure if I'll try another. I actually stopped reading the book half way through so that I could read another book and a novella that had become available from my local library. This is not normal behavior for me. Usually, I get so wrapped up in a story that I have to reach the end, or at the very least I push myself through, even though I might be struggling with a story. The concept of this story, the everyday lives and struggles of peo...

This was the most wonderful book. Julia Glass writes lyrical, evocative, and yet precise prose, the type I most love. Here is an excerpt from the book (not representative of the plot but rather her style) that I have read over and over again, risking a library fine:"When she fed him during the day, her body felt as if it had been made to ensconce a nursing baby the way a saddle was molded to carry a rider--the crevice between her thighs a perfect seat for George's bottom, her waist calibrated to...

My friend Kelly said she liked the "real world" feel of this book, and I agree. I especially liked how Glass was able to write about all different kinds of people with sympathy and an even hand: a southwestern Republican governor/rancher, a gay New York restaurant owner, environmental activists, ranch cooks and cowboys, New York liberals, a brain-injured animal rescuer, a doddering old professor, a Wall Street stock trader, spinster sisters, people in happy committed relationships, people in unh...

Started out liking this story of Greenwich Village baker Greenie Duquette and her depressed psychologist husband Alan Glazier and their 5 yr old son George, though I found it annoying that so many characters had multiple names and nicknames (Greenie is also Charlie and Charlotte, Charlie is also Other Charlie, Fenno is also Bonnie Prince Charlie, gah!). But the more I read, and as more and more peripheral characters got their own main story arcs or glommed onto those of the Duquette-Glaziers, th...

I am on page 393 of this 507-page book and the only reason I'm finishing it is because I kept reading, thinking maybe the story would go somewhere...where it should go?? In the trash, fireplace or any similar place!! The storyline is all over the place, the characters and their dialogue is ANNOYING (brought me back to when I used to see episodes of Dawson's Creek and thought, who the hell talks like that!) and the writing style is just plain stupid (for lack of a better term). This is the worst

Why was this book even written?I slogged through all 500 pages and still have no idea! The friend who loaned it to me found it pleasant reading and really liked the author's other book, Three Junes - obviously that's the one to read. The story wandered all over the place, and I didn't care about any of the characters or the foolish choices they made.I didn't hate it - just found it a waste of time.K.

I lost interest about half way through the book.

I listened to this as an audiobook and I have to say – for a book that's 20 hours long, it sure went nowhere fast. I've enjoyed other books by this author, so I was surprised to have such a tepid reaction to this one. I didn't really care about any of the characters and mainly wanted this book to be over.

6/6/2013: I don't know why I plowed all the way through this novel. I don't really like Julia Glass, and I chose it only because I had a car trip coming up and I was sure that a Glass novel would be the right speed for listening while driving. (SWIDT?) But I didn't realize how long it was when I began--I would have had to head for Timbuktu to get through it!--so why did I trade in the CDs for the book at the library?TWWO is, perhaps not surprisingly given its title, ambitious in its reach. Its c...

Once again Julia Glass won me over with her characters. I loved her previous novel, Three Junes, and The Whole World Over, was just as great.The Whole World Over follows four characters. Greenie and Alan are a married couple going through a rough patch; Saga is learning to become independent again after a bad accident; and Walter is going through the agonies of raising a teenage nephew. Their lives all interconnect at points but their stories are independent. Julia Glass' novels are always chara...

I'm really glad I didn't read the jacket of this book before reading the book itself, because I wouldn't have enjoyed it half as much if I'd known going in that the narrative would culminate on September 11, 2001. As in her other books, Julia Glass focuses on several characters whose lives intersect and writes each chapter from the point of view of a different character. 75% of the book tells a story that is, on its own, absorbing: a long-married couple at an impasse over infidelity and differen...

I could give this book a three or a four star rating depending on the time of day or the month, or the year. It takes place in New York and New Mexico. Greenie (Charlotte Greenway Duquette) is a pastry chef married to Alan, a failing psychotherapist, for 10 years. They have a four-year old son whom they both adore. Greenie is unsure of her marriage and is enticed to take a job as the New Mexiocan governor's pastry chef in Sante Fe. Governor Ray McCrae is a "big" character, perhaps overblown, but...

I really liked this the first time I read it, except for the ending which I agree with most readers was contrived and shoved in like a deus ex machina. However, on a re-read, I am feeling slightly bored. The language is not strong enough to merit a second reading. I am not discovering anything new as I usually do with a rereading of most very good books. Great books I can read 20 times and still be held mesmerized. Still I look forward to reading anything else Glass writes. She is certainly a st...

I like the "real world" feel of this book. None of the characters really know how they are supposed to act when situations come up that throw their lives into disarray. Glass follows several characters through a time period when they have to make decisions that will change the course of life and love - and none of the characters is perfect. It is a bit annoying at points to switch between characters, a device I have never loved, but it kept me reading (and guessing!). Glass has talent for explor...