3 out of 4 stars
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Ripples Through Time by Lincoln Cole is a novel about an eighty-something man dealing with being alone after his wife’s death. It is categorized in the General Fiction genre. Calvin Greenwood’s wife Emily, nicknamed Mellie, recently passed away after a long, painful illness and he harbors suicidal thoughts due to grief and regret. Edward White, a family friend, tries to intervene as he realizes Calvin is at a perilous crossroads.
The story is told through multiple narrators in the first and third person. The reader is introduced to the various members of the Greenwood family through flashbacks of the couple’s courtship, their long marriage, and their three children. There is also a look back at Edward and his family. A racetrack theme is woven through the plot; in fact, the couple first met when assistant horse trainer Calvin helped a mare give birth, with bystander Mellie agreeing to assist him.
Calvin is an interesting, layered character. When he was younger, he gambled and drank too much, and was not the best husband or father by a long shot. Since he appeared to be a nice, elderly man in the beginning chapters, it was a surprise to discover the many facets of Calvin’s character. It felt a little like peeling an onion and was realistically written. The most intriguing characters are usually the ones that are not all good or all bad.
The author has a casual, conversational writing style which works well in this book. The writing is easy to understand with a nice mix of sophisticated phrasing and a direct, plainspoken style. However, a few of the words used in the flashback scenes are not consistent with the background or age of the characters. For example, Calvin’s son Jason narrates a chapter in which he is ten years old. He wants to be a writer, but is frustrated since he feels his writing is cliché. Cliché doesn’t seem like a word a child of that age would use, particularly someone from a poor upbringing in a small town fifty years ago.
My main gripe relates to keeping track of the various characters’ points of view at different stages of their lives. Each transition is preceded by Calvin or Edward mentioning an incident that happened long ago. The plot becomes confusing with time jumps about too many different characters at different life stages. The pacing is slow with an abundance of details about each character and incident. I would become absorbed in a person’s story in flashback and have to reorient myself to the present, and then back to a different time period with another character. These switches gave the story a disjointed feel with too many subplots splitting off on long tangents. Still, there is an interesting twist in the latter part of the story and the ending is well done.
I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. The characterizations are top-notch, even if the plot is slow and meandering at times. I would recommend this book to fans of family sagas and characters dealing with change. A tighter plot would have improved the book overall, but I still found it a worthwhile read.
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Ripples Through Time
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