Victoria Brown (3)

This story of a young immigrant's (from Trinidad) experience in NYC is told in a well executed first person voice -- and the strength of this voice held my interest. However, the author tries to do too much. There are too many shallowly drawn characters. The three Jewish characters (the Bruckners and the landlord) are portrayed in the most negative light with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Unfortunately, the overall impact is unsatisfying. There's a good book in here somewhere, but I don't think this one fully realized its potential.

That being said, I've seen some other advanced reviews that gave it 5 stars. As a Jewish woman, perhaps my view of the book was colored by my perception that the Jewish characters were uni-dimensional, totally unlikeable, and played into stereotypes (especially the one about Jews being cheap).

I think that if you tend to like books about people from foreign cultures making their way in the US . . .this might be for you. It definitely has five star portions . . .but the highs were cancelled out by the lows for me.… (mais)

I have had this book sitting on my TBR stack for awhile now. I finally decided to read this book for a challenge. I am glad I read the book.

Minding Ben is a story about a young girl named Grace from Trinidad. She decides to go to America to help her cousin raise her child. When she finally goes to New York her cousin never picks her up at the airport.

Grace meets many different people in New York and finally becomes a nanny to a little boy named Ben. The parents are Sol and Miriam. I really didn't care for Miriam or Sol. Miriam because I just felt that she was very mean to Grace. Plus I felt that Miriam had a chip on her shoulder. Sol I would get annoyed with because he was nice to Grace but then would be different when his wife was around.

I enjoyed reading the book even though some of the book was written in a broken dialect. That gave the story more truth to it. Giving you the feeling of actually listening to ladies from the Islands talking.
Not sure if the author Victoria Brown will be continuing Grace's story but it would be interesting to see where she goes.… (mais)

Half-way through this book I was frustrated - I felt like there was a lot of character introduction missing. I couldn't figure out why Grace was living with Sylvia, who Bo was (Sylvia's lover, friend, cousin, brother?), and there was no explanation as to what happened after Grace was left at the airport. I was a hundred pages in, I couldn't stop despite the fact that I was really annoyed.

I'd say that's a sign of a good book.

While some of those frustrations could have been handled much earlier on, the fact that Grace's missing year and a half aren't explained until later turns out to be pretty important. I'm still a little annoyed that we never found out what happened with Carmen - though I'm pretty sure I have an idea...or I'm just going to continue to use my imagination. Book groups could have a field day with the missing Carmen story!

As a former babysitter for an upper middle class family, I could empathize with Grace (despite the fact that I didn't have my own concerns of sponsorship). Everyone wants to raise their children in a specific way, but then there are those special folks that actually want OTHER people to raise the kid, but in their way.

Bottom line: a good read.… (mais)