Come Sunday

Great story that doesn't follow the typical story line. Easy to listen to and it left you waiting for the next car ride to see what was going to happen.

Wordy, overly introspective first-person account, made even more off-putting by the frequent use of words and phrases from other languages, which weren't discernible via context. The characters were countless and none developed enough to make me remember them or care what happened with them. The preachy ending was the coup de grace of this very dissatisfying story.

A difficult subject, handled with great care and expertise. Looking forward to reading this authors second book, ABOVE, very soon. A special plus is having lived in Hawaii and shared mutual friends.

As a writer I enjoy a well-written story, although sad, and very sad in places, Come Sunday was a great read. I highly recommend it! Russell Traughber

Very serious and sad read but beautifully written and gripping to the end. Worth reading as makes you think a lotknn

Very interesting on many levels.One of the books to read slowly in order to get all it shares. Loved it

It was a story I could identify with. The characters were very realistic and the story was funny and interesting.

Found the story too dark and depressing. Will not read this author again.

The subject of this book is such a sensitive one that I feel pretty bad giving the book a negative review - but I have to say, I couldn't get on with it at all (and after one very bad reading experience already this week this was a disappointment).'Come Sunday' is the story of Abbe (for some strange reason this appears to be an abbreviation of Elizabeth rather than Abigail) who at the start of the book appears to have what my father used to call a 'Kelloggs Cornflake Advert' perfect family. We are treated to much cuteness from wilful, supposedly adorable toddler daughter Cleo, including mispronounced words and insistence on sweets for breakfast, and much adorable banter between mother and child 'You can't wear those stinky pajamas again', warmly observed by loveable husband Greg. Which is cue of course for something to go horribly wrong. And indeed, after some 40 pages little Cleo is run over while chasing a kite into the middle of the road at a friend's house (if she was that small, why wasn't she being supervised?).The next 150 pages or so deals almost exclusively with Abbe's grief. At their greatest, writers can portray grief in a way that the reader truly sympathizes with and understands the person suffering (one thinks of C.S. Lewis's 'A Grief Observed' or of Dannie Abse's 'The Presence', or of A.S. Byatt's chilling story 'The July Ghost'). At their worst, they can merely make the person sound self-focussed and vicious. This is the case with Abbe, who's not even that likeable before the accident - and becomes still less so when we learn that she was rather apathetically contemplating cheating on her nice husband Greg with a colleague at the magazine where she is an editor. Though I knew it shouldn't, I felt my sympathy for the woman waning ever more as she refused to talk to her husband, sneered at everyone else for their lack of understanding, attacked her husband for trying to talk to her daughter's killer, remained adamant she didn't need help... it was as though she'd used her grief as an excuse to be as unpleasant as possible to everyone around her. In between times, for extra agony, we get flashbacks to Abbe's South African childhood, featuring her mother (a doormat) and her father (a cartoon brute in favour of Apartheid). It's all deeply depressing and never really goes anywhere, we just go round and round in circles with Abbe's grief, nasty memories and sense that her life is in ruins.The book picks up somewhat when Abbe takes a trip back to South Africa (I must confess that I bought the book because I thought it was largely set in South Africa, a country that interests me a lot). But what happens is horribly predictable: wise old servant helps Abbe come to terms with her past and get 'closure', adorably cute children sooth her misery and help her undergo a personality change into a lovely, calm person etc etc. I'm afraid I didn't even get to the end - I started skimming about halfway through, and can't see myself taking up the book again. This is a novel whose examination of grief is mawkish rather than profound, whose observations of South Africa are horribly black-and-white and on the surface (nowhere did I get a real sense of the country) and with a protagonist I frankly couldn't care about. The good bits of the book - Abbe's intelligent literature-loving brother Rhiaan and his partner, Abbe's discoveries about her mother, some of the bits about poetry and literature - were not enough to make this a readable or remotely enjoyable book. And it's made me want to never, never go to Hawaii, which seems horribly boring as a place.

Abbe grew up in South Africa in the midst of Apartheid but chose to make Honolulu her home with her pastor husband, Greg, and her young daughter, Chloe. One evening she goes out to the movies with Greg, leaving Chloe with a good friend who loves her daughter just as much as she. On returning, they discover the worst has happened and their daughter is dead.There are two central plots in Come Sunday, the present day in which Abbe falls apart after the accident, and the story of her past in Africa. I really struggled through Abbe wallowing in her grief. Whilst it's certainly realistic that depression can bring life to a standstill and make even everyday tasks difficult, it doesn't make for a gripping read. I guiltily couldn't empathise with Abbe until near the end and I felt sorry for her long-suffering husband.More enjoyable was the story of Abbe's past in South Africa, the political climate of the time and the disintegration of her family. The structure seemed a bit dislocated in places with little link between past and present. Fortunately the two did come together in the end but it needed more perseverance than I would normally give a book.You might be thinking, well at least the locations are spectacular. There was very little description of the landscapes of Hawaii and South Africa. The current day story could have been set in any western town, be it rather middle class.