Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good Author, Bad Book
Comment: Generally Alice's writing makes me think and follow closely so as not to miss her little back-and-forths with her characters. I enjoy her writing style and story lines very much.
However, and a big however it is, this book had such a disappointing ending that I can't even recommend it in good conscience. More precisely, it had NOOO ending at all. The story started out with some direction but quickly lost it. The farther I read the more I wondered whose secrets we were going to uncover. In the end we uncovered nothing. She left us hanging here folks.
Tupper was horrible. His personality was as bland as his complexion. And arrogant??? What's the guy so proud of? Elizabeth could've been okay if she'd snapped out of her coma and decided to have any kind of life. Some points made in the book were interesting although incredibly glorifying to a batch of people who selfishly "commit" themselves to more than one partner. If you want more than one "wife" don't get married!! No offense intended but how can anyone ever call bigamy a moral alternative to cheating? Or at the least when all parties involved aren't privy to the set up? Doesn't that make it the same thing??
But hence I divert. The short version...good author, bad book. Skip this one and read something else she wrote if you want to give Alice a try.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unsatisfying and Pointless
Comment: I received The Bigamist's Daughter as a gift as "anything written by Alice McDermott" was highly recommended by Anna Quindlen in a USA Today story. Although the writing is precise and flows, the story and the characters are not engaging. Elizabeth the main character seems to be sleep walking through her life, her affair and her job. I kept waiting for the story to click and I had to reread the final chapters to see what I was missing. It just wasn't there. No stars is a more accurate assessment of my review. Skip this book. I am going to try another of her titles since I got two as gifts. I will read another Isabel Alende and an Amy Tan and a Jane Austen in between.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What Was the Point?
Comment: Elizabeth Connelly works for a Manhattan vanity press. When Tupper Daniels, a sure-to-be-published author presents her with the story of a bigamist in his southern hometown, she jokingly kids that her own father had more than one wife.Tupper's book lacks an ending, and Elizabeth seriously considers whether her father was indeed a bigamist. Together author and editor forge a relationship to search for the end of one story and the truth of another. I reached the end of A BIGAMIST'S DAUGHTER without resolution to either quest. I'm not even sure what becomes of Tupper and Elizabeth, the couple.
As a story that describes itself as "an absolutely contemporary portrait of a new generation's search for--and avoidance of--committment in life and love," it's not a picture I would hang on a wall.
Customer Rating:
Summary: it enthralled me
Comment: I liked this so well, I've bought 5 copies as gifts. Illuminating look at family relationships, memory, story, integrity. Just when you think you have these characters figured out, there's an AHA! incident which you should have anticipated, but didn't. Has one of the best last lines in fiction. Her best work!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Potential but needed more development
Comment: This book had such potential, but the characters were so static and did not develop or mature in any way throughout the novel. I was very disappointed in the protagonist's unemotional responses to emotional situations and subjects. McDermott does have a beautiful style of writing, but she did not take these characters to the level that she could have. The ending was anti-climatic and frustrating.
