I wanted to like this, and I did in parts, but there were so many characters and so much jumping around between stories and time periods that I was usually halfway through a chapter before I'd completely figured out who I was reading about and just as I started really enjoying a story the book jumped to something entirely different. Add on to that not infrequent tangents into anecdotes about other people besides the main characters, and I was too lost to really get into the story. Sadly when my library loan was up and I was only about a third of the way through I did not bother renewing it. If I couldn't manage to get any traction during Thanksgiving with lots of time to devote to it there's no way I was going to manage it once back to work. 
 I'm still interested in the stories this book tells and would love to find a more linear (admittedly potentially less literary) place to read about them.