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This book has received so much praise, and I cannot fathom why. It's terribly boring, and too much emphasis is placed on mundane details that add nothing to the story. Frankly, I found the book to be a chore to read and found myself struggling to finish it. I would not recommend this novel to anyone, as the story, unfortunately, has no heart. It took over 70 pages for the main character to spend even more than one night in her father's home. Why? The characters are bland, the writing just does not grab you. Several chapters in, I was still waiting for the 'story' to begin. I'm sorry, but to say I was bored to tears would be an understatment.

Maggie Pouncey's debut novel, "Perfect Reader," tells a strong character-driven story about ordinary people who unexpectedly find themselves sharing the same life crisis: <br /> <br />Flora Dempsey, 28 years old, has been called back to Darwin to deal with the sudden death of her father, Lewis, a retired college president who was still very much a presence in this small college town right up to the day of his death. Cynthia is the lover Lewis Dempsey left behind, a teacher still employed by Dempsey's old school, and someone whose very existence comes as a shock to Flora. Cynthia had hoped to spend the rest of her life with Dempsey - but now he is gone. Joan is Flora's mother, the woman who divorced Lewis Dempsey almost two decades earlier precisely because she could not stand playing the "president's wife" role assigned to her by small-town academia - and who is still angry that her ex-husband ever had the nerve to expect her to fill that role. <br /> <br />Flora is an unhappy young woman. She is not satisfied with her life in the big city, including the magazine job that makes that life possible, so she is almost eager to walk away from it all to begin a new one in the house she has inherited from her father. When she meets her father's lawyer, a man whom she sees as a potential lover of her own, Flora learns she has inherited more than just the assets her father left behind. She has also inherited the obligation of serving as his literary executor and now she will have to decide whether the poems her father entrusted to her care will ever be published. <br /> <br />By entrusting his daughter with his final work, Lewis Dempsey may have been hoping to find his own "perfect reader," that person who would read his poems exactly as he intended them to be read, with complete understanding of their message and source. Realistically, such a thing is near impossible to achieve and, in the case of the Lewis Dempsey and his daughter, their complicated relationship will doom it from the start. <br /> <br />Flora will spend much of her time in Darwin, a town she feels is "three hours from everywhere," being reminded of her unhappy childhood there. Pouncey skillfully interweaves stories from Flora's childhood about sharing time with both parents after the divorce, and about a devastating incident involving her best friend, with the current day experiences that trigger those memories. In the year-long process, Flora will learn as much about her own life as she does about her father's and about the woman she has come to see as such a rival to her father's memory. <br /> <br />"Perfect Reader" will particularly appeal to those readers who enjoy delving deeply into the heads of a novel's characters and those with an interest in the inner workings of a small town college. This one is not long on action or plot twists, but it leaves the reader with plenty to think about. <br />

PERFECT READER is Maggie Pouncey's first novel. I hope it will be the first of many from her; I enjoyed this one enormously. It's very much a character-driven novel, moved along by psychological and intellectual introspection, not mainly by events and actions. Readers who need an intricate plot or lots of happenings to propel a story will not find this book to their liking. But if you enjoy getting into the head of a smart, carefully drawn character (even if that character is not likable on every page), this book is for you. Pouncey's writing reminds me of the work of Anne Tyler, Mary Gordon, and Sue Miller; and Pouncey is every bit as good as any of them. <br /> <br />The story focuses on Flora Dempsey, the daughter of a recently deceased president of an elite college in a small New England town. Part of Flora's inheritance from her father, a renowned literary critic, is the responsibility of being the literary executor of his estate, thus putting her in charge of deciding whether to publish a set of poems he had written in the last couple of years of his life, many of them paeans to a woman he had fallen in love with during that period. Neither Flora nor her mother, who was divorced from her father some years earlier, knew about the new lover, making Flora's feelings about releasing the poems to the public all the more complicated -- especially because the lover is eagerly pushing for the publication of the poetry. The story unfolds in the college town, which provides Pouncey with some of her freshest, most interesting material -- commentary on the elitist academics who populate such places and the utter irrelevance of so many of their concerns, intellectual and otherwise. There's also lots of rich insight here on the relationship between writers and readers and between fathers and daughters. <br /> <br />If Hilary Thayer Hamann's ANTHROPOLOGY OF AN AMERICAN GIRL is an example of how an author makes poor use of her own experience for novelistic purposes, Pouncey's PERFECT READER is just the opposite. There's no doubt it has autobiographical elements; like her protagonist, Pouncey is the daughter of a former president of an elite college (Peter Pouncey of Amherst College). But unlike Hamann's work, every element of Pouncey's novel feels genuine: the characters, the setting, the dialogue, the actions are all as authentic as can be. That's one mark of a truly fine writer. Pouncey is that, for sure.

Maggie Pouncey's debut novel left me wishing I could rate it higher than three stars, because she's clearly a good writer and the novel did keep me interested. But therein is the flaw for me; I was interested, but not really affected by, the story. <br /> <br />The strengths of the novel include Pouncey's descriptive prose (although, it could have done with fewer run-on sentences). She skillfully brings to life the atmosphere of a small New England college town. It was easy to get immersed in the setting and she brought the world of liberal academia to life. I could picture the streets of Darwin, and the coziness of Flora's father's living room. <br /> <br />One of the main weaknesses was character development. Flora, the main character, was interesting but too often just plain unlikeable. Pouncey shows how her childhood and, of course, her current state of grief contribute to her state of unhappiness. But there were too many times that I cringed at her cruel behavior and the "excuses" of her past began to feel tiresome. The novel does a good job of capturing the unsettling experience of trying to figure out one's direction in life, but Flora's reactions at times are just uncalled for. Flora had some genuinely vulnerable and funny moments that made her more likeable, I just wish there had been more of them. <br /> <br />The ending wrapped up a bit too quickly and neatly, with no real resolution to some of the plotlines and relationships which was a bit unsatisfying. But the writing kept me reading. Perfect Reader didn't quite capture me, but I do think Pouncey is a promising writer and I'd check out her next effort.

Once I started "The Perfect Reader," I wanted to finish; but I can't say I especially liked Flora Dempsey as created by author Maggie Pouncey. I'll let you be your own judge. But I just couldn't fully understand the anger contained within this woman and her sometimes unfortunate way of dealing with the people around her. After the death of her father, a college professor, Flora returns to the town as the executor of her father's estate. Moving into the father's home, moving back to the college town in which she had lived for so many years growing up, Flora learns about her father what she sometimes would have preferred not knowing. The book is in many ways a very delayed coming of age story; but what puzzled me is exactly why Flora seems to have a terrible difficulty forging bonds with the people around her. She seemed so able to leave a life and a job to return to seeing to her father's estate. But, once there, she seems to have really left behind nothing she misses. Her relationships tend to be always on the testy side; and for some reason Flora struck me as being just a little too old to be acting, often, like a child. As I said, on the one hand it's a book you'll finish; on the other, wouldn't you have liked to have smacked Flora on the side of the head, telling her to get a life and grow up!