Jacob Have I Loved

Locations
Call Number: R Newbery Medal 1981, Teen Book / Fiction / Classic / Paterson, Katherine
On Shelf At: Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Kids Reference 0-week checkout	R Newbery Medal 1981	0-week checkout	Library Use Only
Westgate Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Classic / Paterson, Katherine	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Classic / Paterson, Katherine	4-week checkout	On Shelf

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes
School Library Journal Review
Booklist Review

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Crab Hunting submitted by Caser on August 5, 2010, 4:10pm As good as Paterson is at crafting a fully realized setting experience -- and she makes the tiny Chesapeake Bay island of Rass feel like I grew up there my whole life -- the story goes hot and cold too often for me to give it any more than 3.5 stars.

I liked the characters, believed in them, and wanted to know more about their stories, but the last part was the problem for me. Most of the story progresses slowly and carefully over the course of the years leading up to WWII, as the protagonist, Sara Louise (aka Wheeze to her multi-talented sister, Caroline), grows up in the shadow of her sister's accomplishments, struggling to find her identity and figure out what to do with her life. This much was great fun.

But when Caroline leaves for the prestigious Julliard School of Music, Paterson begins jumping ahead years at a time, when Sara Louise would be a teenager going through turbulent emotional times. These long time jumps happen not between chapters, but between paragraphs for the first time in the novel, which mutes the impact of certain important events. My favorite character, the Captain, is dropped almost entirely from the narrative, and the ending fails to wrap up a few loose ends of the plot.

It's definitely worth the read, but I was hoping for more.

Pretty Good submitted by 0liviap0pp on August 22, 2011, 7:32am I thought this was a great book.

Jacob Have I Loved submitted by leighsprauer on June 19, 2022, 8:56pm This is a really good book, but I don't quite love it. Paterson's main character, Louise, is a teenager in the 1940s, living in a fishing community on the Chesapeake Bay. She lives in the shadow of her twin, Caroline, who is nearly perfect in every way. The confines of her relationship with her sister, of the war, and of life on an island are almost too much to bear, and she longs to break free of them. Hopeful that life has something better in store of her, she is also scared of what that might be.

There are many things I do love about the book: Paterson beautifully captures the life of fishermen, including many well-researched details. Her writing is simple, but lovely, like the island she describes. Her characters are almost flawless. That is, of course they have many flaws, but they are completely believable and nuanced. She has a gift, especially, for understanding adolescent girls, and all the heartache, jealousy, anxiety, and insecurity that they often have. (It reminds me, in many ways, of The Porcupine Year, by Louise Erdrich, in the way that it captures all the complexities of adolescence.)

The only two things that stop me from giving this an unreserved recommendation are Louise's inappropriate crush on a neighbor (which, although not completely ridiculous, is probably not as relatable for teenagers today as it once might have been), and the fact that the ending, which is lovely and satisfying, feels a bit rushed. She did such a wonderful job developing Louise's interior life, only to have neat and tidy resolution to all her troubles in the last several pages. I'm not sure if it would have been better to leave things hanging, or to spend more time on Louise's adult life; the drawback of the latter is that it would cease to be a coming-of-age book at that point.

But with those few reservations, I would recommend it for teenage girls.