Book review - The Sins of The Mother - part 1
I've read a short novel The Sins of The Mother last Sunday. It is about a successful woman who built a business empire with the support of her devoted husband and mother to care for her 4 children. She enjoyed her life and embraced every opportunity to expand her commercial success, which she did not think was a problem. However, when the kids grew up to either cut off the relationship with her or stayed alien to her, she started to realize something was wrong and to make up for the missing time and to strengthen the family bonds, she meticulously planned a family trip each June.
This year, she invited her children and grandchildren to go on a 2-week luxurious vacation. The oldest son Phil married with an ice queen who was very ambitious about her career but had obviously no interest in building up a solid family; the second child John was luckier to have found an intellectual and family-life loving wife; the third kid Liz experienced a succession of failures with her marriage and career; the youngest daughter Casse was not coming due to the resentment towards her for not being there when her husband died.
(start to get bumpy with the "she", she refers to the heroin or the heroin's daughter? how to make it less bewildering? and I have the problem to use the right tense, should I use "have done" tense or "did" for such book review? Is there anyone who can help me with these 2 questions?) This was when the thought-provoking part got out of the water. 3 of her children brought their families on the yacht she had chartered for them.
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Book Review - The Sins of The Mother - Part 1 [In titles always capitalize the first, last, and all important words.]
I've read a short novel The Sins of The Mother last Sunday. It is about a successful woman who built a business empire with the support of her devoted husband and mother to care for her 4 children. She enjoyed her life and embraced every opportunity to expand her commercial success, which she did not think was a problem. However, when the kids grew up to either cut off their relationship with her or stay alienated to her, she started to realize something was wrong, and to make up for the missing time and to strengthen the family bonds, she meticulously planned a family trip each June.This year she invited her children and grandchildren to go on a 2-week luxurious vacation. The oldest son, Phil, married with an ice queen who was very ambitious about her career but had obviously no interest in building up a solid family. The second child, John, was luckier to have found an intellectual and family-life loving wife. The third kid, Liz, experienced a succession of failures with her marriage and career, and the youngest daughter Casse was not coming due to the resentment towards her for not being there when her husband died.*
(start to get bumpy with the "she", she refers to the heroin or the heroin's daughter? how to make it less bewildering? [Your text about Liz implies the failures are about Liz's own marriage failures, not that of her mother. If this is incorrect you need to write "failures with her mother's marriage and career." Yes, for Casse both "her"s are ambiguous. As an example of clearing up your last sentence, write either "due to her mother's resentment towards her" or "due to her resentment towards her mother", and "when her mother's husband died" or "when her own husband died".] and I have the problem to use the right tense, should I use "have done" tense or "did" for such book review? [No, just use simple past tense. The fact that you mention she realized something was wrong and wanted to make up for missing time clearly and completely explains the situation without needing to use a different tense.] This was when the thought-provoking part got out of the water. 3 of her children brought their families on the yacht she had chartered for them.) [Wouldn't "This year she invited 3 of her children and their grandchildren" make this clear?]
[* Combining all these phrases into one sentence makes for awkward reading. In English this is called a run-on sentence. There are no hard and fast rules for how long to make a single sentence, but your text about the children reads better broken up. Note that I kept the information about the final two children together to show variety in writing style (less boring) and also because doing this does not make that final sentence overly long.]
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