It felt like a life sentence reading this book. I understand all the deep and philosophical issues involved: inter-racial relationships, complicated family matters that affect one's whole life, infidelities, changing, evolving and ending friendships, complicated personal choices....I get it, but does it need to be presented in this hard to follow, boringly dry prose? Most of our book club members could not get past the beginning which seemed to never end. It is hard to understand what is the point of the book, until you've read it to the end. Problem is, you might never be patient enough to get there...