English 11B
Ms. Whall
Reaction to All Souls
After finishing our summer reading novel, All Souls, by Michael Patrick MacDonald, I was both very surprised and moved. I was surprised because after assuming that this book would be another boring, required read, I loved the book and could not put it down the whole time I was reading it. The style of Michael Patrick MacDonald’s writing was phenomenal and kept me glued to the book the whole time. Plus, the reality of the whole book was also very convincing. The way Ma always spoke to Michael was realistic and obviously helped him grow up as a child. The neighborhood that Michael was forced to grow up in, Southie, was something that nobody should ever be subjected to, whether they are a child or an adult. Southie had one of the highest rates of white poverty in the United States, and the detail that MacDonald used when he was describing his home and surroundings was astounding. In his home with the cockroaches and shoddy rooms, the reader is forced to feel bad for this child who is being brought up this way. In Sharon, we have never known anything like this and when we were children, we might have been upset if we had a bad day in school or our friend got in a fight with us. Here, MacDonald forces us to think about living in Southie at the time he did, with “Whitey” James Bulger at large, and having to come home every day to the place that he called home. The style of writing that MacDonald uses makes us feel involved in the story. Talking about the four deaths of his brothers and sisters could not have been easy but MacDonald does it and accomplishes it well. I would have to recommend this novel to anyone who likes to read, no matter what type of genre they are in to. This is something that everyone should read and I am sure that most everyone would enjoy this book as much as I did.