Common Sense Note
There's not much plot, but this gentle character story, simply told, is as engrossing and sweet as they come. In simple, lyrical language, India learns not to judge others on first impressions, and to make friends by opening herself to others.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
A mere summary can't capture this warmhearted, lovely combination of hilarity (in one scene Winn-Dixie captures an unhurt mouse in the church and delivers it to the preacher during his sermon), poignancy (a candy that tastes of sadness created by a young man who lost everything in the Civil War), and the kind of characters you find only in Southern novels (a child named Sweetie Pie, an old woman who ties bottles to a tree to hold the ghosts of her past transgressions).
In prose as warm and soft as a Florida night, the author creates a dusty Southern town where life is still slow, church is held in a former convenience store, and even dogs and parrots have eccentric personalities.
Opal, who narrates, ties it all together. Her voice is one of the more distinctive in recent years--tart without being snide, humorous, wise without precocity, and completely honest. Initially she is more comfortable with adults than with children, but she learns, with help from her unusual dog and some caring adults, to look for the good in others.
This exceptional first novel joins a genre, epitomized by Patricia MacLachlan's work, of stories without villains, which hold the reader instead through the charm of the characters, the delight of the events, and the lyricism of the writing.
From the Book:
And then he crept up on the couch with us in this funny way he has, where he gets on the couch an inch at a time, kind of sliding himself onto it, looking off in a different direction, like it's all happening by accident, llike he doesn't intend to get on the couch, but all of a sudden, there he is.
Plot Summary:
When lonely India Opal Buloni takes home a stray dog she finds at the supermarket, her whole life changes in ways she couldn't have imagined. This soothing, poignant first novel, filled with the atmosphere of a dusty Southern town, is one of the best around.
India Opal Buloni has just moved to the small town of Naomi, Florida, with her father, a preacher who "reminded me of a turtle hiding inside its shell." Her mother abandoned them years before, and Opal feels alone and abandoned in her new town.
At the supermarket she rescues a stray dog who looks "like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain," and names him Winn-Dixie, after the market. She soon discovers that he is great at making friends, and because of Winn-Dixie, Opal is learning to see beyond people's surfaces.
The ex-con who runs the pet shop plays music that mesmerizes animals. An woman rumored to be a witch is just an old lady who is half-blind, but can see with her heart. A pinched-faced girl harbors a tragic secret. And all are soon her friends.
Related Books:
Books With Similar Themes
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Journey by Patricia MacLachlan
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan
The Last Payback by James Van Oosting
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