My "review" that totally failed to say what the book was all about.

The Orchardist
by Amanda Coplin

I was reading a large print version, and the text didn’t have any double-quote characters around the dialog.  Was this a feature of the typeface, or did the author want it that way?  It had the strange and eerie effect of making it seem like that characters were talking to themselves—in their own heads—a lot of the time.  Which they were.   They were a quiet kind of people.

And a most uniquely amazing kind of people.   A lot of characters seemed to lack depth, but that wasn’t a failure of the author, rather, a failure of the characters themselves.  Everyone isn’t as introspective as you or I, and a lot of people don’t really have a clue why they do what they do.   Other people have a clue but only after the fact; others a clue some of the time but that doesn’t stop them from doing what they do, anyway.  Are you with me, here?

Bear in mind that I’m a pretty ordinary reader—no Ulysses or Moby Dick for me—but in my humble opinion this was some of the best writing I’ve read in a lot of years.   So invisible I didn’t even notice the missing double-quotes until several chapters in.  It wasn’t writing at all, but story-telling.  Marvelous!