This is a hard book to review I think because it was hard book to read. This is my first Stanley Gordon West and I have heard great things about him as a writer and maybe this isn't where I should have started, but even though I didn’t love this book it is well written.

This was an interesting look at the abhorrent conditions that some nursing homes were in and the people working in them were sadists and thieves who prey on the weak. It was tough reading at times especially if you have a loved one in a care facility but you couldn’t help but cheer for the residents and hope their big plan would work.

I don’t want to say too much more because I had the ending of this book spoiled on me and it kind of wrecked the rest of the book for me and that may have added to me not liking it as much as I should have.

I will give this author another try as I liked his style but this one was just kind a little better than just ok.

3 stars ( )

I ended up buying this book along with a later West book, BLIND YOUR PONIES, which has gotten a lot of favorable buzz in the past several months. AMOS, it turns out, was West's first (self-)published book, back in the early 80s. And the premise is an interesting enough one, a group of elders in a rural Montana nursing home in the early 60s - it was actually more of a 'poorhouse' or county farm sort of place back then. And these old folks are being victimized and terrorized by the home's director, Daisy Daws, who is a 'Big Nurse' kind of character, a la Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. West's hero is one Amos Lasher, a widower in his late 70s when he arrives at the Sunset home. It doesn't take Amos long to figure out something is rotten in Denmark, beginning with the sudden demise of his roommate, a busted-up old cowboy with no family. Yes, Daisy Daws is an evil life-insurance-collecting ball-buster indeed, as is her shin-kicking abusive henchman, Roland.

Yes, people are abused and neglected, evil runs rampant at Sunset - just what the book promises. It is a classic 'good' (Amos et al) vs 'evil' (Daisy et Roland). The problem is these roles are just too too completely black and white. There are no shades of grey. But there is plenty of overwrought absolutely purple prose strewn throughout the book, which plods along at an annoying 'old folks' sort of pace. And what is most painful for the discerning reader is an annoying surplus of simply horrible and inept metaphors and similes, to be found on nearly every page. Here are a just a few examples -

"Depression covered him like an afghan." (p 124) "He looked at Amos through heavy glass lenses, his eyes magnified goldfish swimming in symphony." (also p 124) "Amos thought they were like fish in a aquarium ... nowhere to go, nothing to do with themselves, simming round and round all day over the same marbles and colored rocks ..." (p 44) "When his heart felt like wax, his plans like dust in the hurricane, Carlos, in his weathered adobe skin ..." (p 141) "... knocked over the urinal full of phlegm and urine. Like a flow of lava the nauseous mess moved slowly across the green and black linoleum ..." (p 35) ...

Aahh, what the hell, they're everywhere, and worse ones than that. Just open the book anywhere and you'll find 'em.

I will admit that the resolution to this good vs evil conflict was somewhat unique and even unexpected - and if you're gonna read it, I won't spoil the ending - but even that was ruined for me by the aforementioned purple prose and overdone adjectives. I would have liked to give the book at least 3 stars, but just couldn't. I hate to beat a dead horse, but the writing is simply too awful. I can only hope that West's writing has gotten better in the past 25 years, because I've got BLIND YOUR PONIES here to try soon. My wife is reading it now and tells me it's good. I sincerely hope I agree. ( )