Scan barcode
A review by bill_wehrmacher
The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P.S. Duffy
2.0
As one may deduce from my two star rating, I didn't like this book very much.
I am a member of two book clubs. About three months ago, we chose this The Cartographer of No Man's Land. I usually enjoy the the books our librarian/BookClub leader chooses; some more than others. This book was the first I didn't finish. I started I several times and got to about page 30 before I just stopped reading.
As my other book club is in the same county library system, No Man's Land appeared again. As so many of the members of the first club, and GoodReads members, loved the book, I was determined to find out what they loved so much. I didn't.
To be totally honest, I didn't read the whole book. I skipped from page 165 to 275 to see how the book turned out.
The book is about Argus, a frustrated artist who joins the Canadian army in 1917 to go to France to find his brother in law Ebbin, and the adventures surrounding that escapade. Ms Duffy intersperses that story with chapters about the lives of those Argus and Ebbin left behind in Canada. I found neither of these stories sufficiently compelling to hold my interest.
I am well aware it is important for an author to paint verbal images to pull the reader into the story. Ms Duffy uses mountains of metaphor and avalanches of adjectives in an attempt to do just that. However, for me these efforts got in the way and prompted my ADHD mind to go get a cup of tea, or go for a walk, or google causality figures for WWI and the battle of Vimy ridge, or impact WWI had on global population (almost none in the grand scheme of things).
I must say that I did come across some sentences that painted an image, but then the mood is lost: “Pink and lavender sweet peas fluttered on the vine – their scent, light as air, filling him with temporary amnesia for the war. Beyond the vines, beyond the sheltering branches of an Elm, the women rubbed their hair with thick towels and then sat in a circle in the sun, each one coming the next one's hair with wide toothed combs.”
I was never able to decide what this book was trying to be. I guess it is WWI historical fiction, as there is reference to actual events including actual statistics, but I am not sure. I am actually a fan of historical fiction, but if you are, and are interested in WWI, I suggest you choose Ken Follett's The Fall of Giants. I spent less time reading that 985 pages than I have struggling through this.
The book did offer some redeeming character in the last 50 pages or so. It focuses on the war's impact on the lives of those who return and those loved ones who never left. Investigating these sorts of impacts is typical of book and I think is a very important subject for people to understand, and Ms. Duffy does this well.
I am a member of two book clubs. About three months ago, we chose this The Cartographer of No Man's Land. I usually enjoy the the books our librarian/BookClub leader chooses; some more than others. This book was the first I didn't finish. I started I several times and got to about page 30 before I just stopped reading.
As my other book club is in the same county library system, No Man's Land appeared again. As so many of the members of the first club, and GoodReads members, loved the book, I was determined to find out what they loved so much. I didn't.
To be totally honest, I didn't read the whole book. I skipped from page 165 to 275 to see how the book turned out.
The book is about Argus, a frustrated artist who joins the Canadian army in 1917 to go to France to find his brother in law Ebbin, and the adventures surrounding that escapade. Ms Duffy intersperses that story with chapters about the lives of those Argus and Ebbin left behind in Canada. I found neither of these stories sufficiently compelling to hold my interest.
I am well aware it is important for an author to paint verbal images to pull the reader into the story. Ms Duffy uses mountains of metaphor and avalanches of adjectives in an attempt to do just that. However, for me these efforts got in the way and prompted my ADHD mind to go get a cup of tea, or go for a walk, or google causality figures for WWI and the battle of Vimy ridge, or impact WWI had on global population (almost none in the grand scheme of things).
I must say that I did come across some sentences that painted an image, but then the mood is lost: “Pink and lavender sweet peas fluttered on the vine – their scent, light as air, filling him with temporary amnesia for the war. Beyond the vines, beyond the sheltering branches of an Elm, the women rubbed their hair with thick towels and then sat in a circle in the sun, each one coming the next one's hair with wide toothed combs.”
I was never able to decide what this book was trying to be. I guess it is WWI historical fiction, as there is reference to actual events including actual statistics, but I am not sure. I am actually a fan of historical fiction, but if you are, and are interested in WWI, I suggest you choose Ken Follett's The Fall of Giants. I spent less time reading that 985 pages than I have struggling through this.
The book did offer some redeeming character in the last 50 pages or so. It focuses on the war's impact on the lives of those who return and those loved ones who never left. Investigating these sorts of impacts is typical of book and I think is a very important subject for people to understand, and Ms. Duffy does this well.