claire_fuller_writer's reviews
1030 reviews

I know lots of people who have loved this, but it wasn't for me. Not so much the content, as the writing, which was too descriptive for my taste. I also had a problem with the 'magical' world that Bond created for the book, and how flexible its 'rules' were. Every time something terrible happened, the protagonist, Ruby was able to get out of it by the rules changing, which meant that I stopped trusting or believing whenever I was told that something was as bad as it could get.

Another re-read straight after reading Girl With Green Eyes, which meant I read them in the wrong order. I didn't like this one quite as much, but still loved it.

I really enjoyed this - the eighth novel from Louise Doughty. It is very different from Apple Tree Yard, which was no problem for me, but readers who loved that and come looking for something similar might be disappointed, but I'd still urge them to read it.
It's a quiet book despite the horrors it contains. There's something gentle about it and the way it's written.
It's about Nicolaas who starts a relationship with Rita (so refreshing to meet a woman who is large-ish, confident and likable), but can't settle. He wants in and then wants out. And gradually we learn about the things in his life which have made him who he is.

Ambitious and important, but it didn't quite work for me. I love O'Brien's style of writing - the non sequiturs, the minutiae of characters' behaviour, the descriptions of place, but it was the structure of this book that did it for me. The first half is set in a rural Irish village with a thinly disguised Karadzic disturbing the villagers, while the second half is about how one of the villagers flees to London and further, and is also filled with the terrible stories of refugees and immigrants. Important stories, but they made the novel so fractured that it stopped hanging together as a whole, but still didn't work as something experimental.

I love Myerson's writing - reading it is almost as if I'm not reading, as if the words are washing over me. I read this in a couple of days on holiday and it deals with some difficult subjects for holiday reading, but completely gripped me.

Spoiler

When I realised that we probably wouldn't ever find out who killed Lennie, for a moment I was disappointed, but this book is in no way a who-done-it, and then towards the end of the novel when the child disappears, I really liked how the story turned.

Myerson has a way of catching and describing the tiny details of ordinary life - the way a baby wakes with a jerk and grabs at the air and then falls back to sleep - that I absolutely love.

Wonderfully odd. I loved how my view of the father was manipulated and changed over the course of this novella. About half way through I was worried that we wouldn't find out what happened to him when he doesn't come home from dinner, but by the end it really no longer mattered - it was all about the family rather than that evening.

3.5 stars. This book has much to recommend it: an evocative and sustained atmosphere, and although I was never there at that time, a well-imagined late '60s California, and some beautiful writing. Perhaps if it had panned out differently it might have been a four or even five star book for me. But about half way through, it felt as if there had been too much foreshadowing of what was going to happen (in fact telling, rather than foreshadowing). I realise it's inspired by the Charles Manson murders, but I felt that if Cline had strayed further from this well-trodden path, the book would have been more gripping.
My other issue with it was the number of metaphors and exposition. Many of these are beautifully written pieces, and often apt and well-considered, but it was the shear number of them (at least one metaphor per page) that pulled me out of the story because I found myself anticipating the next.
Despite all that I did enjoy reading it and would recommend it.

I loved all of this, and will keep re-reading. If I had to choose, then I would say I like the third section the most, (and found the middle section the hardest - although that might make it the best - the one I'll need to go back to, to keep getting more from it), and the final poem, Finally, the best.

Maybe lots of people are going to love this book. But although I read it through to the end, and quite quickly, it didn't keep me on the edge of my seat. It was pacey, and

Spoiler

I thought the way Robert's reaction changes when he learns that Catherine didn't have an affair, but was raped - that he can accept her back if raped, but not from an affair

made me stop and think. The 'twist' for me, didn't justify the build up and keeping the secret hidden for so many years. And the pedant in me didn't understand how'The Perfect Stranger' (the book that Disclaimer features) could possibly have enough content for it to be made into a novel.

3.5 stars really. Lovely descriptions of the landscape - this time mostly of Denmark - which I've come to expect and enjoy from Stegner, but the structure didn't quite work for me. The narrator, Joe Allston, finds a diary from a visit to Denmark where he discovers the horrific secrets of an aristocratic family. That story was really interesting, what didn't grab me quite so much was when Joe was back home in California and musing on growing old. I felt like a lot of that had been covered in All The Little Live Things which also features Joe Allston as the narrator.