At least this was better than Inferno. It's more of the same: Robert Langdon being chased around Europe while trying to decipher clues and reveal truAt least this was better than Inferno. It's more of the same: Robert Langdon being chased around Europe while trying to decipher clues and reveal truth to the world. At least half the chapters end with some character getting a cryptic text message or viewing an astonishing news story and then running off in shock without letting on what the message or news story was about. (Note to Dan Brown who certainly cares about my opinion: if you use this same plot device 150 times in a single book, people might stop caring about what the text message said. Just saying.)
I usually like Dan Brown for his ideas, and I was intrigued by the two ideas this book purported to answer: where do we come from and where are we going? But we don't get to hear his answers to these questions until the end of the book, and I thought the ultimate answers were unoriginal. Particular the question about where we're going: there have been science fiction stories about this exact concept since basically the dawn of science fiction.
Dan Brown fans will read this regardless of the reviews. I'll be interested to see how many people were intrigued by his ideas and how many thought there wasn't anything new here.
Merged review:
At least this was better than Inferno. It's more of the same: Robert Langdon being chased around Europe while trying to decipher clues and reveal truth to the world. At least half the chapters end with some character getting a cryptic text message or viewing an astonishing news story and then running off in shock without letting on what the message or news story was about. (Note to Dan Brown who certainly cares about my opinion: if you use this same plot device 150 times in a single book, people might stop caring about what the text message said. Just saying.)
I usually like Dan Brown for his ideas, and I was intrigued by the two ideas this book purported to answer: where do we come from and where are we going? But we don't get to hear his answers to these questions until the end of the book, and I thought the ultimate answers were unoriginal. Particular the question about where we're going: there have been science fiction stories about this exact concept since basically the dawn of science fiction.
Dan Brown fans will read this regardless of the reviews. I'll be interested to see how many people were intrigued by his ideas and how many thought there wasn't anything new here.
Merged review:
At least this was better than Inferno. It's more of the same: Robert Langdon being chased around Europe while trying to decipher clues and reveal truth to the world. At least half the chapters end with some character getting a cryptic text message or viewing an astonishing news story and then running off in shock without letting on what the message or news story was about. (Note to Dan Brown who certainly cares about my opinion: if you use this same plot device 150 times in a single book, people might stop caring about what the text message said. Just saying.)
I usually like Dan Brown for his ideas, and I was intrigued by the two ideas this book purported to answer: where do we come from and where are we going? But we don't get to hear his answers to these questions until the end of the book, and I thought the ultimate answers were unoriginal. Particular the question about where we're going: there have been science fiction stories about this exact concept since basically the dawn of science fiction.
Dan Brown fans will read this regardless of the reviews. I'll be interested to see how many people were intrigued by his ideas and how many thought there wasn't anything new here....more
Just understand that this is a self-help book and not a memoir. And it's self-help in a feminist way: the focus is on how women lose their true voicesJust understand that this is a self-help book and not a memoir. And it's self-help in a feminist way: the focus is on how women lose their true voices and true selves as they become adults. If the book speaks to you and helps you to become a truer, more authentic version of yourself, that's great - I am supportive of any book that does that. For me, it all just seemed like something I've heard before. I found the subsequent book club discussion much better than the book itself.
It started out well. Glennon Doyle relates an experience she once had of seeing a cheetah who believed it was a tame golden retriever but who wasn't quite able to give up its wild instincts. But from there it just went into well-worn territory: girls lose their true selves when they approach puberty, they can't express negative emotions, they're conditioned to take up less space and be quieter than boys, fashion magazines set unrealistic expectations, etc. Again, if this was conveyed in a way that meant something to you and changed your life, I think that's wonderful. To me it seemed same-old, same-old.
The book was easy to read, written in bite-size essays. I noticed that other reviewers have commented on the stilted, unrealistic dialogue and the paragraphs-long dissertations she claims to have given (word for word) to her preteen daughters. I have to agree - there was something inauthentic about this book about authenticity. But maybe if you ignore the quotation marks and consider the dialogue as part of the essay, it's more believable. (Personally I couldn't ignore the quotation marks and I was left feeling that she had a very odd conversational style with friends.)
The book made me wonder what society would be like if people never became socialised into acting like 'adults'. What would happen if we immediately expressed every emotion we felt, if we never did anything we didn't want to do, and if we instead maintained the 'authenticity' of children our whole lives? What if every day was like recess on the playground? Like it or not, part of growing up means learning to sometimes consider the needs of other people or the society as a whole before one's own. This isn't a negative mark against the book since Doyle didn't claim to write a book about balance, but I think I would have been more interested in reading a book which acknowledges that it's not always me-first or always them-first but talks about how to decide between the two....more
I'm having trouble coming up with a star rating for this book. I loved the prose and I couldn't put the book down. But I thought all the sadness and lI'm having trouble coming up with a star rating for this book. I loved the prose and I couldn't put the book down. But I thought all the sadness and loneliness were oppressive and the situation was unbelievable.
When Kya was 6 years old, her mother left and never came back. Then all her siblings (much older than her so they were mostly grown when she was still young) drifted away and most of them were never heard from again; only one of her siblings ever thought to check in on her, and that was more than a decade later. Last of all, Kya's violent father disappeared one day and never came back. Kya was 7 and was living alone in a shack in a salt marsh with no plumbing or electricity. And she stayed.
And that was that. The town knew she was out there, living on her own at 7 years old, but nobody cared. It's not like this was the 19th century and she was a little Oliver Twist, trying to make her way in the world on her own. This was mid-20th-century America. The truant officer turned up once before her father disappeared and made her go to school for one day, but she didn't like it so she never went back. This truant officer was the only official person who ever looked in on her and she apparently gave up after a few attempts. I had a lot of trouble believing that an entire town would abandon a little white girl to her own devices. (Unfortunately I could have imagined it better if she was a little black girl, but even then I think she would have been adopted into some sort of community.)
Instead of starving, young Kya (who didn't know how to cook anything but grits) taught herself to use the family motorboat, plant a garden, and live off the land even though she was almost completely isolated - nobody ever came to check on her. Most of the book is about her loneliness and isolation and also about how she was taken advantage of by some of the very few people who appeared in her life.
The book is wonderfully written - the prose is excellent. I had trouble putting the book down. It just all seemed contrived to me, and I couldn't get past that. The author wanted to write a book about isolation, but instead of putting little Kya on a desert island or something, she put her just outside a decent-sized town with churches and schools and a sheriff's office - basically a town full of people who wouldn't actually leave a 7-year-old to feed and clothe herself in the 1960s.
And the ending. (view spoiler)[The idea that a young woman who had never ridden a bus in her life, never left her town, never stayed in a hotel, etc, could pull off the events in the ending...it's not at all believable. Where would she have gotten the wig to disguise herself on the bus? She didn't know how to use a phone - how would she have gotten Chase to meet her at exactly the right time in the swamp in the middle of the night? And he didn't crow to any of his drinking buddies about who he was going to meet? How could she have known when the motel receptionist would be distracted? And so on. Disappointingly unbelievable. (hide spoiler)]...more
3.5 stars. This isn't meant to be a bad rating (I know these YA books tend to have readers who only give five stars unless the book is terrible). I th3.5 stars. This isn't meant to be a bad rating (I know these YA books tend to have readers who only give five stars unless the book is terrible). I thought it was one of the stronger novellas in the series. It's just that it's a novella; it's not quite as absorbing as a full-length book.
This book focuses primarily on Cora, who was introduced a few books ago, and continues the story of Regan, who appeared in the last book. Ergo, this book doesn't stand alone the way some of the other books in the series do. In an effort to protect her beloved mermaids from the Drowned Gods who discovered Cora when she visited the Moors, Cora transferred from Eleanor West's school to the Whitethorn Institute try to forget everything. We had always been told that the Whitethorn Institute was for girls who went through a door into a hostile world that they were trying to forget; it turns out that the Whitethorn students (at least those we saw) were just as anxious to remember the truth of their experiences as the girls who landed with Eleanor West. It was just that their parents wanted them to forget what happened and to go back to the way they were before walking through a doorway into another world.
As always, there is also a bit of social commentary surrounding what it means to be a girl in the 21st century, presumably in the USA. Many (most?) of the students are minorities or come from marginalised populations but I think they're all American. Cora is fat, and I thought the sections which focused on her fat-ness were insightful and thought-provoking. I was also glad to see what happened to Regan. There was also a lot of Sumi in this book, but I do my best to tune Sumi out. I'm sure her personal brand of nonsense (she went to a Nonsense world, after all) speaks to some people, but I just find her annoying.
I couldn't remember Cora's adventures in the Moors well enough to remember who the Drowned Gods were or why they were after her; there isn't any sort of review or flashback in this book to trigger memory. Same with Regan - if I hadn't recognised her name, I wouldn't have known she was the same girl who was the subject of the last book. I suggest re-reading Come Tumbling Down and maybe Across the Green Grass Fields first unless your memory is better than mine....more
Heartwrenching short story about a grandpa who loves a little boy, Noah, but knows that he's doomed to lose the relationship along with all his memoriHeartwrenching short story about a grandpa who loves a little boy, Noah, but knows that he's doomed to lose the relationship along with all his memories. This is a story about Alzheimer's from the points of view of the grandfather, the son, and the grandson.
It wasn't all sad; in the end I was left with the warm feeling that the grandpa was still a wonderful grandpa and that Noah would be able to look back on their memories with love. I was also left with the not-so-warm feeling that I don't want to get Alzheimer's. ...more
I thought I would love this book. It's about a 50-something husband and wife who walk a 630-mile trail - it sounded like exactly my kind of thing.
But I thought I would love this book. It's about a 50-something husband and wife who walk a 630-mile trail - it sounded like exactly my kind of thing.
But I just never warmed to Raynor and her husband Moth. They lost their house and were left destitute after a bad investment decision - Raynor doesn't go into any details except to say repeatedly that it was 100% not their fault. (Which...I know this is probably unfair of me, but I'm more likely to feel sorry for someone who admits that they made a bad decision. Yes, the punishment rarely fits the crime and I'm fine with people complaining about that, but I have a hard time believing people who insist that they're 100% innocent. Especially when they do it over and over.)
A few days/weeks/hours after the final judgement where they were told they would lose their house, which was apparently also their only source of income (this also wasn't clear to me either - maybe they rented the place out for events?), Moth got diagnosed with a degenerative and terminal disease. He was told to take it easy, not exert himself, and maybe he would have a few years.
So homeless, destitute, and dying, they spent the last of their money on a cheap tent and even cheaper sleeping bags and decided to hike the South West Coast Path, a 630-mile trail which winds around the southwest coast of England. Because they had an income of 拢48 per week, they decided to wild camp rather than using paid campsites. This is where I thought I would like the book. People who decide to go for a hike to get a better perspective on their woes are my kind of people.
But things went south for me when Raynor squatted in the bushes on the first day and then said she tried to scoop a bit of dirt over her...leavings...by hand because a trowel would be too heavy to carry. Look, a trowel would have cost 50p and would have weighed a few ounces - it doesn't have to be gold-plated. You can use a spoon if a trowel is too extravagant. Or scoop up your poop in a baggie and dispose of it in a bin, the way you would clean up after a dog. But it's not okay to leave your poop and your used toilet paper just sitting there on the side of the trail for anyone to step in.
And I am all for ethical wild camping. I think that with a bit of effort, the dictum to 'Leave No Trace' can be obeyed. But while Raynor and Moth did some of that, they also (quite proudly) snuck into paid campgrounds at night, pitched their tent under cover of darkness or hid it behind larger tents, and availed themselves of the shower facilities while they were at it. I get that they were poor and homeless, but the owner of the campground is just trying to pay his/her bills too. Stealing space, stealing hot water...what would happen if all of us did that?
Speaking of stealing, Raynor almost gleefully admits to stealing ridiculous things like chocolate bars. Maybe if they were stealing noodles or cans of tuna I would be more sympathetic, assuming they were truly out of food, but a chocolate bar is hardly a necessity of life. And it wasn't like they were shoplifting from large supermarkets; they were ripping off the small business owners in small shops. They justified it by (once again) saying that they were poor and homeless, but nobody was forcing them to walk a 630-mile trail.
So the couple rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning, which was too bad because I think I could have liked the rest of the story. Raynor's descriptions of the coastal trail made it sound lovely, and the crazy characters they met along the way made the small coastal villages endearing. I was delighted for Moth that his symptoms improved while he hiked. But every time I started almost liking them, they would do something like set up their tent on the green of a golf course. Honestly, these are the sorts of people who give wild campers a bad name. And the worst part was that they were so un-self-aware. I mean, of course Raynor had to just poop wherever she wanted and not clean it up because trowels are really, really heavy. How do the rest of us possibly manage to leave no trace?
I also worry that others will read this book and decide to do the same thing: head out into the bush with a cheap tent and a one-season sleeping bag that they got for 拢5 at Tesco, thinking they can just shoplift their supplies and sneak into campgrounds.
I hope that after the success of the book, the Winns have made restitution to the campground owners and shop owners and perhaps sponsored a cleanup of the South West Coast Trail. Or maybe they could open a campground of their own where they just provide all services for free - why should anyone have to pay, after all?...more
Even though I think Cathy Glass is a fraud, there's still something almost soothing about her books. I think it's the fact that she tells us all the uEven though I think Cathy Glass is a fraud, there's still something almost soothing about her books. I think it's the fact that she tells us all the unimportant details about her day: what everyone drank while having a meeting at her house ("'A coffee would be lovely, thank you,' Shari said. 'Just water, please,' Jasmine said. Joy and Haylea didn't want anything."), explaining that she takes time each day to sit down at her computer to open emails with attachments because attachments are hard to read on her phone, or reassuring us that her daughter Paula changes out of her work clothes before having supper.
She'll talk about horrific abuse that her foster daughter has disclosed (she never gives too many details, which I also appreciate) and then in the next paragraph she's detailing how she took the baby to the park to give her a bottle, and on the way home she stopped to chat with an elderly neighbour because 'having lived in the same area for nearly thirty years, I knew a lot of people, and I do like a chat.' It's oddly fascinating.
But she never seems to foster regular kids who are in the system for regular reasons. She's always busting a pedophile ring or solving a kidnapping or discovering a child bride. The woman claims to have had more bizarre experiences in 20 years of fostering than I think any 20 foster parents would have experienced collectively. And funnily enough, the stories seem to be ripped from the headlines. And by the end of the book, the kids are always well-adjusted and happy. I'm not a believer anymore, but when this book fell into my hands, I wasn't disappointed....more
I felt like a voyeur. This book is openly based on the real 'House of Horrors' inhabited by the Turpin family in California where 13 children ages 2 tI felt like a voyeur. This book is openly based on the real 'House of Horrors' inhabited by the Turpin family in California where 13 children ages 2 to 29 were perpetually starved, chained to their beds, and only allowed to bathe once a year. It's so openly based on that case that the road the Turpins lived on, Muir Woods Road, becomes Moor Woods Road in this book.
In the novel, seven children of the Gracie family experience escalating neglect and abuse at the hands of their lunatic father and weak mother. Eventually Alexandra ('Lex') manages to climb out a window and escape, raising the alarm and saving her siblings from what would have been almost certain death, probably within weeks. But of course that's not the end of the story. The Gracie children still have to continue living the rest of their lives: growing up, finishing school, deciding on a career, finding a partner, etc.
The novel begins with the Gracie's mother dying in prison several years after Lex rescued her family. Lex has been named executor over her mother's estate, which includes 拢20,000 as well as the house where the abuse took place. Lex has to gather with her siblings to decide what should be done with the assets. The story is told in the past and present, and we can see how each child's past affects their everyday lives. One child was forced to turn against his siblings and do his father's dirty work, others turned to manipulation techniques, and others simply withdrew emotionally from the world.
On the one hand, the book was compelling and kept me reading. I finished it in two sittings but would have finished it in one except that common sense reared its head and decreed that I should go to bed. The first-person narrator was able to communicate a lot about the character traits of her brothers and sisters with few words, and she was also coy: she made the reader read between the lines to try to understand what she was really trying to say. I always like a good unreliable narrator and I thought that literary device was used well in this novel. (Often it isn't.)
But on the other hand, this almost felt...exploitative. There is no question that the public is fascinated with cases like this (clearly I'm no exception), yet I haven't seen any evidence that the Turpin family is benefitting from Abigail Dean turning their family tragedy into entertainment. So while I kept reading, I felt a bit icky about it.
In 2007, at age 59, Terry Pratchett was diagnosed of a rare form of Alzheimer's disease. He famously railed against the system that would make him livIn 2007, at age 59, Terry Pratchett was diagnosed of a rare form of Alzheimer's disease. He famously railed against the system that would make him live every day of his life to the bitter end, keeping him alive after he had lost control of all bodily functions and lived in a frightening fog of lost memories. Since he already had an incurable disease, he wanted to be able to choose death with dignity and to end things on his own terms.
In 2010 Pratchett was asked to give the BBC's Dimbleby Lecture (yes, that's a real thing even though it sounds like something out of a Dr Seuss book). This short book contains the text of the lecture along with some foreword and afterword material other people wrote to bulk the book up. Pratchett was able to introduce himself at the lecture but I understand the bulk of the text had to be read by someone else because Pratchett was no longer able to read reliably. (Imagine being a prolific author who spends the last five years of your life unable to read.)
Even if he couldn't deliver the lecture, Pratchett wrote every word himself. His anger at the priorities of the current medical establishment practically sears the page. According to Pratchett, during Victorian times family doctors saw it as their responsibility to end suffering in cases where there was no hope for survival. (He doesn't cite any sources so I'm not sure if this is true, but it certainly sounds reasonable.) He wanted to be treated like any British citizen living a hundred years ago, with the right to die before turning into a gibbering idiot.
A friend gave me this book when I was diagnosed with my own terminal illness, which in my case is cancer. I'm actually not sure if she knew that the book was about assisted dying or if she just knew I liked Terry Pratchett. But I agree with him: the medical establishment's priority to make sure you take every single breath you can and have every heartbeat they can squeeze out of you, regardless of how much pain you're in or what your quality of life is like, is preposterous. Not to mention that doctors have a vested interest to make you live as long as possible, since they'll make most of their money off of you during the last year or two of your life. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but it's undeniable that in cases of terminal illness, life-and-death decisions lie with the very people who stand to profit the most from them.
Among Pratchett's excellent points was one that particularly struck a chord with me: if you're able to decide when to end your life, every moment you're alive becomes precious. If you're able to decide when life has become too much of a burden, you're free to decide that life is a joy. Note that he only advocates assisted dying in cases when a patient has received a terminal diagnosis; this essay is only applicable to physical illnesses and not mental ones.
I have plenty of other opinions about assisted dying which don't have a place in a book review. So I'll just sum up by saying this book is worth reading by anyone, regardless of where you fall in the assisted dying debate. It's short and it's written by a person with a vested interest in the outcome. And I think Pratchett has points which can be used as a starting point to have a conversation with your loved ones about their wishes regarding the end of their life, or perhaps even to have that conversation with yourself, if you haven't already.
This is the Twitter announcement from 12 March 2015, advising the world of Terry Pratchett's death. (The first bit should be written in a particular 'Death' font which readers of Pratchett's Discworld series would understand to mean that the character Death is speaking, but I don't think it can be done in 欧宝娱乐.)
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
Terry took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
I'm giving up on this. It's me, it's not C.S. Lewis. Hence, I'm not going to give it a star rating. I didn't like the book but that's not Lewis's faulI'm giving up on this. It's me, it's not C.S. Lewis. Hence, I'm not going to give it a star rating. I didn't like the book but that's not Lewis's fault.
This is supposed to be an allegory of a man leaving his Christian childhood and taking a journey through several other philosophical schools of thought before (presumably) ending up back at Christianity, a better and wiser person for having taken the journey. The first few chapters were great: there's a young man named John who has been taught all his life to follow the arbitrary rules of 'the Landlord' - the person who owns all the land round about. The Steward is the man who sets the rules and make sure everyone follows them, but he's quite literally two-faced. And off in the distance John can occasionally glimpse an Island which he longs to visit.
So that part was great and thought-provoking, and it gave me hope that the rest of the book would be just as great. I read half the book hoping to re-capture the insights from the first few chapters. But from here John travels into the world running across people (Mr Enlightenment, the Spirit of the Age, the Clevers, Sigismund, ...) and visiting places (Eschropolis, Claptrap, ...) where he evaluates what he's learning and decides to move on.
The trouble was that I don't know enough about the various philosophies to make sense of John's conversations. The book presupposes familiarity with the various schools of thought, so it is about debunking the philosophies rather than explaining them. John visits with each character and stays at each place for 4-5 pages, where he has inscrutable (to me) conversations and then decides to move on. Halfway through the book he arrives at the Grand Canyon and is told a story which was recognisable to me as the Adam and Eve story, and Mother Kirk appeared and offered to carry him across the Grand Canyon but he decided to go his own way - finally, I thought, we were getting to a place I understood. But a few pages later he ended up with Mr Sensible and I'm reading things like, 'Sense is easy, Reason is hard. Sense knows where to stop with gracious inconsistency, while Reason slavishly follows an abstract logic whither she knows not. Le bon sens is the father of a flourishing family: Reason is barren and a virgin.'
If this sort of thing makes sense to you, you'll probably like the book....more
I got this in an Audible sale (I have two months' free membership so I'm trying to pick up all the cheap books) and I'm glad I got it off the discountI got this in an Audible sale (I have two months' free membership so I'm trying to pick up all the cheap books) and I'm glad I got it off the discount rack.
The author spent the first hour telling me that once I know The Greatest Secret I'll never be sad again. I'll live my life in constant joy and will never experience anger or disappointment or fear. Like, even if a tidal wave is rushing towards me, I won't be afraid because I'll be experiencing constant joy. (She didn't actually say this but it was implied.) So I already had the sneaking suspicion that she was overpromising.
Finally she got to the point. The Greatest Secret is pure Buddhism: realise that your body is not 'you', realise that your thoughts are not 'you', realise that you're an eternal being having an earthly experience. Apparently this is a secret hidden in plain sight...except, of course, for the ~1 billion Buddhists in the world or any followers of Eckhart Tolle or similar writers.
She also told me that once I understood The Greatest Secret I would no longer be concerned about world events. Presumably this is because a Syrian refugee or a mother who lost her 10-year-old in a mass genocide can also understand The Greatest Secret and live their lives in constant joy. Look, if I'm reincarnated as a Syrian refugee, I'm going to hope that there are some non-enlightened people who are concerned about world affairs rather than spending all their time navel-gazing and telling me that we should all just be happy.
If Rhonda Byrne is your guru and this book speaks to you, that's terrific. I think the Buddhist Path of Enlightenment is an excellent way to live, and if Byrne is able to present it in a way that helps people, so much the better. For me it was just fluff and I was glad I bought it off the sale rack. But the reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one star is because I think for some people this could be a life-changing introduction to something they haven't heard before.
Note on the Audible edition: for some reason there is loud music playing during the entire narration. Drums, pan flutes, even people singing. Baffling. I imagine it was there to set the mood, but if they must play music (which I pretty much hate in audiobooks anyway) why couldn't they just play it between chapters? I often had a hard time distinguishing the narrator's voice from the voice of the woman singing in the background. It was like going to a lecture and having a band playing next door (or going to a concert and having a person loudly narrate a book over the music). However, if you like the idea of books being accompanied by music, you'll love it....more
I'm a bit torn on whether this is a 3-star or 4-star read for me. I'll put four stars for now but might change it later.
The story, as such, is basicalI'm a bit torn on whether this is a 3-star or 4-star read for me. I'll put four stars for now but might change it later.
The story, as such, is basically a year in the life of the Casey family: three brothers, their wives, and their children. Two of the children are also attached to the Kinsella family: their mother, Jessie, was married to Rory Kinsella who died, and then she married a Casey. I spent the first hundred pages flipping back to the family tree, conveniently placed at the beginning of the book, before I started to get all the relationships straight.
In 650+ pages we get to know all the characters very well. Very, very well. Jessie, the insecure control freak; Johnnie, the former playboy turned family man who worries that he has no substance; Cara, who denies she has an eating disorder; idealistic Nell who married into the family too quickly and is looking for acceptance; etc. The story is told from multiple points of view (although always in third person) from all the adult characters. Except Liam (the villain) - I'm not sure we ever heard from Liam.
This is the sort of book I normally love: family drama, character growth, multiple points of view, etc. I just sometimes felt it was dragging on too long. 650+ pages and nothing ever really happens. I mean, there's normal family drama and a big explosion at the end, but this is basically just a year in the life of a normal family. This is the sort of book which is more about the journey than the destination, because there is no destination. It doesn't have a beginning, middle, and an end; it just starts in the middle of a family's day and ends in another one.
But I also found it compelling, and despite the length I read most of it in two days. I started reading Marian Keyes' books when her first novel, Watermelon, was published when I was at university. It was fluffy but entertaining, with a story that was hard to find between the witticisms. I kind of felt like she and I grew up together as her writing matured through the years (and hopefully I matured through the years too). There was nothing fluffy about this book. It probably could have been edited down by about 200 pages, but it's certainly not the chick-lit that her first few books were. It wasn't even witty, and normally I can rely on Marian Keyes to at least be witty.
In the end, there's an 'Eight Months Later' chapter but it only involves two of the characters. I kept flipping through the acknowledgements and the other end-of-book stuff thinking that I was missing something, that surely the other characters would have their 8-month status update too. But no. I'm never going to know what happened with Jessie's business or Nell's decisions or the Kinsella family's ongoing hostility. (view spoiler)[ I never really got the Kinsella thing. They're the best, most wonderful, most loving family in the world, but they could never forgive Jessie and Johnny for getting together nearly three years after Rory died? (hide spoiler)]
Can I recommend it? Dunno. For Marian Keyes fans who know what they're getting into, yes, it's worth reading. I liked it better than her other recent books. For those who haven't read her books before? I wouldn't recommend this one as a first book. I would recommend Rachel's Holiday or Last Chance Saloon first....more
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