A bunch of Oxford grads get caught up in a murder that happened 10years previously. Way too much drinking going on. If just a few of them had remained sober, we wouldn't have this book. In spite of that, this is an interesting story, keeps you guessing, more or less.
A bait & switch -- the mystery of what happened to Severine, the French Girl, is a thin pretext for a lot of pathetic nonsense about the love-lives of of some obnoxious, entitled Londoners.
This might have been interesting if there was any sense that Elliott was aware just how obnoxious are her group of college friends, whose affluent buzz is being harshed by a cold case murder investigation dating back to their last holiday as an undergraduate group. Each and every one of the five surviving friends is obnoxious in a special, unique way -- compounded by the fact that each and every one of them harbours desperate longings for at least one of their mates -- longings that normal adults would have grown out of after ten years of, y'know, real life. But no: the white hot fires of college lust still burn as brightly for these immature yahoos as they did when they were at Oxford, and their " ... favourite summer pastime was ball-crashing ... -- to dress up in black tie and sneak into an event without paying."
Oh. My. God. Page 6 of my edition, and I should have stopped there.
Spoiler Alert: The murder is a McGuffin, and really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter so thoroughly that long (long, long) pages go by with no reference to it as we endure descriptions of the characters' Important City jobs, their boozing, their hangovers, and their romantic longings. As I said, this could have been interesting if you thought for one minute that Elliott was aware of their arrested development, and rampant entitlement, and was aware that this is a BAD THING. She could have turned the reopening of the murder investigation and the upending of their immature group dynamic into a dark, modern comedy of manners. But I think Elliott actually loves pathetic Kate, sex-addict Lara, day-trader Tom, and Ice Queen Caro, and expects us to love and relate to them too.. That she actually Feels Their Pain.
Maybe this is just me, but I'd say AVOID ...
This might have been interesting if there was any sense that Elliott was aware just how obnoxious are her group of college friends, whose affluent buzz is being harshed by a cold case murder investigation dating back to their last holiday as an undergraduate group. Each and every one of the five surviving friends is obnoxious in a special, unique way -- compounded by the fact that each and every one of them harbours desperate longings for at least one of their mates -- longings that normal adults would have grown out of after ten years of, y'know, real life. But no: the white hot fires of college lust still burn as brightly for these immature yahoos as they did when they were at Oxford, and their " ... favourite summer pastime was ball-crashing ... -- to dress up in black tie and sneak into an event without paying."
Oh. My. God. Page 6 of my edition, and I should have stopped there.
Spoiler Alert: The murder is a McGuffin, and really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter so thoroughly that long (long, long) pages go by with no reference to it as we endure descriptions of the characters' Important City jobs, their boozing, their hangovers, and their romantic longings. As I said, this could have been interesting if you thought for one minute that Elliott was aware of their arrested development, and rampant entitlement, and was aware that this is a BAD THING. She could have turned the reopening of the murder investigation and the upending of their immature group dynamic into a dark, modern comedy of manners. But I think Elliott actually loves pathetic Kate, sex-addict Lara, day-trader Tom, and Ice Queen Caro, and expects us to love and relate to them too.. That she actually Feels Their Pain.
Maybe this is just me, but I'd say AVOID ...
Superbly plotted, will keep you guessing. Characters are well drawn. A good read!
