Maura (maura853) -
Page turner.
My advice for you, if you're planning to embark on this novel, is to clear your diary for a couple of days. Maybe arrange for someone to cook your meals for you. Because, however you feel about the way it eventually plays out, you're going to want to finish it, and you're going to be willing to neglect your daily schedule, blank your nearest and dearest, and ignore healthy eating in order to do it.
For a long time, I've felt that Sophie Hannah is the Mistress of the "great hook." The opening idea that is so crazy that you simply have to read on to find out how she explains it. (I first encountered Hannah because of her novel in which a woman is idly checking out a house for sale, online -- as you do -- and as she's flicking through the pictures, sees a dead body, covered in blood, in the middle of the floor of one of the carefully staged rooms ... That's the sort of thing I mean.)
But, I'm afraid, I'd also found that, sadly, the payoff of the Great Idea was often disappointing -- too complicated, or too "so-what," or even maintained by bald-faced cheating. (In one novel, a 1st person narrative, she only manages to carry the "great idea" as far as she does because the narrator is lying to us. Not choosing carefull what she reveals, but simply lying to us.)
Here, I think she just about manages to pull it off -- great idea, almost plausible, very creepy conclusion.
If I have reservations, it's the padding: stretching out the tension in a way that becomes less than realistic, inserting episodes and conversations that have nothing to do with the mystery at hand -- not even in a "making connections," shedding light on character sort of way. Just dull sidebars, and annoying diversions. Some of that is, I think, down to the 1st person narrative (again!) -- I found myself wondering what Hannah could have done with it had she decided to write it as 3rd person, with a more distanced authorial voice. Whether she would have mad connections, and shed light on character, without feeling that the padding was necessary.
But as a way to pass the time, in a reasonably entertained and slightly obsessive way -- I think that deserves 4-stars.
My advice for you, if you're planning to embark on this novel, is to clear your diary for a couple of days. Maybe arrange for someone to cook your meals for you. Because, however you feel about the way it eventually plays out, you're going to want to finish it, and you're going to be willing to neglect your daily schedule, blank your nearest and dearest, and ignore healthy eating in order to do it.
For a long time, I've felt that Sophie Hannah is the Mistress of the "great hook." The opening idea that is so crazy that you simply have to read on to find out how she explains it. (I first encountered Hannah because of her novel in which a woman is idly checking out a house for sale, online -- as you do -- and as she's flicking through the pictures, sees a dead body, covered in blood, in the middle of the floor of one of the carefully staged rooms ... That's the sort of thing I mean.)
But, I'm afraid, I'd also found that, sadly, the payoff of the Great Idea was often disappointing -- too complicated, or too "so-what," or even maintained by bald-faced cheating. (In one novel, a 1st person narrative, she only manages to carry the "great idea" as far as she does because the narrator is lying to us. Not choosing carefull what she reveals, but simply lying to us.)
Here, I think she just about manages to pull it off -- great idea, almost plausible, very creepy conclusion.
If I have reservations, it's the padding: stretching out the tension in a way that becomes less than realistic, inserting episodes and conversations that have nothing to do with the mystery at hand -- not even in a "making connections," shedding light on character sort of way. Just dull sidebars, and annoying diversions. Some of that is, I think, down to the 1st person narrative (again!) -- I found myself wondering what Hannah could have done with it had she decided to write it as 3rd person, with a more distanced authorial voice. Whether she would have mad connections, and shed light on character, without feeling that the padding was necessary.
But as a way to pass the time, in a reasonably entertained and slightly obsessive way -- I think that deserves 4-stars.
