08.06.25
This was longlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction but read like a collection of writing exercises that tried to cram in as many metaphors as possible about pathetic women, horrible men and depressing seaside towns. It started out pretentious and ended up trite, thus losing any insights into (some specific) female experiences.
06.09.24
Looks like a beach read, reads like literary fiction that happens to be both layered and fun. Not psychologically complex but vividly written, the claustrophobic south of France in August the strongest character of all.
06.06.22
Weird, maybe, convoluted, definitely, but impossible? Well, given I couldn't understand what the protagonists saw in each other, or why they did what they did, or why it resolved so awkwardly, then yes.
Also: 'pointless pandemic-themed epilogue' warning. Why did the publisher evidently insist on this 'realistic' afterthought when the whole point of the story is that it's 'impossible'?
02.12.21
I hadn't realised that the clever and incisive humorous poet Brian Bilston is not technically a real person. Whoever he is, he needs to stick to writing clever and incisive poems and forget the novel writing. This homage to Adrian Mole (an equally hapless Brian Bilston aged 45 and three quarters) wasn't particularly successful. But his poems are truly fabulous so he gets marks for those.
