The Vacationers - Emma Straub

57%

28.08.26

The wry observational characterisation almost made it not matter that there wasn't much plot or that the characters would be mostly unbearable if they were real. What did matter was the lack of believability, whether that was fact checking (I'm starting to wonder whether New York time actually is ahead of Europe, it comes up so often) and the weirdnesses placed only to help the story along (why would you make your young adult, who has just graduated high school, take Spanish lessons on vacation?). Not as insightful as it's no doubt supposed to be.

Hot Milk - Deborah Levy

45%
17.12.18

The cover says beautiful, clever, powerful, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. I say badly written, incoherent, pretentious and full of wooden characters it's impossible to care about. But each to their own. I have a couple of other Levy novels I've not yet read, but I don't think I'll bother now.

The Muse - Jessie Burton

54%
13.04.17

Attentive readers may remember that I wasn't too keen on Burton's previous book but this was slightly better. So the two historical periods didn't gel too well, the 'twist', such as it was, predictable, and the ending yet again tailed off to nothing, but at least I didn't fall asleep this time.