Death, Wind, Confession and Fire
Nov. 21st, 2019 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearLast weekend, I spent a glorious few days in Thorpeness on a reading retreat, finishing four books in four days.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is an extraordinary book, and not in the least what I was expecting from the little I knew about it going in. I think reading it straight through in about nine hours was both a good and a bad thing. It enabled me to keep track of what was going on better than I would have otherwise, but I think I would have liked to savour it more. It appears to be a period country house mystery at first look, but quickly picks up layer upon layer of intrigue and complexity as it goes on. At the halfway point, I was thinking of it as a highly entertaining romp in the vein of To Say Nothing Of The Dog, but by the end, it was so much more. It's difficult to discuss the book further without giving things away, but I particularly liked the way the physicality and individual personalities of the characters were brought into play, and also the very interesting questions raised about guilt/innocence, punishment/rehabilitation and judgement/victimhood. However, it did fall down a bit in places, in the ways that are inevitable with the logic of this kind of story, which was a shame. But I'll definitely be reading this again at some point and have already purchased two copies to pass on to other people for them to read as well.
The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey is a medi-eval set mystery, from the point of view of a village priest. It has a very clever structure, with each section going backwards by a day, towards the drowning of a prominent member of the community. However, since the reader knows no new information can be discovered past the date of the opening of the story, the first person perspective necessitates an unreliable narrator, which makes certain aspects of the conclusion rather predictable. Still, the book is much more an in-depth character study than it is a bona fide mystery, and the way the information is built up to provide insight into later/earlier events is masterfully done. The prose is beautiful as well, with a lot of wonderfully evocative imagery, and a langurous, immersive style that brings both the village and the protagonist vividly to life. A very interesting read.
Jessie Burton's The Confession didn't really grab me to begin with, but gradually drew me in and kept my attention through to the end. It felt a bit inconsequential and predicatble at first, but I grew more intrigued as the story went on, and it took some unexpected and very welcome turns towards the end, in relation to the protagonist's life choices. The split timeline between a female protagonist in the present, trying to find out about her family history, leading to a separate timeline set in the past is very standard these days. I struggled a bit because I wasn't so keen on the main character in the 80s set sections, but Rose's story in the present was much more compelling. The book also had a lot of interesting things to say about writing as a career, which I related to. So, enjoyable overall, but not a stand-out, and rather less interesting than Burton's other two novels, in my view.
Family Book Club members look away now, please, as my fourth retreat book may well be my next selection for book club!
My fourth book of the weekend was Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which is a modern retelling of The Antigone, with Creon as the new Home Secretary and Antigone as a young British woman of Pakistani descent, whose brother is recruited by Isis. It provides a very interesting progression through the story, by having five separate points of view, but in succession, rather than intermingled, showing very different sides to the story, but only one at a time. It raises a lot of questions about politics, prejudice, fear of the other, and importance of belonging. It's not always an easy read, but it's very involving. All of the perspectives allowed sympathy and understanding, creating a multi-layered, complex story where there are very many shades of grey.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is an extraordinary book, and not in the least what I was expecting from the little I knew about it going in. I think reading it straight through in about nine hours was both a good and a bad thing. It enabled me to keep track of what was going on better than I would have otherwise, but I think I would have liked to savour it more. It appears to be a period country house mystery at first look, but quickly picks up layer upon layer of intrigue and complexity as it goes on. At the halfway point, I was thinking of it as a highly entertaining romp in the vein of To Say Nothing Of The Dog, but by the end, it was so much more. It's difficult to discuss the book further without giving things away, but I particularly liked the way the physicality and individual personalities of the characters were brought into play, and also the very interesting questions raised about guilt/innocence, punishment/rehabilitation and judgement/victimhood. However, it did fall down a bit in places, in the ways that are inevitable with the logic of this kind of story, which was a shame. But I'll definitely be reading this again at some point and have already purchased two copies to pass on to other people for them to read as well.
The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey is a medi-eval set mystery, from the point of view of a village priest. It has a very clever structure, with each section going backwards by a day, towards the drowning of a prominent member of the community. However, since the reader knows no new information can be discovered past the date of the opening of the story, the first person perspective necessitates an unreliable narrator, which makes certain aspects of the conclusion rather predictable. Still, the book is much more an in-depth character study than it is a bona fide mystery, and the way the information is built up to provide insight into later/earlier events is masterfully done. The prose is beautiful as well, with a lot of wonderfully evocative imagery, and a langurous, immersive style that brings both the village and the protagonist vividly to life. A very interesting read.
Jessie Burton's The Confession didn't really grab me to begin with, but gradually drew me in and kept my attention through to the end. It felt a bit inconsequential and predicatble at first, but I grew more intrigued as the story went on, and it took some unexpected and very welcome turns towards the end, in relation to the protagonist's life choices. The split timeline between a female protagonist in the present, trying to find out about her family history, leading to a separate timeline set in the past is very standard these days. I struggled a bit because I wasn't so keen on the main character in the 80s set sections, but Rose's story in the present was much more compelling. The book also had a lot of interesting things to say about writing as a career, which I related to. So, enjoyable overall, but not a stand-out, and rather less interesting than Burton's other two novels, in my view.
Family Book Club members look away now, please, as my fourth retreat book may well be my next selection for book club!
My fourth book of the weekend was Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which is a modern retelling of The Antigone, with Creon as the new Home Secretary and Antigone as a young British woman of Pakistani descent, whose brother is recruited by Isis. It provides a very interesting progression through the story, by having five separate points of view, but in succession, rather than intermingled, showing very different sides to the story, but only one at a time. It raises a lot of questions about politics, prejudice, fear of the other, and importance of belonging. It's not always an easy read, but it's very involving. All of the perspectives allowed sympathy and understanding, creating a multi-layered, complex story where there are very many shades of grey.
