The Amber Fury
Dec. 8th, 2021 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI like Natalie Haynes' classics-related comedy stuff a lot, so it was interesting to discover she'd written a novel. It's about a young woman who takes a job teaching at a unit for troubled kids in Edinburgh, after a devastating personal tragedy. She introduces the kids to ancient Greek tragedies, and events spiral out of control when one of them gets obsessed with her past.
It's one of those books where you know at the start that something terrible has happened, and the book gradually reveals the background and the events leading up to the event, with the big reveal at the end. It's not a story structure I'm a particular fan of, but it's done quite well here, and it's helped by a very strong narrative voice (both in the main text and the student's diary entries) and well-portrayed characters.
It kept me reading, and the narrative itself was compelling enough that I didn't just want to skim to find out what happened, which is often how it goes for me with these kinds of stories. So, that demonstrated good writing and good storytelling from Haynes.
A solid book, which I enjoyed.
It's one of those books where you know at the start that something terrible has happened, and the book gradually reveals the background and the events leading up to the event, with the big reveal at the end. It's not a story structure I'm a particular fan of, but it's done quite well here, and it's helped by a very strong narrative voice (both in the main text and the student's diary entries) and well-portrayed characters.
It kept me reading, and the narrative itself was compelling enough that I didn't just want to skim to find out what happened, which is often how it goes for me with these kinds of stories. So, that demonstrated good writing and good storytelling from Haynes.
A solid book, which I enjoyed.
