francesmthompson's Reviews (976)

I read this because of the hype and the tears. I wanted tears. Yes, it's true, sometimes I just want to read a book that makes me feel like putty. And it almost got me. Almost. I could hear my tear ducts whirr into action at one point... they just didn't follow through. I suppose that's what I could also say about the book in summary. It didn't wow me, or woe me or make me wonder. Although the story is charming and original-ish, the chick-lit dialogue (inner and outer) just put me off from start (I almost abandoned the book several times but kept going for the promise of sobbing on the horizon). It's not that I hate this book, or think the seven gazillion people who love it are wrong for doing so, it just proved a point to me that I really don't like chick-lit or these kind of girl-meets-boy romances when there is so much telling rather than showing. It also frustrated me that some of the more tender scenes in the book actually revealed some lovely turns of phrase, suggesting that Ms Moyes could write much more subtle and sensual language but the genre/publishers perhaps censored this in favour of cliched, unnatural conversation and unnecessarily long back stories and repetitive over-explaining. All that said, I did plough through it quickly, so that's why it gets three rather than two stars.

Crazy good (and occasionally bad) prose, crazy mostly bad natured characters, crazy good and bad plot twists and slightly crazed writing style at times. For all of these reasons I'm convinced that reading this book will make me a better writer who, in the future, will not fear digging deeper and deeper into the darker holes of her characters. You have been warned.

First five star review of the year and I am pretty confident this is a worthy and accomplished book to set the bar... Full review to follow on my blog, but for now I recommend this collection of sort-of-art-themed short stories that are beautifully written and wonderfully surprising.

I wanted to read this book because I'd read about how the other book of a similar name had actually catapulted this book to the top of the Amazon Kindle charts because people kept downloading it by mistake. I subsequently wanted this book to then be better than the other one. But it wasn't. It really, really wasn't.
So yes, I finished this book, because yes, it had me hooked in terms of wanting to know what happened, but ultimately I wanted to see if the book and author would redeem themselves. You see, after plodding along quite nicely through the first half, my only gripe was that the story badly needed an editor and about half as many words. But then I began to feel quite angry about some of the stances the characters and ultimately the author took, not least the offensive views that

Spoiler

rape is a crime you can ignore in order to find some good in a person (!!!!)

and

Spoiler

being gay is a shameful thing that would have you thrown out of the Met police

. It also had the most bizarre use of a church to create a community of characters (the majority of which didn't seem to be church-going types at all, see married man having multiple affairs with women much younger than him) and the fact that

Spoiler

two completely separate stories and circumstance became so inextricably linked

really did make me almost laugh in disbelief.
All these scathing things said, I was surprised by The Big Reveal and didn't find it completely unthinkable or lacking in feasibility... albeit a stretch of the imagination.
But when all is said and done the previously mentioned viewpoints on issues we shouldn't mess around with, even in fiction, unless sensitively done so, means this is my first 1 star book of the year.

I feel like this book went from "Oooh!" to "Aaah" and then finally, just when I was hoping for a twist or a turn or another reason to go "Oooh!" or "Aaah!" it went decidely "meh".

All current, future and wannabe parents should read the section on parenting. It offers no insight on sleep, food, or how to blow snot out of your baby's nostrils but it tells you pretty much all you need to know; don't worry about your kid coming up against adversity. In fact, let him/her and he/she'll be better for it.

The rest of the book is of course worth reading (if a wee bit repetitive in places) for some frequently eye-opening, often face-palming, but ultimately encouraging observations about shame in both our personal lives and its role in the world around us.

Hugely popular when it was published in 2008 (it won the Man Booker prize) I successfully avoided this book until because I'm always wary of things that get a lot of hype. That and I'm slow and lazy. and in 2008 I was too busy perusing London's bar scene than I was the literature pages of newspapers. Anyway I finally read it and I found it as brilliant as it was disturbing. and as entertaining as it was utterly, stomach-wrenching saddening.

Written as a letter to the Chinese Prime Minister who is about to visit India, Balram Halawi takes it upon himself to introduce the Premier to what life is really like for an Indian entrepreneur. While it's clear very quickly that Balram is intended to amuse and appeal to the reader, it took me a lot longer to realise exactly what his story is about, but once that message was clear, it was uncomfortably hard to ignore. As it should be. But you don't want to stop reading because Balram stays funny thoughout and his plight is one you confusingly but without doubt root for.

I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it but let's just say that after finishing this book, I dreamt of India and in my dream the country was colourful and chaotic and the people were clean and kind. This surprised me because this is exactly not the India that Balram describes... and by all accounts he and the millions like him should know.

I can't figure out if I'm relieved this story is over because it was so long or because it was so harrowing with very little let-up... Not that I mind harrowing. I'm okay reading about cruelty, evil and suffering, because although this is fiction, it is a reality of life. I'm also not saying that the plodding on and on and on with more and more grief is what limited my enjoyment of the book, but I definitely feel the unnecessary length, the odd use of tenses (or lack of history or dates to reveal time), the excessive detail and odd-choice of third-person narrator for such a personal story left me wanting so much more from such an epic-length novel that also lacked any sort of purpose, in my opinion.

That said, I do think there is a moral of this story: Get therapy.