This book comes festooned with awards and laudatory reviews, blurbs and hype and Rooney herself is acclaimed as the Next Big Thing, one of the great authors of the 21st Century.
The mind boggles, the currency cheapens, and all faith in pundits and the judgement of Zadie Smith goes right down the pan.
This is a truly, truly, dreadful book, almost fascinatingly so. Frances, supposedly "cool headed and observant", falls in love with an older, married man. It goes badly. Surprised? She apparently is. "I can't remember if I thought about this at the beginning. How it was doomed to end unhappily" is a line from about halfway through. Apart from the cringe-worthy triteness, it also reveals the lead character to be stunningly obtuse, and far from the "observant" person the blurb on the cover would have us believe. All the characters - Frances, her best friend/lover Bobbi, the journalist Melissa and the husband/lover Nick - are so flatly written they might as well be cardboard cut-outs, their dialogue equally flat and lifeless and dull, to the point that it became impossible to work out who's talking. It could be anybody, about anybody, about anything.
And then there's the prose itself -- it's....it's hideous, it really is. About halfway through I started making notes in the margins, underlining the worst passages -- something an editor is supposed to do. In no particular order: "His heart continued to beat like an excited or miserable clock" It...it what?? "Valerie spoke with a moneyed British accent, too rich to be comical". How does THAT work? "I perceived that my face and hair were becoming wet, too wet to feel normal"; "She looked clean and dry like a model from a catalogue. My hair was leaking water into my face". Leaking? "I laughed to myself, although there was no one there to see me". That's kind of what it means, right? "He never touched me like that usually. But he was looking at me, so I guess he must have known who I was". Wait, this woman's supposed to be "observant", right? And my favourite: "He touched me cautiously like a deer touches things with its face". Oh god, make it stop.
Seriously, this is supposed to be award-worthy? A tired story, hitched to some staggeringly dreadful prose which reveals nothing of the workings of the human heart, nothing of the soul, nothing of passion. Shame on the critics who have passed this off as something worthy, shame on every one of the publications whose glowing quotes litter the front pages of this travesty. I'm tempted to read Rooney's "Normal People" to see if it's as hysterically bad or if, by some miracle, she improved. If I come across a copy for less than a pound, I might just, but I'm not paying much more for this kind of nonsense.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Flip to back Flip to front
Follow the author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
| Amazon Price | New from | Used from |
|
Kindle Edition
"Please retry" | — | — |
|
Audible Audiobooks, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
£0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" | £13.55 | £21.47 |
Frequently bought together
- +
- +
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your basket.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Customer reviews
Book was dirty and all wrinkled and dented when arrived.Very disappointed, it was supposed to be a gift.
Images in this review
