
I love novels that
have interweaving plots. For the first half of the book it feels pleasantly
like connected short stories, until the strands start to come together. I like
how each chapter tends to be from a different character’s point-of-view, and
how we often get the same events, the same moments, told from multiple
perspectives. The narrative structure is well done, as is the weaving in and
out of past and present events. I thought the time jumps and narrative distance
were handled very well, especially as several chapters end up covering some ten
years of a character’s life.
The writing, is to my
mind, excellent. There’s something simple and frank about the narrative style
which I really enjoyed. It’s hard to explain without an example, so let’s look
at this sentence: ‘Caroline always looks fabulous in old photographs, except that sometimes
her head has been cut off. This is because she’s taller than everyone else in
the picture. Caroline is blonde and six foot tall.’ I think perhaps it’s
the balance between viewpoint and narrative distance that I enjoyed. I’m also
big fan of the immediacy of the third person present tense, although sometimes
the tenses do seem a little confused in flashback scenes. There’s a pleasant
fairy tale or perhaps even Dickensian quality to some of the writing; I quite
like that Caroline’s mother is referred to as ‘The Witch’ and her sister as
‘The Less
Fortunate’.
I thought the
characters were in general well done. Some, such as Caroline’s mother or
sister, did feel a bit like stereotypes, but from their fairy tale names I
imagine that was intentional. I feel like you get an understanding of all the
characters as you dip in and out of their viewpoint. Josh was my favourite
character; yes, he seems a little weak at times but I thoroughly believed in
his weakness, that he is just the sort of person who would act as he does. Jack
too intrigued me, as did his backstory. The whole history of the plots in South
Africa, and the background of Apartheid was well executed. I might have liked
some of the social issues to be a little more centre-stage, but they did add an
interesting undertone to the novel.
Basically, I really
really liked this book – until about three quarters of the way through. I found
the characters intriguing and well-defined. The narrative structure is great,
and I absolutely love the writing style. However, I’m just not massively sold
on the plot. There are just too many coincidences in this book – and my
favourite author is Charles Dickens, so my threshold for coincidences is pretty
high. I don’t think I’d have minded any of the coincidences on their own, but the
series of ten or more massive coincidences that lead the plot to its conclusion
for me began to jar quite quickly. On the one hand I like all the doubling, but
on the other hand it just wasn’t believable and made a serious and interesting
story feel at times a little silly.
The ending felt so
contrived and neat. I think Trapido was going for a Shakespearian comedy style
ending, but I’m just not quite sure it worked. It took me out of the story because
I kept questioning how possible any of this was. I don’t mind ridiculous plots,
but part of the problem here is that the majority of the book is not in the
slightest ridiculous. It’s set up, to my mind, as a realist, if stylistically
told, novel – so when we get to the last quarter of the book it feels as though
Trapido has somehow changed what she’s doing entirely. For me, the plot just
didn’t quite work.
I was disappointed
with the ending, but I did still enjoy this book overall. It’s very readable
and only took me a day, and the characters were interesting. Even if the plot
didn’t quite work for me, I absolutely loved the writing style, so I’m sure I’ll
be reading another Trapido novel in the future.
Greatest
strength: The
writing style. It was easy and enjoyable to read.
Greatest
weakness: The
ending, and the plot. It all felt far too neat.
Let’s
finish on a quote:
‘Josh
meets Caroline in a shared student house in London. The time is late 1970s so
everyone in the house looks hideous… All the men have got too much hair, which
tends to come lank, matt and flecked with dandruff. The women wear floatly
purple things, worn over flared jeans, or full-length floatly purple things
that go from shoulder to ankle. Josh remembers this as the Purple Time.’
(I just think this is
a lovely opening to a book.)
Next week: Down The Rabbit Hole, by Juan Pablo Villalobos
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