Harriet Devine's Blog

What I've been reading... and not reviewing (1)

I haven't reviewed anything for ages but that doesn't mean I've stopped reading. Life just took over and swamped me. But here I am again and here's some of what I've read lately. First up, Jesse Kellerman's latest novel, I'll Catch You. Well. I've long admired Kellerman junior, both of whose parents are distinguished crime writers, and in fact I think his books are even better than theirs. But anyone who starts this one expecting it to be like the earlier ones is in for a surprise. "This novel is, in a word, dreadful", writes one bemused blogger, who shall remain nameless. It's not, though, not at all. 

This is the story of Arthur Pfefferkorn, who teaches creative writing at a small college on the east coast of America. This is quite ironic, really, as Arthur himself is a failed novelist -- his one published work, a semi-autobiographical literary novel called Shade of the Colossus, sank without trace many years ago, and he has never succeeded in writing anything else.  His college friend Bill, however, whose literary abilities appeared to be pretty well zero, has become a hugely successful thriller writer, much to Arthur's chagrin. As the novel begins, however, he is reading in the paper that Bill is missing, presumed drowned, after an accident at sea. He rather unwillingly decides to go to the funeral, where he meets Bill's widow Carlotta, and soon, much to his surprise and delight, finds himself in bed with her. Carlotta has shown him Bill's writing room, and on the desk is Bill's last work, an incomplete manuscript. Before he leaves, Arthur manages to steal it, and soon, with its help, he too is a massively successful writer and making huge sums of money. But then he makes a terrifying discovery, and his life takes a most unexpected and frightening turn...

Really, this novel is a satire on the world of blockbusting thrillers, with many bizarre twists and turns into the bargain, but it also considers literary pretensions, literary success and its effects, friendship, parenthood, and more besides. Jesse Kellerman writes with great wit and intelligence and I loved the way he expresses some of the simplest things, such as Arthur's first impressions of Carlotta's magnificent Californian villa: A mosaic fountain burbled. Cut flowers stood erect in vases. A chess set awaited players. Chairs awaited buttocks. Portraits smiled, landscapes sprawled, statuary thrust. 

I see on Amazon that this novel has defeated most readers, and perhaps you would be one of them. But for me, though I admit to finding the central section a little too long, this was a really enjoyable and entertaining read. Recommended, but only to those who are willing to suspend disbelief and let themselves have a bit of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Frozen Shroud

Isn't this a lovely and evocative cover? If I saw this in a bookshop I'd pick it up just to see if the inside lived up to it. The Lake District is a part of England very dear to me, because I lived only an hour or so away from there for nearly twenty years. It was a great joy to be able to whizz up the motorway and spend the day wandering in a Wordsworthian sort of way among the lakes, rivers, mountains and waterfalls. Martin Edwards has cleverly chosen to set his latest series of crime novels in this lovely area, though he even more cleverly adapts the geographical location to suit his purposes, so that some bits of it are real and some invented. 

This is the latest in what I have only just realised is a series of six. I've read the other five and enjoyed them enormously so I was pleased to be able to get hold of this one courtesy of the kind publisher. But it's the first one I have read as an e-book, on my iPad. And this brings me to the reason why I mention the cover -- because the version I was sent didn't have any kind of cover at all, though probably that's because it came from NetGalley. But this way of reading -- very far from my preferred choice -- really brought it home to me why I so much love real books. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it -- the plot, combining as all the novels in the series do, a cold case with a present day murder, is intriguing, and the relationship between Hannah, the cop, and Daniel, the academic historian, as always tantalisingly near consummation -- but I wanted to be able to hold a book in my hand, to muse over the cover, to flick back through the pages and check on things I might have missed. Oh yes I know you can flick away in Kindle too, but somehow it's just not the same. 

Sorry -- just a hobby horse of mine, and perhaps one I should dismount pretty sharpish. Anyway, the novel is atmospheric, the beautiful, though here often gloomy and threatening locations well evoked, the story of a series of very similar and somewhat gothic murders stretching over almost a century properly puzzling, and the characters, as always, attractive and believeable. If you haven't read this series, do give it a go -- though I'd advise starting at the beginning with The Coffin Trail, the first of the series, to get a real understanding of the history of the characters and their somewhat complicated relationship. A quick and enjoyable read, ideal for curling up with on a rainy day.

The Carrier

I have been a huge fan of Sophie Hannah's novels from the beginning. In fact just a year ago I was raving about the one before this one, Kind of Cruel, which I thought was the best yet. So I was really excited to get hold of this, the most recently published. 

What Sophie Hannah does most wonderfully well is to set up situations at the beginning of her novels which appear to be utterly impossible and insoluble. And here, again, we have one such. A youngish businesswoman, Gaby Struthers, is stranded in Dusseldorf airport, and finds herself sharing a hotel room with a distressed and angry young woman called Lauren. It gradually transpires that Lauren is in a panic because she has come to Germany for the day without telling her abusive husband. But she also lets slip the fact that she is worried about someone she knows who has confessed to a murder but who is, in fact innocent. A bit of quick googling while Lauren is in the bathroom reveals to Gaby that the man concerned is Tim Brearly, with whom Gaby has been in love for many years, even though he is married to someone else -- in fact, to the woman who he is now accused of killing. What's more, Tim has confessed to the murder, but will not reveal his motive. Meanwhile Lauren disappears, leaving Gaby in a state of great confusion and anxiety. Did Lauren seek her out? What does she want with her? Why did Tim confess? Who really killed Francine?

Naturally all these and many other mysteries get solved in the end. And in addition there are various other developments in the novel, many of which concern DI Simon Waterhouse and his wife Charlie Zailer, whose strange marriage staggers on regardless. 

I must admit that I enjoyed this a bit less than the last one, partly because I found it hard to warm to any of the characters. Gaby was so relentlessly nasty to poor Lauren, who, despite being uneducated and helpless, certianly didn't deserve the stream of sarcasm she was subjected to. However, I suspect that this was a pointer to Gaby's own unhappiness, and she did warm somewhat to Lauren as the novel went on. Charlie, too, seemed incapable of much other than sharp comments and showed very little sympathy for anyone she encountered. Simon, of course, is always weird and shows no sign of changing. But I was still intrigued by the story and glad to follow it though its twists and turns. So, though it's not Sophie Hannah's best, I'm still recommending it as a highly readable psychological thriller. 

 

Dr Thorne

How Did He Do It?  is not the title of a novel by Anthony Trollope, though it could be (cf. Can You Forgive Her? Is He Popenjoy?, Did He Steal It?). No, it reflects my amazement at the astonishingly prolific output of a man who managed to hold down a highly responsible job while producing 47 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 18 works of non-fiction and two plays. And not just any old novels, mind you -- although his reputation was a bit up and down at first, there's no doubt -- in my mind at least -- that he was one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. And in fact, one reason why he was looked at with a rather beady eye by some of his contemporaries was the very fact that he wrote so much and in such an organised way -- he paid his servant an extra £5 a year to wake him up with a cup of coffee at 5am so that he could write for three hours before he went to work. What's wrong with that, you may ask? Well, there was a view at the time that you had to wait for the Muse to strike you before you picked up your pen, so Trollope's method seemed a good deal too mundane. Also, he was not much liked for his most delightful way of suddenly addressing the reader, or, in more contemporary parlance, drawing attention to the act of writing:

But it will be too much, perhaps, to tell the reader what she wore as Beatrice's bridesmaid, seeing that a couple of pages, at least, must be devoted to her marriage dress, and seeing, also, that we have only a few pages left to finish everything...

I've read a few of Trollope's novels over the years, though only reviewed one on here, the not very well known Lady Anna. Dr Thorne is much better known, being the fourth of the so-called Barchester Novels, of which I have read the first three, though in pre-blogging days. The eponymous doctor is a middle-aged gentleman of modest means, who lives in the village of Greshamsbury. Twenty or so years before the story begins, he adopted the illegitimate baby daughter of his ne-er do well brother, who had been murdered by the brother of the village girl he made pregnant. The child's mother has married and gone to America, the brother has served his sentence and subsequently become stupendously rich, but the doctor and his beloved adopted Mary have gone on quietly with their lives in domestic peace and comfort. Mary has become very close to the daughters of the neighbouring squire Mr Gresham, with whom she has shared lessons throughout her teenage years. Now, as the novel begins, the Gresham's only son Frank has reached twenty-one, and the whole neighbourhood is sharing in the celebrations. As we soon learn, Frank and Mary have fallen in love, but from this seemingly innocent fact springs the whole convoluted and often nail-biting plot.

Money, social class and "blood". To these and their often complex interactions are owed the trials and tribulations of poor Mary and Frank. For Frank's father has managed to get himself into deep financial trouble, and that part of his estate that he has not sold is heavily mortgaged. Thus it is that, certainly as far as his mother and her aristocratic relations are concerned, Frank has but one duty -- to marry money. Mary has neither money nor that second prerequisite, "blood" (of the blue variety), and indeed her illegitimacy puts her beyond the pale. Of course, the immensely wealthy heiress who the family would like Frank to marry is the daughter of a tradesman, but her riches overrule what would otherwise be an absolute barrier.

As anyone who is familiar with Trollope will know, these are his common concerns. But that does not make this novel any less appealing. Trollope manages to satirise the worst excesses of the appalling aristocrats and the dreadfulness of their lawyers in a way which is both funny and horrifically convincing. But he also manages to create characters who have undoubted faults and yet make them surprisingly sympathetic. And then of course there is Mary, the most admirable heroine, intelligent and feisty as well as pretty, who suffers dreadfully through a great part of the novel but bears it with great courage, and dear, good-hearted, loyal Frank, and the delightful doctor himself, very human and not always right but always having at heart the best interests of those he loves. 

I am so happy to have rediscovered Trollope. After a rather worrying reading block earlier this year, it is exciting to find that there are more than forty unread novels to look forward to! I've started one already, and another is on its way, so keep a watch on here for more reviews soon. Any fellow Trollope fans out there? What's your favorite?

 

"perfect for fans of..."

If there's one thing that really riles me when I find it on the cover of a book, it's a comment such as 'perfect for fans of [insert random name here]'. There are variations such as 'the next Steig Larsson' which appears in the publicity of just about any crime novel published anywhere north of Germany, but 'perfect for fans of...' suggests to me that there will be some kind of similarity between the present work and that of the named celebrity. So I was a little disquieted when I saw the formula on the cover of this one, kindly sent by the publisher, especially as it was attributed to a writer I admire a lot, Sam Mills, who seemingly thinks the novel would be perfect for fans of Sophie Hannah. Now I am a huge fan of Sophie Hannah, and have in fact just received a copy of her latest novel, so you'll be hearing more about her soon. But the thing for which I would say she is most celebrated is her ability to kick off her novels with the most extraordinary and apparently inexplicable scenario, which is then slowly unravelled throughout the rest of the book. And such is not the case with The Woman Before Me.

Now this is not to say there is anything wrong with this novel, which has won the CWA Debut Dagger Award and the Luke Bitmead Novel Award (of which I'd never heard, but never mind that), and has a great many five-star reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. I'm just riding a probably rather pathetic hobby horse here --  it's just that I think it doesn't do a writer any favours if you compare her to someone who she doesn't really resemble. But Ruth Dugdall clearly has done fine anyway, and this, her first novel, has been followed by two more, equally successful.

On her website Ruth says "my books explore the darker areas of himan behaviour and how long-held secrets can affect the present". Certainly that is a good description of what happens here. Rose Wilks, an unhappy and rather unattractive woman in her thirties, has served four years of a sentence for murdering a baby who died in a fire when she had been babysitting him. Ruth is up for parole, and being assessed by a young probabtion officer, Cate Austin, who is new to the job. The narrative shifts between Cate's story, present day, and Ruth's 'Black Book' in which she recounts her own past history and the events which have led up to her arrest and imprisonment. A sad story it is indeed, and of course, being the sort of novel this is, there's a twist on the last page which I  wasn't expecting (though I was expecting something). 

So, if this sounds like your sort of book, go for it! 

Farewell, My Lovely

I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

Have you read any Raymond Chandler? If not, why not? I expect you may say, Oh, I don't like crime novels. And yes, of course, Chandler is a crime novelist -- but I rather think that anyone who reads his books just for the plot may be disappointed. But above all, he is a simply wonderful writer. I'm talking about style here -- "Chandler wrote like a slumming angel",  said Ross Macdonald. Oh, the plots are there, alright, but they are sometimes quite confusing, though never lacking in events and excitement. But again and again you are brought up against some of the most wonderful lines in English prose. Take for example "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window". Superb.

Beautiful blondes are quite a feature of Raymond Chandler's novels, and though they are usually extremely untrustworthy, his hero Philip Marlowe finds them hard to resist. "I like smooth, shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin". That description certainly fits Mrs Grayle, the gorgeous young wife of an aging and sick millionaire. She hires Marlowe to look for her priceless, recently stolen jade necklace. A ransom has been demanded, but the necklace has not been returned and someone has died in the process of trying to retrieve it. 

There's money forthcoming for this job, which Marlowe badly needs, but he is also caught up in a police investigation, having witnessed a shooting in a bar in town. The killer, one Moose Malloy, fresh out of jail, is looking for his erstwhile girlfriend Velma, who has disappeared off the face of the earth. Between these two assignments, which prove to be oddly linked, Marlowe is kept busy, and gets himself into deep deep trouble. Needless to say he emerges, battered but unbowed -- or only a little bowed -- to face another day.

All the riddles, of which there are many, are solved in the end, though I'd have a job explaining exactly how. But that is really by the by. Published in 1940, this novel portays with brilliant skill the seedy underworld of Los Angeles, where drugs and alcohol and crime are the currency of the day. And, thought this would be enough to make any man lose his faith in the human race, Marlowe somehow manages to keep a shred of optimism.

You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at the politicians but there are a lot of nice people in the world just the same.

I read this in an Everyman edition of Chandler's first three novels, and still have The High Window to go. I reviewed the first one.The Big Sleep, a year or so ago -- you can read that review here. Highly recommended.

Therese Raquin

I've made a strange and disquieting discovery. A few days ago, dovegreyreader was urging people to read Zola, and, though I didn't say so in the comments, I thought I might join in. I looked for a free e-book and found Therese Raquin, which I duly downloaded and started to read. I've read about half of it, but I found I wasn't enjoying it at all. For a start it seemed as if it was all a bit familiar, but as I'd seen it on TV a million years ago that didn't really surprise me. Also, the translation I'd downloaded - by one Ernest Vizetelly - is about the worst, clunkiest translation I have ever read. 

These two hands, one in the other, were burning; the moist palms adhered,and the fingers held tightly together, were hurt at each pressure. It seemed to Laurent and Therese that the blood from one penetrated the chest of the other, passing through their joined fists. These fists became a live fire whereon their lives were boiling.

Well of course it does say much the same in French. But honestly, Ernest, you could have done a bit better than that. And, above all, I just was not enjoying the story at all. It seemed terribly depressing and terribly melodramatic -- passion, lust, murder, suicide -- none of which I wanted to read about, really.

Anyway, I'd decided I was going to give up on the book -- chuck it onto my ever-growing pile of abandoned books -- and as I knew I'd read some Zola before, I thought I'd find a post or two in the archive to prove it. Yes, indeed, I had. I read Nana in 2007, and thought it was brilliant. Then I read another -- and what was it? Therese Raquin. And, what's more, I seem to have enjoyed it. Ironically, the last line of that 2007 review says 'it will stay with me for a long time'. Not long enough, clearly. 

I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. It's not the first time I've read a good way into a book and then realised I'd read it before. Rather stranger to me is how much I seem to have liked it the first time round, and how much I disliked it this time. Perhaps just the mood of the moment, or perhaps my reading tastes have changed.

I've just found another Zola on the bookshelf -- Au Bonheur des Dames, in French. Not sure if my French is up to it, but I'm thinking I might have a go. There was a TV adaptation of this last year and the only episode I saw didn't impress me very much. But I'd like to give Zola another chance. 

Anybody else ever done anything like this?

Ordinary Thunderstorms

There are many things I can't do, ranging from brain surgery through anything to do with science or mathematics to brick-laying and heavy lifting. But most of them I am quite happy without. One thing, though, that I regret deeply is my inability to write a novel. Oh yes, I've tried, many times in the course of my life, but never got beyond chapter one. And it's obviously not that I can't write as I've produced quantities of non-fictional prose. What I lack are the three things absolutely necessary to write fiction -- plotting, dialogue and characters. I expect if I really tried I could produce something just about passable, but that wouldn't do for me. So when I encounter a writer who is absolutely at the top of the pile where those three things are concerned, I am not only enthralled but deeply envious. How do they do it? 

Of course all this is leading up to William Boyd. This is the second of his novels I have read in less than a month. I wrote enthusiastically about Waiting for Sunrise a few weeks ago, and now I have just finished Ordinary Thunderstorms. And my goodness did I enjoy it.

This is the story of Adam Kindred. As the novel begins he has just returned to England from America, where he has been living and teaching (climatology) for a number of years, to have a job interview. He decides to treat himself to an Italian lunch, and gets into conversation with a man at the next table, who introduces himself as Dr Philip Wang, a research scientist. As Adam is leaving he notices that Wang has left a folder on the table. Luckily it has a business card in it, so Adam rings to say he will drop the folder off at Wang's flat. When he gets there, he finds Wang has been stabbed with a breadknife, and manages to leave his own fingerprints on it. 

The obvious thing to do in this situation would be to throw yourself on the mercy of the police but, for various reasons, Adam does not do this. Instead he goes on the run, and is soon being tracked both by the police and by Wang's killer, the terrifyingly amoral ex-SAS man JonJo Case.  So far, then, your conventional thriller. But though the pursuit continues, many strands open up which are at least as fascinating as whether or not JonJo will catch up with Adam. One such is the shockingly immoral behaviour of the big pharmaceutical companies -- Wang was employed by one such, Calenture Deutz, who are on the brink of getting a new wonder drug, promising a certain cure for asthma, certified and on the market. In this strand we meet Ingram Fryzer, the company chairman, a rather harmless multi-millionaire who is blithely ignorant of what the company is up to behind his back. Then there's the doings of London's river police, one of whose policewomen encounters Adam and takes him back to the barge where she lives with her aging radical father and where she and Adam smoke joints on deck.

But most fascinating of all, and, I suppose, what Boyd was really interested in exploring, is the way Adam survives once he has decided to hide from the law. Initially, his existence is about as basic as anyone could possibly imagine -- he finds a hidden spot near the river in Chelsea, makes a very crude encampment, and survives on baked beans and what he can scrounge from dustbins. After some weeks he learns to be a very successful beggar -- even better when he steals a white stick from a blind man -- and later still he is living in a sink estate in Rotherhithe with a prostitute called Mhouse and her son Ly-on, who she keeps quiet with rum and sleeping pills in his breakfast cereal. At this point he has changed his name to John 1603, or rather accepted the name he was given at the Church of John Christ, whose extraordinary, charismatic leader gives 2-hour sermons which are endured by the congregation of down and outs because a hot meal is forthcoming at the end. Then, after another name change, Adam is working as a porter in a hospital, having stolen the identity of a flatmate who inconveniently, or perhaps conveniently, died. I think identity is something that has preoccupied Boyd in most of his writing, and here he seems to be showing how fragile it really is. 

I've told you rather more about the plot than I usually do, only because I wanted to give some idea of the amazing depth and breadth of this novel -- and believe me, I've only scratched the surface. I know the novel has had some mixed reviews, but I have to say it stayed in my mind in an amazingly tenacious way after I'd finished it -- and, by the way, the ending is notable for its lack of closure, which has led several reviewers to hope for a sequel, though I don't think Boyd has any plans for one.

And all of this is why I started this post by saying I could never write a novel. I just can't see how anyone could invent such an extraordinary and event-filled plot, or such unexpected and yet wholly plausible characters, or such totally believeable dialogue. But never mind -- luckily there are people out there who can do it for me.

The Nightmare

Lars Kepler is two people -- for some reason this seems to be not uncommon in crime writing (cf. Sjowall and Wahloo, or Nikki French). I always wonder how they do it -- I think S&W used to write alternate chapters. The Keplers, if one can call them this, are an amazingly photogenic couple of Swedish academics who started crime writing a couple of years ago with The Hypnotist, which I reviewed rather enthusiastically in 2011. That book has now been made into a Swedish film and no doubt will soon be remade as an American one. 

And now we have the second novel in the series -- I think it can be called that, as the rather quirky Finnish detective Joona Linna reappears here and apparently will be doing so in future novels. This one is rather more ambitious in that it has a political theme -- arms dealing, in fact -- which, though it isn't clear at first, is associated with the mystifying crimes that Linna has to solve. A young girl is found dead on a yacht, apparently drowned except that her clothes are dry.  A  man appears to have committed suicide by hanging himself, but there is no way he could have reached the high ceiling to attach the rope. And the sister of the murdered girl, together with her boyfriend, are being pursued around lonely, uninhabited islands by a faceless and completely ruthless assassin, though they have no idea why he is trying to kill them. 

Unlike The Hypnotist, which grabs you instantly, this novel starts rather slowly and, to me, rather confusingly. I guess that's partly the point, though, as a great many apparently disparate events slowly converge until finally it becomes clear who is behind all this and why, though whether it will be possible to catch the person involved is another matter. Once I got the hang of all the political machinations, and figured ot who everybody was, I started to enjoy it it quite a lot. There are some excellent characters and some fascinating themes, including the history of the violin and of Paganini, the greatest violinist of all time. Like several other things, this appears to have nothing to do with the main story but proves to do so in the end -- in fact I think the original title of the novel was The Paganini Contract. As for it's present title, its full meaning only becomes clear quite near the end, and though I'd love to tell you the implications I feel I'd better not in case I spoil your fun.

Final verdict? Interesting, exciting, ultimately disturbing and thought-provoking. Worth persevering as it definitely hots up as you get further in. Anyone out there read it yet?

 

 

In a Dry Season

So many books I read these days seem to come to me rather fortuitously -- in other words, I find them in charity shops or on other peoples' bookshelves -- but here is one I actually ordered. I can't now remember why I did this, but I think I must have read a review of it on someone's blog. I'd never read, or even heard of, Peter Robinson before, though I now know there is a TV series featuring his DC Banks. I suppose what must have attracted me to the novel was the fact that it is partly set during the second world war, and that it features a village which was vacated, submerged as a reservoir, and then re-emerges decades later, in the exceptionally dry summer which gives the book its title. It all sounded appealing and intriguing, and so, in many ways, it was.

But. For some reason it didn't really grab me, not quite sure why, but perhaps it will emerge as I try to write about it ("How do I know what I think till I see what I say?" as EM Forster said, or maybe it was WH Auden, or somebody quite different). The plot kicks off promisingly enough -- the village of Hobb's End has emerged from the waters of the reservoir, mostly a heap of ruins covered with mud, though the shapes of the houses still remain. A boy goes to play inside one of the houses, and discovers a skeleton. The police are called in and rather rapidly ascertain that this is a mid-20th century person, and even more quickly discover their identity -- it is beautiful Gloria Stringer, who had appeared in Hobbs End at the start of the war and married one of the inhabitants. DC Banks is called in to take the case, aided by Annie Cabbott, an extremely attractive young woman detective. They investigate, and eventually discover the identity of the murderer. They also start a relationship which has its ups and downs.

Running parallel with all this is an autobiographical account by a woman who once lived in Hobbs End, and who we soon discover was the sister of Gloria's husband. It soon becomes clear that this woman changed her identity many years earlier and is now a hugely successful crime novelist. Her account tells us things that Bank and Cabbott don't know, but how much of it is true? We learn much of the wartime history of the village as it appeared to Gwen, who was still a teenager at the time -- the blackout, the privations, the dances, and the welcome influx of GIs with their gifts of whiskey, cigarettes and nylons. 

So -- for a start I found it all rather predictable. I was in no doubt at all from the beginning about the identity of the autobiographical writer, and I'm not sure how soon this was supposed to become clear. I didn't actually guess who did the murder, but I wasn't really surprised, and to be honest by then I didn't really care, as I found the 1940s Hobbs End inhabitants an unattractive bunch. I think we were supposed to be sympathetic to Gloria, who had a rough start in London's East End, and had abandoned an illegitimate baby hoping he would have a better life, but I couldn't really muster much interest. I didn't care, either, about Gwen, aka Famous Crime Novelist, whose dark secret was obvious to me from the beginning. As for Banks and Annie, I wished them well, and quite liked Annie, who was vegetarian and practised yoga and meditation. But I expect their love affair will have foundered in the next of Robinson's novels, though I doubt if I shall bother to find out

Still -- "A wonderful novel" proclaims Michael Connelly on the cover. "A powerfully moving work", says Ian Rankin inside. So there's no accounting for tastes, and you might love it.