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Book Review – American Gods

15 Sunday Jun 2014

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I hope readers enjoyed the first two entries in my series about inspirations for characters in the Cavaliers, focussed on Augustine and George. I promised more entries, and they will be coming soon, with my intention being to write one about Adelaide (touching on her twin and on her previous incarnation) and then a joint one about Fea and the Visigoth Goth Twins. 

Sadly, this week’s been far too hectic to write any of those posts, as they tend to take me a while. In the meantime, therefore, here’s a review. Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that there are books I bring up again and again – in Top Ten Tuesday lists, in posts about my own books, and as comparators in reviews. One of those is American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which blew me away as a seventeen or eighteen year old when I was really, really into mythology. I’ve read several of his books since, and although I always enjoy them, they’ve never quite hit that high note for me.

Incidentally, the one other thing Gaiman has written that is as good is his Sandman series of graphic novels. I’m not a very visual person  – I definitely think in words rather than pictures – so due to personal preference rather than literary snobbery, I didn’t think I’d enjoy what are basically comics, but they are amazing and well worth a look even if it’s not a medium you’re familiar/comfortable with. 

Back to American Gods. Over the years, I’ve recommended it to loads of people, referenced it constantly, and looked back on it lovingly, but I’ve never re-read it. A few weeks ago, I decided to get a copy and re-read it cover to cover. It’s always a dangerous thing to do, thanks to the risk that it won’t be as good in reality as it is in your memory, but in this case, no such problem arose. I didn’t adore it quite as much as I did first time around, partly due to remembering the plot twists and partly due to not being quite so fascinated by the subject matter anymore, but it’s still a definite 5 star read and a book I’d heavily recommend. 

AMERICAN GODS – NEIL GAIMAN – 5 STARS

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THE BLURB

Days before his release from prison, Shadow’s wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, AMERICAN GODS takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You’ll be surprised by what and who it finds there…

THE REVIEW

I long been a believer that “genre fiction” can be just as meaningful and well-written as some of the more obviously literary novels, and this book, (which I first read around ten years ago but re-read from cover to cover recently) is a perfect example of the concept. 

The storyline is utterly compelling, with well-developed, memorable characters and some well-handled twists. The basic premise is an intriguing one. All gods and similar mythological creatures are real, created out of people’s belief in them. As waves of explorers and immigrants have come to America over the centuries, they’ve brought their gods with them, but with little belief left in Thor or leprechauns or whatever, they are mostly eking out a fragile existence on the fringes of society, as con artists or prostitutes or physical labourers. At the same time, new gods are coming into being – gods of the internet, of electricity, of cars etc, and having far more success. That rather bizarre set-up is handled well and believably, and both old and new gods are fun to read about. If you like mythology (and I love it) you’ll have lots of fun trying to work out who some of the more obscure characters are based on, and making frequent trips to wikipedia. Gaiman has clearly done his research.

Despite all the Gods drifting around and the fantastical nature of some scenes, much of the plot and the setting is very realistic, even gritty. The main character is a seemingly ordinary man called Shadow, who becomes embroiled in the old gods’ plot to regain their power and prestige, after a meeting with a Mr Wednesday, whose real identity readers with a passing knowledge of myths can probably take a guess at. Shadow starts the novel in prison for bank robbery, and the prison scenes and later fights and interrogations would not be out of place in something like The Wire. This is urban fantasy at it’s most urban, with a definite adult feel. 

Sometimes, the plot is full of action and revelation. At other points, however, it becomes slow and meditative, which seems quite unusual for a novel of this kind. Shadow spends large parts of the middle section hiding out in an oddly perfect snow-covered town in the north of America. This section could easily have dragged, but my interest in the character and the quality of the writing kept me engaged, and I ultimately felt the book was better for being willing to slow down. It gave it a real epic quality. 

Beyond the plot though, there are allsorts of big questions being explored. Why does every society have gods? What role do they fulfil in the human psyche? What is the nature of belief? What does it mean to be American? How does it feel to leave one country and culture behind and join another. They are the sort of questions you’d normally expect to be dealt with in a deadly serious Big Novel, but actually feel fresher viewed through this prism of gods and adventures. It’s helped by the fact that Gaiman’s writing style is consistently strong, and would actually translate perfectly to something less fantastical. 

Finally, one of my favourite things about the book is the way the main storyline is intercut with both stories of random gods’ everyday lives in modern America (I was particularly intrigued by the Queen of Sheba) and stories of the people who came to America and brought their gods with them. Of the latter, the standout was a story of an African woman brought to America as a slave, bringing some voodoo type gods with her. In one chapter, it honestly delivers the most powerful reminder of how horrific slavery was that I’ve ever read. Most of the others are lighter, but still fascinating. 

In conclusion, I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone that likes intelligent fantasy, as well as some people who think fantasy isn’t really for them. Gaiman’s one of my favourite authors, and this is probably his best book and a wonderful introduction to his style.

 

PS. This time around, I (deliberately) read the author’s preferred edition, basically a sort of director’s cut equivalent, with 12 000 words of previously cut material added back in. I’d recommend sticking with the original, slightly shorter (though still nearly 600 pages long) edition. It’s hard to be sure as it’s so long since I first read this, but I think the original is just that bit tighter and slicker. Editors serve a purpose, they’re not just there to thwart an author’s will, something that I’ve learned over time, as a naturally wordy writer. 

Review – MaddAddam

30 Monday Dec 2013

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Tomorrow, all being well, I’ll be posting some sort of review of my reading year. But the year is not over yet, and with the luxury of time that the holidays provide, I’m trying to get a few final books read before it draws to a close. One book that I devoured over Christmas was MaddAddam, and my review of it is below. 

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THE BLURB (and my goodness, what a rubbish blurb it is – if I hadn’t read the earlier books, I’d have thought it was utter trash based on this description. Also, what on earth is going on with the British cover with the flying pig?)

A man-made plague has swept the earth, but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, onetime member of the God’s Gardeners and expert in mushrooms and bees, is still in love with street-smart Zeb, who has an interesting past. The Crakers’ reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is hallucinating; Amanda is in shock from a Painballer assault; and Ivory Bill yearns for the provocative Swift Fox, who is flirting with Zeb. Meanwhile, giant Pigoons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack.

 Told with wit, dizzying imagination, and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood’s unpredictable, chilling and hilarious MaddAddam takes us further into a challenging dystopian world – a moving and dramatic conclusion to the internationally celebrated trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.

MaddAddam (MaddAddam Trilogy #3)

MY REVIEW

I’m a big fan of Margaret Atwood. The quality of her prose, her characters, and her imagination is such that she writes some of the few realistic, contemporary tales that I’m happy to read. Nonetheless, I still think she’s at her best when she’s writing full-blown science-fiction with a literary edge. While the Handmaid’s Tale is probably the best known example of this, I actually prefer Oryx and Crake and its sequel, the Year of the Floor. The series presents one of the most intriguing and well-developed futuristic dystopias I’ve ever come across, combined with an interesting plot set both before and after the plague deliberately designed to wipe out humanity and replace it with a race of genetically modified perfect beings.

Oryx and Crake dealt with the upper-echelons of society and the scientific genius who created the plague and the new humans, while Year of the Flood told the interlocking story of the underclass and the God’s Gardeners environmentalist cult. The two books worked well together to fill in each other’s blanks, give various different perspectives on the world and the plot, and create a fully rounded universe. I was therefore unsure what else this third book could add.

As with the earlier books, MaddAddam presents both a linear narrative of life after the “Waterless Flood” for the handful of survivors, and flashbacks to life in the pre-plague world of genetic engineering, stark class divides, and armed corporations.

The “modern-day” sections focus on Toby, who is holed up with a combination of God’s Gardeners, former MaddAddam affiliates, a (mostly unconscious) Jimmy from the first book, and a large group of Crakers, the new humans, to whom she tells selective stories of the past as a sort of creation myth. The focus is on the story-telling sessions, on the group defending themselves against Painballers and the world’s strange man-made animals, and on Toby’s relationship with Zeb. There is very little action, even in relation to the Painballer plot. The storytelling concept and the development of the Crakers was interesting, but otherwise, these sections, while redeemed by Atwood’s writing skills and characterisation, were ultimately quite dull.

The storytelling sessions and Toby’s diary, which ultimately becomes a sort of Bible, are well done, playing with ideas of folklore, origin stories and the development of a shared culture. Though this premise was intriguing, I ultimately felt it was a little laboured and overdone. Constant Craker interruptions and misunderstandings of Toby’s stories became trying when I just wanted to immerse myself in the tale, and the sections told by the Crakers felt a little twee. Cloud Atlas did a similar thing much more succinctly and subtly, by showing how one character’s police interview became a religious text in the future. Still, I’m a firm believer that there shouldn’t be a solid divide between literary and genre fiction, so it’s refreshing to see such complex ideas being explored in this sort of story.

The best parts of the book were the flashbacks. The dystopian world is so well developed that it’s fascinating to spend time there. That said, I didn’t feel that these sections, focussed on Zeb and Adam One this time, added much to what readers have seen in earlier books. Zeb has lots of adventures, but doesn’t really seem to do much. And while it’s heavily implied that Adam is heavily embroiled in various plots, I was no clearer on his actual role in events by the end.

In essence, I don’t think this book needed to be written in order to make this a complete series, and I don’t think it’s as good as its predecessors. That said, the writing, the imagination on display and the fascinating world still make it a pleasure to read, and I raced through it, complex ideas about storytelling and exciting tales of fights with mutant bears alike. I’d definitely recommend to fans of the author and the series, and if you haven’t read the earlier books yet, do so now. If you have, a quick re-read may be in order – at times I struggled to remember the details of earlier plots and it would be interesting to see how they all merge together. I’ve started re-reading Oryx and Crake today to refresh my memory and spend more time immersed in this compelling world. 

Flawed heroines, villainous love interests, and a rather good review of Oxford Blood

09 Saturday Nov 2013

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Yesterday I got a rather interesting review. I find that the majority of reviews I get come from people that I’ve pro-actively approached, so it’s always a pleasant surprise to get a good one one from someone who has just randomly read the book and then decided to talk about it on their blog. https://davidjhiggins.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/oxford-blood-by-georgiana-derwent/

What I really liked about this review however it that it seemed to get a point about the book that many either miss or outright misinterpret:

“I recommend it to readers who enjoy new interpretations of the vampire myth, especially those seeking a counterpoint to the more usual humane vampire societies“

“Harriet is a strong character: at times shallow and ambitious enough to work with the Cavaliers if it might advance her interests; yet also loyal to her mortal friends, and ready to act against the Cavaliers on some issues. This makes her increasing attraction to blood-drinking tyrants more believable than that of the usual heroines of vampire romance.”

“Horrified by their hungers but drawn to their power she struggles to balance humanity with ambition.”

I’ve had several reviews over the months that complain that most of the characters in the book are unlikeable, as though I set out to make them nice and failed, when to a large degree that was a deliberate choice. I wanted the Cavaliers to be at worst villains and at best seriously flawed anti-heroes – I can’t stand soppy vampires who are basically just long-living super-attractive humans. And while Harriet is meant to be a bit more sympathetic, she’s certainly not meant to be a role model or free of personality flaws, and she definitely makes some rather dubious decisions. 

Ultimately, of course, an author’s view only counts for so much, and readers are welcome to their own perspectives on the characters, but I thought it would be interesting to share mine. 

In short, my vampires are power-obsessed, blood-thirsty, and generally don’t care much about humans other than as a source of blood, sex, or influence. And yes, I emphatically include George and Tom in that. I see them as having genuine feelings for Harriet, but that doesn’t magically make them good people. Plenty of real-life sadistic dictators have a wife and children that they appear to truly love, but while it reveals a spark of humanity under their darkness, it doesn’t redeem them.

In particular, I think readers tend to struggle with Tom in this context. There’s very much a culture of good vampire/bad vampire love triangles in paranormal romance, and as Tom is the slightly less bad one, people tend to assume that he is meant to be the good one and then attack him for some of the ruthless things he does as though they are out of character. Let me make this clear once and for all: Tom drinks human blood regularly by mesmerising people. He has lots of casual relationships. He’s fully involved in the Cavaliers schemes to turn some students, kill others, and control the country. He is meant to love Harriet. He is meant to have some human and redeeming qualities, but he is not meant to be a nice guy. The following exchange between George and Harriet in Screaming Spires sums it up:

“He saved me from you that first night when you’d just have used and abused me out on the Walk.”

Harriet shuddered at the memory of that evening, a memory she usually managed to suppress.

George looked pained. “Do you really think he hasn’t done exactly the same thing to other women? He saved you because he was acting under orders from your mother. The slightest twist of roles and it could have been me saving you from him. I heard about the first time you met. What do you think he was taking you to an old hidden library for if not to have a taste of you?”

Harriet’s angry reply died on her tongue. She’d almost forgotten about that, the way Tom had charmed her on her very first day in Oxford, led her from a party to a darkened room and been utterly seductive until he’d seen her necklace and guessed who she was. When she thought about it at all, she considered it as a charming prelude to their relationship, proof that he’d liked her from the very beginning. But George’s words made a horrible sense. Of course Tom had been planning to mesmerise and bite her. That was what vampires did, and it was far too easy to think that Tom was different. 

 

Oh, and George? The scene they are reflecting on there where he takes Harriet out into the woods and forcibly bites her? That is not meant to be okay. And the fact that she then goes out with him is not meant to be a sensible decision. I would be the first to admit that if I were writing Oxford Blood from scratch today, I’d probably handle that plot arc slightly differently, as it does push credibility. But some people’s capacity for self-delusion and bad decisions should not be underestimated. And sadly, when someone is sufficiently attractive and charming, some people will forgive them far too much. I used to do pro bono work for a legal domestic violence charity, and it never ceased to amaze me what kind of treatment some people would put up with once they thought that someone loved them and they loved them back.

Incidentally, I would never write a realistic scene featuring two humans and abuse that gave even the slightest implication that it was okay for the abuser to go on to be regarded as a quasi-romantic hero – though far too many authors do. Personally, I find that the paranormal element (and to some degree, fantasy, far-futuristic and far-historical approaches) give just enough distance from similar real life scenarios to make this palatable – but I appreciate that this is an argument that people either buy or they don’t. 

Funnily enough, much more than the vampires, Harriet comes in for a lot of abuse, often in otherwise really, really positive reviews. Now, I like Harriet. I like the fact that she’s ambitious. I like the fact that she’s rarely fazed by anything, and I like the fact that Oxford is an alien environment for her but that she faces it head on. She’s not meant to be a deliberately dislikeable person. But she isn’t meant to be a role model or someone who always does the right thing. She’s shallow at times, and her ambition sometimes tips over into obsession. When she likes someone (men especially) she tends to be blind to their faults, and conversely, when she gets off on the wrong foot with someone, she tends to overemphasise their faults. And sometimes, she makes incredibly silly choices – but so do most people at some point in their life. 

It’s easy to assume that the author’s view is always aligned with their main character, but when I have Josh say, “Did you spend the night with the rich blond wanker or the dark haired posh twat?” or Caroline, “He stabbed you with a knife. I’m already uncomfortable that we didn’t go to the police – why would you go on a date with him?” their views are no more or less representative of mine than when Harriet opines on the wonders of the Cavaliers. 

Most of the series is from Harriet’s point of view. It should not therefore be assumed that her view of the world is shared by everyone, or that her opinion of people is the right one. Katie is a case in point. Because she was initially a rival for Tom’s affections, and because she’s posh and self-possessed, Harriet thinks of her as stuck-up and something of an enemy. In-fact, baring one vicious insult when Harriet has pretty clearly stolen her boyfriend while they were out on a date there’s little to suggest that she’s anything but a reasonably pleasant person. As the series goes on, Harriet grows to realise this. 

More fundamentally (and this one contains huge spoilers for the end of Oxford Blood, so read with caution) Archie basically has the good of the university and the country at heart when he tries to kill George and stop the Summer Party from taking place. He has to kill one human to do so, but killing one to save fifteen could be regarded as a ruthless but ultimately pragmatic trade-off.  He is the one vampire who feels bad about killing someone to be turned, the one who tries to avoid drinking human blood, and the one who dislikes Cavalier control of the country. In a different book, told form his POV, he could almost have been the hero. But because the one person he has to kill is our heroine, he feels like the villain.

Looking ahead, I’m interested more generally in the question of whether a reader has to like the main character to enjoy the book. I’ve started vaguely planning my next novel for when Ivory Terrors, and therefore the whole Cavaliers Series, is finally finished, and I intend it to feature a full-blown anti-heroine whose actions, while starting off broadly understandable, start to verge on the evil. I am however rather concerned that people will miss the point, assume that her approach to life is meant to be unquestioningly supported and decide that my moral compass is distinctly skewed. Still, I think I’ll take my chances, and I think the lesson I’ve learnt from the Cavaliers is to really spell this sort of thing out, and not underestimate people’s ability to assume that genre conventions are in play.  

 

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Review of The Shining Girls

14 Monday Oct 2013

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Still working through the holiday reading, here’s my review of one of those books that everyone suddenly seems to be talking about: The Shining Girls.

THE BLURB

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“THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST.

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times. 

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins theChicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . . 

THE SHINING GIRLS is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.”

THE REVIEW

As a general rule, I hate crime novels but love stories that make clever use of time travel, so I was in two minds over whether to read this book. The comparisons to Gone Girl, which I read last year and loved, finally persuaded me to give it a try.

Let me start by saying that I don’t agree with that comparison at all. They are two books that involve a crime and have an unconventional narrative structure, but that’s literally the only things they have in common. The things I loved about Gone Girl were the brilliantly quotable prose, the clever twist, and the unreliable narration. None of that is present here – it’s a much more workmanlike novel.

That’s not to say it isn’t an enjoyable read. It was an pacey thriller that made me want to rush to the end and it had a well-executed sense of creepiness. My favourite parts actually had little to do with either crime or time travel. I loved the vignettes about the different girls the villain killed. The idea was that he only killed girls who had a spark about them – some combination of having a huge ambition and/or wanting to change the world. I was fascinated by their stories – the transgender fifties showgirl, the woman doing a man’s job during WW2, the seventies procurer of illegal abortions. It’s just a shame they all died so quickly! I actually thought the heroine was one of the weaker characters, and it was hard to see what her “shine” was meant to be. I’d rather have had one of the women listed above be the survivor who is hunting him down.

Weirdly, I enjoyed it more while I was reading it than afterwards. Once I’d put it down, I had time to think about the weaknesses. For me, the big problem was that “time travelling serial killer being pursued by escaped victim” is a truly amazing premise, and the plot just didn’t quite do it justice. I’d have liked a wider spread of time periods (it spanned 1929 to 1993)but that’s just personal preference. More problematic was that I didn’t get quite enough sense of different times, and the killer seemed far too comfortable with it all – more scenes of him struggling to adapt to changing attitudes and technology would have been great. I like time travel when it’s really mind-bending (like in the Time Traveller’s Wife) and I didn’t get that here. In effect, most of the plot would actually have played out similarly without the time travel element. The times where the author played with this (the ending, the body in the bin, the first meeting with Bartek, some of the use of objects) were some of my favourite parts, and I really wish they’d been developed more.

There also didn’t seem to be that much rhyme or reason to how the villain had acquired a)the ability to travel through time, or b)this overwhelming urge to kill. He’s a psychopath who’s found a magic house, and that’s pretty much all the explanation you’re going to get.

In conclusion, this is worth a read if you want an unusual premise, an engaging plot, and a bit of a scare. Just don’t expect Gone Girl, metaphysical mind games, or a great deal of substance.

***

As a good deal of this review hinges on comparisons with Gone Girl, you may be interested in reading my review (4 stars) of it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R11UR2VBJCIBIW

Review of Sisterland

13 Sunday Oct 2013

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A few weeks ago, I announced that I was going to be writing a review post for every book I read. The observant amongst you might have noticed that since then, there haven’t been any book reviews, which might lead you to think that I’m either rubbish at sticking to plans, or an incredibly slow reader. In actual fact, it’s down to two issues – picking a book that I really couldn’t get on with but stubbornly refusing to read anything else until I’d finished it, and feeling that I really shouldn’t be reading when I should be finishing Ivory Terrors. 

I finally gave up on The Teleportation Accident (I’m in two minds about whether I should review a book that I didn’t finish, it’s not something that happens to me very often at all) and a blissful week in Italy finally gave me the space to get some serious reading done. Over the next couple of days, I’ll therefore be putting up the reviews of my holiday reading. I’m starting with Sisterland, the latest book from Curtis Sittenfeld. She’s one of my absolute favourite authors, and one of the few writers of realistic, contemporary fiction that I enjoy at all. 

 

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THE BLURB

From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.
 
Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.
 
Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves.

MY REVIEW – 5 Stars

Curtis Sittenfeld’s first novel, Prep, is one of my all-time favourite books, and I’ve also hugely enjoyed her other works. Therefore, I was going into this one with high expectations, especially as I’d heard it had a telepathy themes, and I always love it when authors blend a literary approach with paranormal or fantasy elements.

I absolutely wasn’t disappointed. This is a beautifully written novel with characters that take on a life of their own. The paranormal aspects (basically, the lead characters are psychic twins) is quite subtle, and acts more as a catalyst for the story than the main focus of the ploy. Ultimately, the book is about family relationships – between sisters, of course, but also between children and parents (in both directions), and between husbands and wives. I particularly loved the way the central marital relationship was portrayed. Fiction generally only shows love affairs during their passionate beginnings or bitter endings, but here was a touching (though never overly sentimental) steady-state relationship, complete with a few non-explicit scenes of hot marital sex.

For most of the book, very little happens. The story divides about fifty/fifty between the narrator reminiscing about her life up until this point, and scenes of her and the people around her getting on with their fairly normal lives. Usually, that would be enough to make me drop a book after a few chapters. I feel no shame in admitting that for me, plot usually comes first. However, there’s something about Sittenfeld’s writing that just gels with me. Scenes of her characters taking a baby to a park are oddly compelling, and sometimes even a little profound.

The flashbacks are done particularly well. Just like in Prep, adult hindsight is used to add both distance and poignancy to teenage memories. It’s subtle, but the “present day” scenes are actually also being told in flashback from a few years into the future, and this adds an interesting extra dimension.

This book probably isn’t for everyone. If you can’t cope without tons of action, look away now. Similarly, if you like gritty tales, Sittenfeld probably isn’t for you, full stop. I’m perfectly happy with stories of middle class life, but if you have a low tolerance for “first world problems” then consider yourself fairly warned.

If you liked the author’s other novels, however, then I can confidently report that there hasn’t been a drop in standards. And if you’re just looking for an enjoyable literary novel, then I’d hugely recommend it.

One final thought – this hugely reminded me of my favourite story in Girl Reading, which tells the tale of two Victorian psychic twins, one of whom embraces their power while the other denies it. I’d love to know if Sittenfeld has read it!

***

This review mentions two other books and for anyone who is interested, my review of Prep (5 stars) can be found here:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1APBIXP34IE42

And my review of Girl Reading (3 stars) can be found here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2O1W6C6G9ELRK

Incidentally, while its influence may not be as obvious as, say, The Vampire Diaries, I consider Prep to be one of my major inspiration for The Cavaliers in its treatment of a normal girl at an elite institution. The first few chapters I wrote (long before it even involved vampires!) quite self-consciously tried to imitate her style, before I decided to go in a totally different direction.