In this, the third book of the trilogy, I was a little disappointed. I felt that the writing was very simplistic, as it has been throughout the trilogy, but this book didn’t counteract it with the suspense of the other books. I didn’t like Callie Rose and Sephy’s happy ending; thought that was a bit sugary. Jude was beyond a caricature. All that said, I did think the earlier tension between Sephy and her teenage daughter was quite realistic.
This book is beautifully written. I can’t believe that this was written by the same person who wrote Started Early, Took My Dog, which I read recently. KA has a gift for writing from women’s perspectives, no matter what time period they are in.
Aside from the quality of the writing, what kept me reading was wondering whether Ursula would fare any better in the next perumtation. I was utterly gripped. I also loved how the Snow period is revisited and bulked out gradually through the book e.g. we know that Sylvie is given a snowdrop in a vase on her breakfast tray, then later we see how it came to be there.
There are so many characters and permutations that I feel compelled to make some kind of chart to make sense of it all but it looks like someone has analysed it already with an accompanying flow chart:
I think the flow chart is a bit too simplistic though so I’ll be going through the book again, making my own notes.
This is a wonderful book with a well-told story (or should I say stories?). The characters feel very real and the are tragedies enormous and poetic. Ultimately I found this to be quite a sad book but I loved it. I would go so far as to say that it’s the best book I’ve read all year.
This was a book group choice. I’ll be concise.
1) It has so many characters that I got confused.
2) I found it very difficult to believe that a woman who spent 30 years working for the police would buy a child.
3) I didn’t like the rambling thoughts of characters in this book. It was difficult to glean what was relevant. I didn’t feel like I connected to any of the characters and got fed up of Jackson going on and on about his dead sister. He’s done it throughout the series and it’s getting boring.
In its defence, it’s fairly ‘readable’, just disappointing as I liked the first Jackson Brodie novel (Case Histories).
I became aware of this book on the Hello Sunday Morning Facebook group. AB is a good writer. I wouldn’t say that he’s a great or brilliant writer, but he’s smart, sassy and funny. Dry is his alcoholism memoir. It took me a while to get going but today I’ve read the last two thirds of the book. Unlike Running With Scissors, Dry reads like really good fiction because it has an excellent story arc. Like Running With Scissors, it’s compellingly honest. I’d recommend it.
A crazy book. Just when you think things can’t get any more insane, they do. I raced through it while sunbathing in Cyprus. It was a perfect holiday read: easy, very original and ultimately uplifting.
Made this last night with a 1.8kg unsmoked gammon joint. Simmered it for 2 hours in the Coke, then put the glaze on, but burnt most of the glaze sadly. So be careful when putting the glazed joint in the oven.
I have to say that, so far, I have been a bit disappointed in Paphos.
The hotel is very elegant, with lovely shiny marble everywhere. It’s all very clean and well maintained. The garden and pool areas are pretty. The staff are friendly. The hotel complex is very peaceful compared to the tourist area outside, which is loud and tacky.
We do feel like we’re be squeezed for money though. It’s just small things but added up it gets a bit irritating:-
– the policy of not serving tap water in the restaurants so you have to pay for bottled
– if you want more than the daily allocation of tea bags & coffee sachets in the room you have to pay
– there’s a note asking you to use only bottled water in the kettle for which, you guessed it, you have to pay
– if you want to use the minibar fridge for your own items you have to pay corkage
– the free upgrade to half board does not included dinner on our final day, even though we missed dinner on the first night
When paying 270 Euros a night I would expect these things to be included!
Breakfast has been ok but the coffee wasn’t hot. Dinner at the Fontana restaurant last night was patchy. The salads were reasonable but the hot-held meat and fish was dry and overcooked. Puddings weren’t too bad.
Interesting to read points of view of different old people. Humourous in parts with a slightly farcical ending.
I didn’t think I was enjoying this book as I was reading it but it turned out that I galloped through it at quite a pace. It’s good, dramatic and tender and has a real sense of the time it was set in – the 40’s. The parts are in reverse chronological order which allow the story to unfold in an interesting way. It makes for compulsive reading as blanks are filled in all the way to the end. There are lots of characters; I had to make a list to help me remember as read.
I applied Sarah’s Rule and read 100 pages of this. There is a very funny bit: Renton and his colleagues have a regular competition to see who can do the biggest poos (on newspaper, for measuring). This time their boss is on his way to the toilet so they have to ‘pick up the papers, open the windaes and fling oor bombs oantae the flat roof’ before the boss catches them.
But there isn’t anything noteworthy about the rest. I’ve read 105 pages – the whole first part – and there isn’t anything pushing me to read on. The stuff that is good has been done before; if I’d never met Begbie in Trainspotting I might have found him more amusing/shocking, but I have already met him before. I first read Trainspotting when I was about 18 and I was totally blown away by it. I remember enjoying it just as much the second time I read it but, on reading it again some years later, I’d had enough of it. Perhaps that’s why I’m not interested enough in Skagboys.