Although I haven’t yet read this year’s Booker winner Wolf Hall– which sounds like a very readable historical fiction - I have enjoyed two of the shortlisted novels. I was very excited when AS Byatt’s The children’s book came out. The setting amongst Bohemian society of England in the late nineteenth century, with a children’s fiction writer as a main character, sounded intriguing. Plus it has a gorgeous cover. And it was good. It has a mass of characters whose stories overlap and intertwine over the course of decades, with the novel finishing during world war one. There is an abundance of rich details, which were often fascinating but at other times felt like a drag on the narrative. Certainly sometimes it felt like Byatt was stepping in with a small lecture on a topic rather than letting her wealth of information be revealed by the stories or characters. A couple of months after finishing the book I find I have retained a shadowy feeling of lots of fairy tale elements and themes, and have lots of pretty images and interesting facts in my mind, but the book doesn’t sit comfortably as a whole in my mind. Sarah Waters’ The little stranger was quite different. I read it quickly despite its length and it definitely hung together as a compelling story. Set in a decrepit old English country house in the late 40s, and told from the perspective of the local family doctor visiting the small upper class family reduced to penury, The little stranger is a very well written ghost story. The despair of the characters who feel trapped in their lives, and the collapse of their life together, is matched by the slow decay of the house itself. Yet the feeling of the novel was more suspenseful than melancholic. I recommend it for fans of mystery novels and thrillers, though if you’re a sook like me you might not want to read it alone in an empty house. Tags: books, byatt, historical, mystery, waters
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