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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
Reading this is like emerging from a fugue state, the dissolved reality reassembled into an otherness of order, a different permutation of the multiverse.
There are many terrific writers like Melanie Finn but too few get the attention they deserve or find their audience. Two Dollar Radio, with the tagline Books too loud to Ignore, published The Gloaming, a small mystery with a big heart and an intimate glimpse of both insiders and outsiders from Switzerland to Africa. The oddly and appropriately named Pilgrim Jones has been abandoned by her husband for another woman, while traveling in Switzerland. To add insult to injury, she is subsequently involved in the death of three children, but she has no recollection of the accident nor does she fully comprehend the consequences. In despair over her own life, her unborn children and the victims, everything seems more oppressive, more furtive and mysterious, and in this, Finn is especially good at evoking the scene. She writes frequently about the play of light and dark, and the similarly conflict between people, slowly establishing a powerful sense of place as well as the flaws, and flightiness, of humans outside their comfort zones. Pilgrim takes off impulsively, and remains, in a small town in Tanzania, where she becomes embroiled in all sorts of personal mysteries, until she disappears, and the people in her midst take up the story. With subtle but steadily increasing tension, the narrative shifts time and place and voice, but the story remains cohesive, if you read carefully, and make sure to read every word, as this Kenyan-born American writer is one to watch [this is only her second novel]. Even when she slips into the abstract, or especially then, her descriptive language is a delight for the literary reader.
I have read all the reviews posted here so far and the NYTimes book review. Many say it better, but this book is simply -- evocative. It is suspenseful and thought-provoking. I am so taken with Finn's vivid depiction of Africa, as place and as people, which was only one of the layers in this gem of a read. I was simultaneously frightened and drawn forward in this story until the finish.
Astonishing novel. Complex and deeply felt, with a pitch-perfect sense of place.
I found it to be kinda long-winded and dragging on at some points, and not even in a good way. The structure and the way the chapters are arranged is cool though, even if I didn't understand the ending at all. I found the characters bland and hated them tbh, plus the killer was really obvious halfway through (is that supposed to be that way or...?) But yeah, all in all, hated it but thought it was something I could learn from.