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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
After having been a little less enthusiastic about a couple of Knox's books ([b:After Z-hour|1445612|After Z-hour|Elizabeth Knox|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1276378180s/1445612.jpg|1436301] and [b:Daylight|703418|Daylight|Elizabeth Knox|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177435378s/703418.jpg|689709]), this one has regained my enthusiasm.
From the beginning, I enjoyed the characters - and I find that matters a great deal to me. I know that I have liked books where I haven't liked even the chief characters, and I'm thinking of a book by McEwan (I think, and it might come to mind if I try not to think of it for a while) where I quite disliked the main protagonist - in fact, if I remember correctly, I read a number of books by the same author (and I'll check through my records in a moment to see if anything confirms (or denies) what I'm currently "remembering") without finding any characters that I felt particularly sympathetic towards, and yet I enjoyed them all very much. However (and I am getting to the point here), I believe that I generally prefer books whose characters please me.
Happily, there are a lot of different characteristics that I enjoy, so my taste in books is not severely limited by this preference. But I would venture to say that it's highly unlikely I'll ever give 5 stars to a book with characters that didn't appeal to me.
And, as I said, these characters were most enjoyable. I also enjoyed the mixture of magic and of revolutionary South America and of another world that is accessible at times to ours. Knox weaves a complex tale, covering some 40 years with memories extending another 20 years earlier, and taking us into the lives of some extraodinary people. A "list of characters" at the start made me a little concerned that it might be so complex that I'd have to return to that list regularly in order to sort them all out, but it wasn't so. What I realised it had done, was to whet my appetite. A very clever strategy!
[That's the end of this review, and I've just spent I don't know how long mucking around with Firefox and my Blog, because Firefox stopped showing me the url, which made it impossible to update a link, but now I'm looking at the top of the screen and the url is once again showing, which is good but makes me frustrated at the mucking-around time ...
Anyway, the author I wanted wasn't McEwan, but was Peter Carey. The 2 McEwan books I read were [book:Saturday|5015], and [b:Enduring Love|6870|Enduring Love|Ian McEwan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1313656531s/6870.jpg|31779], both of which I thoroughly enjoyed; the Peter Carey, that I liked despite not liking any of the characters, was [b:Theft: A Love Story|40215|Theft A Love Story|Peter Carey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169432514s/40215.jpg|1266528]]
From the beginning, I enjoyed the characters - and I find that matters a great deal to me. I know that I have liked books where I haven't liked even the chief characters, and I'm thinking of a book by McEwan (I think, and it might come to mind if I try not to think of it for a while) where I quite disliked the main protagonist - in fact, if I remember correctly, I read a number of books by the same author (and I'll check through my records in a moment to see if anything confirms (or denies) what I'm currently "remembering") without finding any characters that I felt particularly sympathetic towards, and yet I enjoyed them all very much. However (and I am getting to the point here), I believe that I generally prefer books whose characters please me.
Happily, there are a lot of different characteristics that I enjoy, so my taste in books is not severely limited by this preference. But I would venture to say that it's highly unlikely I'll ever give 5 stars to a book with characters that didn't appeal to me.
And, as I said, these characters were most enjoyable. I also enjoyed the mixture of magic and of revolutionary South America and of another world that is accessible at times to ours. Knox weaves a complex tale, covering some 40 years with memories extending another 20 years earlier, and taking us into the lives of some extraodinary people. A "list of characters" at the start made me a little concerned that it might be so complex that I'd have to return to that list regularly in order to sort them all out, but it wasn't so. What I realised it had done, was to whet my appetite. A very clever strategy!
[That's the end of this review, and I've just spent I don't know how long mucking around with Firefox and my Blog, because Firefox stopped showing me the url, which made it impossible to update a link, but now I'm looking at the top of the screen and the url is once again showing, which is good but makes me frustrated at the mucking-around time ...
Anyway, the author I wanted wasn't McEwan, but was Peter Carey. The 2 McEwan books I read were [book:Saturday|5015], and [b:Enduring Love|6870|Enduring Love|Ian McEwan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1313656531s/6870.jpg|31779], both of which I thoroughly enjoyed; the Peter Carey, that I liked despite not liking any of the characters, was [b:Theft: A Love Story|40215|Theft A Love Story|Peter Carey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169432514s/40215.jpg|1266528]]
Ok. So... for a large section of this book I was not sure what was going on. The bits of story in it are fairly easy to follow, but the overall shifting of time is a bit odd to figure out. Overall though, it ends up being a rather nice tale as a whole. I enjoyed all of it really. And some of the lines in it are so gorgeous it's hard to not want to reread them over and over again.
One of those endings that leaves me thinking perhaps I missed a chapter somewhere.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes