Reviews

Anyone who has done a writing course of any length, or who has joined a local reading or writing group, will be exhaustively, painfully familiar with the idea of memoir. Everyone has at least one novel in them, and many people choose memoir for some reason - or many reasons.

Anyway, ths is a work of ficiton in which the protagonist first writes a memoir of her time as a nurse in London in World War II, then has some ruminations about the whole craft of writing, especially writing memoir, that might amuse those of you who can deal with memoir in the first place. From this screed, the enlightened student is supposed to take some lessons on the nature of memoir, and the nature of fiction itself since memoir uses the techniques of fiction to describe true events, or perhaps evets that ought to be true, or at least—to borrow from Stephen Colbert—be 'truthy'.

An otherwise pedestrian work that isn't even redeemed by descriptions of changing England over time, as many other books can be, since they use passage of time to create a melancholy about vanished taste and quality.

samleemcneil's review against another edition

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slow-paced

3.0

paulafaian's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

i was about to trash-talk the end but im contented with it. briony gets the attention she wants, and recognises there is no atonement.
i think it was good how in the second part of her narration (part 3) she still puts herself as the focus of cecilia’s and robbie’s story. she can’t conceal her pettiness even in her attempt to redeem herself. even thought it made me mad, i think that’s truthful to her character.

4.5 because part 2 dragged on for too long