3.51 AVERAGE


Uitstekend eerste deel van de Roth trilogie, dat zijn afspeelt in de jaren negentig.
Eddie, een zielige figuur die zich vooral op zijn gemak voelt bij kleine meisjes, neemt met de hulp van een jonge vrouw, Angel, een jong meisje mee.
Lucy is niet zomaar meegenomen, zij is speciaal uitgekozen, maar waarom? Heeft het te maken met het feit dat haar vader bij de politie zit, of dat haar moeder een dominee is in de Anglicaanse kerk terwijl veel mensen hierop tegen zijn? En waarom worden er ledematen van andere meisjes gevonden op allerlei plekken die te maken hebben met een gedicht dat geschreven is door Francis Youlgreave, een priester die in diskrediet is geraakt rond 1900?

De sfeertekening, de uitwerking van de karakters en de opbouw is uitstekend gedaan. Pas in de laatste regel wordt een bepaalde connectie duidelijk, die in deel twee uitgewerkt zal worden.

I really liked this book...right until the ending. I'm hoping the other books in the trilogy wrap up Angel's back story better.
dark tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

First published book in the Roth Trilogy (though the third chronologically). A female Anglican curate and her policeman husband are rocked by the kidnapping of their daughter. Lots of church politics and theology.

It appeared this novel was going to be about how a married couple - a clergywoman and a cop - deal with the most horrible tragedy possible. However, it introduced too many characters - the ranting woman in the church, the husband's godfather, the bishop - and made them seem significant, then gave them inexplicable things to do and no closure. This is one of three books involving the same families and geographical location over several generations, so perhaps Taylor was setting up things that would become clearer in the other books. But that just made this book the poorer. After a good beginning and a very interesting main character - the clergywoman - it veered off into other less compelling areas and had a very unsatisfactory conclusion.
dark hopeful tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The first part of a trilogy that has me wondering where the last two parts will go. I know from the introduction to this book that they go backwards in time and to other places and there are plenty of hints to the characters pasts in this book that I'm looking forward to filling in with details.

This is a story about the abduction of four year old Lucy Appleyard, the daughter of Michael, a police detective, and Sally, a Church of England deacon. The fact that the main mystery is solved but the threads aren't all tied up in this book and I'm going to have to go and get the following two volumes could be annoying but it actually makes it a really good book that leaves me wondering.

25/9 - I love it when people (in books or tv, I've never actually heard it said in RL) use the phrase "Is that the time? I must dash." or words to that effect. It always brings me back to Fawlty Towers, I can't remember exactly which episode it's from but reading it always makes me laugh. To be continued...

26/9 - On page 89,

Clutching the box of paper handkerchiefs...".

Hasn't, like, the whole world been calling them tissues for some time now? That's a very odd way of putting it. *Shakes head in confusion, then scratches it in continued confusion* To be continued...

27/9 - Reading this was slightly weird for me because I knew the big surprise that was sprung on us at the ending. I made the unfortunate mistake of half reading the second book in this series, thinking it was this one (don't ask me how that happened), and so I knew who Angel would turn out to be as soon as she started talking about her father and his new wife. I will be interested to get back to The Judgement of Strangers, book two, as Angel hadn't really made an appearance yet, and I'm looking forward to seeing how she got from the mostly normal person she started out as to the 'Angel, massacrer of innocents' that we see in this book. I also want to understand the psychopathy behind her motives, as Angel doesn't do any self-analysis and Eddie isn't capable.

At some points I found the language a little too flowery for my tastes, especially considering the type of book that it is, and some of the details of the plot too hazy, too vague. I felt like Eddie was an unreliable narrator because a number of the scenes that he describes come to us muddled due to unspecified illness creating fever, alcohol, or blackouts due to mental trauma. The reader is supposed to guess, or assume, what happened through the descriptions Eddie gives us, but those descriptions might be (or might not be) corrupted by hallucinations and nightmares, and so as the reader you can't really trust what he's telling you. He might be telling us what he saw, or he might have hallucinated the whole thing and actually spent the whole night in bed asleep.

Religion played a very important part in this story. Sally, mother of the kidnapped child, is a priest who isn't particularly welcomed to the parish she presides over. David's, her husband's, godfather, is a retired priest with no love for the idea of female priests (it's never made clear when this was set, except that there are mobile phones and that it's after the 80s). After the abduction of Lucy Sally frequently questions her faith, the likelihood of there actually being a god who takes any notice of the troubles of man, and whether her female priestliness is the reason for the abduction of her child - is she going against God by being an ordained woman and is she therefore being punished for her audacity.

The Last Four Things had an interesting premise, but it got a bit bogged down and slow moving whenever we switched to Sally's POV. All she seemed to do was pray, or attempt to pray, sleep (due to sleeping pills handed out by whichever police officer had drawn the short straw and was tasked with babysitting her) and move listlessly around the apartment, or whatever other building, she was in at that time. I think, if I didn't own the final book in the trilogy I would probably stop reading the series right now, as it is I do so I feel obliged to go on, but I'm not expecting the reading of the rest of The Judgement of Strangers to be filled with twists and turns or fireworks.
dark slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Dark but gripping- will definitely read other Roth books.