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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
I wanted to like this book...I really did. It was kind of eerie, which I believe is good, but at times I did struggle to finish it. Because of some non-interets, I am sure there are things I should have caught but didn't. I figure there was some deep, dark message which I never quite figured out. Oh well, you can't win them all.
Twenty years ago Tara Martin went missing. She simply went out one day and never came home. Her boyfriend at the time was an obvious suspect. They had rowed before she disappeared. Her brother and parents have never gotten over it. They’ve moved on as best they can, Peter has a family of his own now, but Tara’s absence casts a long shadow.
A shadow that her sudden and unexplained reappearance only darkens. Where was she all this time?
The story she tells her brother, that for her it has only been six months, and they she tried and tried but this was the earliest she could return, does not persuade anybody. There must be some other explanation.
This book is, in many ways, a perfect read for the Once Upon a Time challenge. It is all about fairy tales and folktales. Joyce starts each chapter with a quote about, or from a fairy tale, and references the case of Bridget Cleary. She was killed by her husband and father, among others, because they believed she was a changeling, the real Bridget having been taken by the fairies.
And Joyce does a wonderful job of mixing the fairy and the more mundane worlds. There are multiple narrators, sometimes it is Tara telling us what happened, other times her brother or her old boyfriend recount what happened to them. We also get the odd report from her psychiatrist as he attempts to uncover why she has lost her memory and created this outlandish tale.
It is also a very readable book. I just kept turning the pages, enjoying the read and wanting to find out more. It isn’t perfect however1 . A couple of times while reading I was slightly jolted out of the story by comments made in relation to women. At one stage, for example, one character says something to the effect that nature doesn’t allow two women to live under the same roof. Nothing major, and I do think it was very definitely the character and not Joyce himself who says and believes it, but at the same time I was a bit hmmm.
And I’m not one hundred per cent sure on the ending.
But all in all I think this is one of Joyce’s better books and I’d recommend it.
A shadow that her sudden and unexplained reappearance only darkens. Where was she all this time?
The story she tells her brother, that for her it has only been six months, and they she tried and tried but this was the earliest she could return, does not persuade anybody. There must be some other explanation.
This book is, in many ways, a perfect read for the Once Upon a Time challenge. It is all about fairy tales and folktales. Joyce starts each chapter with a quote about, or from a fairy tale, and references the case of Bridget Cleary. She was killed by her husband and father, among others, because they believed she was a changeling, the real Bridget having been taken by the fairies.
And Joyce does a wonderful job of mixing the fairy and the more mundane worlds. There are multiple narrators, sometimes it is Tara telling us what happened, other times her brother or her old boyfriend recount what happened to them. We also get the odd report from her psychiatrist as he attempts to uncover why she has lost her memory and created this outlandish tale.
It is also a very readable book. I just kept turning the pages, enjoying the read and wanting to find out more. It isn’t perfect however1 . A couple of times while reading I was slightly jolted out of the story by comments made in relation to women. At one stage, for example, one character says something to the effect that nature doesn’t allow two women to live under the same roof. Nothing major, and I do think it was very definitely the character and not Joyce himself who says and believes it, but at the same time I was a bit hmmm.
And I’m not one hundred per cent sure on the ending.
But all in all I think this is one of Joyce’s better books and I’d recommend it.
I really didn't enjoy this. The fantastic elements are slim to nonexistent; used as a bald plot device to create family dysfunction to explore.
The family itself is peopled with clichés and wish fulfillment (for a particular brand of yuppy professionals who wish they had the gumption to downsize and do something "earthy" and "hands on"). The only character drawn with any depth is Jack the teenage boy whose discomfort and raging libido are on-screen for a ridiculous proportion of the book. Take out a few mentions of mobile phones and the family would fit right in to an Archers episode set in the 60s.
This is supposedly a crossover between fantasy and literary fiction; it's a lousy example of fantasy. If it's representative of the state of lit fic I'm glad I mostly read genre fiction.
The family itself is peopled with clichés and wish fulfillment (for a particular brand of yuppy professionals who wish they had the gumption to downsize and do something "earthy" and "hands on"). The only character drawn with any depth is Jack the teenage boy whose discomfort and raging libido are on-screen for a ridiculous proportion of the book. Take out a few mentions of mobile phones and the family would fit right in to an Archers episode set in the 60s.
This is supposedly a crossover between fantasy and literary fiction; it's a lousy example of fantasy. If it's representative of the state of lit fic I'm glad I mostly read genre fiction.