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A review by kenmuir
The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
2.0
Disappointing sequel to Sacred Hunger.
I liked Sacred Hunger (4 stars) and I enjoy Barry Unsworth's other novels, but several issues in this book did not work well for me.
In the early stages the characters and plot are too explanatory. As a follow-up to Sacred Hunger, written 20 years later, but only set 4 years after the events of that book, Unsworth has reasonably assumed that many readers of Quality Of Mercy will not have read Sacred Hunger. As a result the conversations and descriptions early on try to recapture the Sacred Hunger situation. But these are done in an all-to-obvious and unconvincing manner. You get discussions that begin like, "Why sir, if you recall our last meeting on this subject ... " and then the speaker recounts everything in a most unrealistic and unnatural style. In real life you would trust the other person's memory to be as good as your own and not to require this. It's quite obviously a plot device to bring the reader up to speed.
The pace of the plot is also strange and inconsistent. Reading on my Kindle I was about 45% of the way through the book. Next time I looked I was over 80%. I couldn't account for this gap. Was I really approaching the end already? Had enough happened to make this apparent leap acceptable? Obviously not for me. I felt it jarred considerably.
The new characters introduced in Quality Of Mercy are awkward additions. They are introduced, described and positioned in the tale, but their stories are often left unfinished. What exactly was their purpose? Other than to fill several pages.
I finished the book feeling really quite unsatisfied. As a standalone tale I think it is incomplete and erratic. It actually felt more like book two of a Sacred Hunger trilogy rather than a concluding sequel.
I do think Barry Unworthy writes well. His command of language does enable the characters to have individual lives and appearances in the reader's mind. All the more disappointing then that these identities are left unfulfilled in their stories and how these stories intermesh.
I liked Sacred Hunger (4 stars) and I enjoy Barry Unsworth's other novels, but several issues in this book did not work well for me.
In the early stages the characters and plot are too explanatory. As a follow-up to Sacred Hunger, written 20 years later, but only set 4 years after the events of that book, Unsworth has reasonably assumed that many readers of Quality Of Mercy will not have read Sacred Hunger. As a result the conversations and descriptions early on try to recapture the Sacred Hunger situation. But these are done in an all-to-obvious and unconvincing manner. You get discussions that begin like, "Why sir, if you recall our last meeting on this subject ... " and then the speaker recounts everything in a most unrealistic and unnatural style. In real life you would trust the other person's memory to be as good as your own and not to require this. It's quite obviously a plot device to bring the reader up to speed.
The pace of the plot is also strange and inconsistent. Reading on my Kindle I was about 45% of the way through the book. Next time I looked I was over 80%. I couldn't account for this gap. Was I really approaching the end already? Had enough happened to make this apparent leap acceptable? Obviously not for me. I felt it jarred considerably.
The new characters introduced in Quality Of Mercy are awkward additions. They are introduced, described and positioned in the tale, but their stories are often left unfinished. What exactly was their purpose? Other than to fill several pages.
I finished the book feeling really quite unsatisfied. As a standalone tale I think it is incomplete and erratic. It actually felt more like book two of a Sacred Hunger trilogy rather than a concluding sequel.
I do think Barry Unworthy writes well. His command of language does enable the characters to have individual lives and appearances in the reader's mind. All the more disappointing then that these identities are left unfulfilled in their stories and how these stories intermesh.