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bjr2022 's review for:
This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!
by Jonathan Evison
Like a mashup of the old TV series This Is Your Life and Topper with Frederik Backman's Britt-Marie Was Here, this novel was predictable but fun. A smart-alecky omniscient writer narrator tells us and 78-year-old Harriet Chance how she got to where she is.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The problem wasn't that I guessed all the plot revelations way before they happened. And it wasn't the dour character of Harriet, who felt familiar and flawed, which is something I usually love. The story involves talking to dead people, which I've been known to do, and there is a life review—a habit of mine—so I should have been a huge fan. I think the problem was that the smart aleck omniscient narrator doesn't seem to like, empathize with, or respect Harriet, and the direction of his (the voice has a distinct male feeling and does not feel remotely like an alter-ego Harriet which, toward the end, seems intended) flippant finger-pointing made me, the reader, a voyeur. This narrator seems to have a complete understanding of Harriet's psychology—an understanding which could result in compassion—but he used his knowledge harshly (which felt particularly cruel when he dealt with her childhood pain). Toward the end, he diagnoses Harriet with "contempt," and I found myself wondering if there is some of that in the narrator—so much so that I actually wanted defend Harriet from him and get to know her without him. Still, the book was well written, clever, and entertaining enough to read to the end.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The problem wasn't that I guessed all the plot revelations way before they happened. And it wasn't the dour character of Harriet, who felt familiar and flawed, which is something I usually love. The story involves talking to dead people, which I've been known to do, and there is a life review—a habit of mine—so I should have been a huge fan. I think the problem was that the smart aleck omniscient narrator doesn't seem to like, empathize with, or respect Harriet, and the direction of his (the voice has a distinct male feeling and does not feel remotely like an alter-ego Harriet which, toward the end, seems intended) flippant finger-pointing made me, the reader, a voyeur. This narrator seems to have a complete understanding of Harriet's psychology—an understanding which could result in compassion—but he used his knowledge harshly (which felt particularly cruel when he dealt with her childhood pain). Toward the end, he diagnoses Harriet with "contempt," and I found myself wondering if there is some of that in the narrator—so much so that I actually wanted defend Harriet from him and get to know her without him. Still, the book was well written, clever, and entertaining enough to read to the end.