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A review by slippy_underfoot
The Other Side Of The Fire by Alice Thomas Ellis
3.0
Enjoyed that.
Claudia realises she is falling in love with her stepson, and is both horrified and excited by the possibilities.
With her usual acuity Alice Thomas Ellis laces this short, deceptively light, tale with line after line of witty barbs, exploring relationships between women and their friends, their daughters, sons, mothers, and husbands.
The characters are swiftly and well drawn, and each has their own distinct voice - which can be quite rare in comic novels.
I had to stop myself just posting great swathes of it on Twitter, it’s so damn quotable:
“In Evvie’s view men were a nuisance with more or less nothing to be said for them.”
“True, she suspected, Charles, unlike most women, believed in the vaginal orgasm while refusing to credit the existence of the Loch Ness monster - but then so did most men, in her experience.”
“An idea conceived in drunkenness, considered in sobriety and found reasonable will, when the thinker is next drunk, have taken on something of the force of prophecy.”
Not a classic by any means, but I’m always delighted to spend time inside an Alice Thomas Ellis book.
Claudia realises she is falling in love with her stepson, and is both horrified and excited by the possibilities.
With her usual acuity Alice Thomas Ellis laces this short, deceptively light, tale with line after line of witty barbs, exploring relationships between women and their friends, their daughters, sons, mothers, and husbands.
The characters are swiftly and well drawn, and each has their own distinct voice - which can be quite rare in comic novels.
I had to stop myself just posting great swathes of it on Twitter, it’s so damn quotable:
“In Evvie’s view men were a nuisance with more or less nothing to be said for them.”
“True, she suspected, Charles, unlike most women, believed in the vaginal orgasm while refusing to credit the existence of the Loch Ness monster - but then so did most men, in her experience.”
“An idea conceived in drunkenness, considered in sobriety and found reasonable will, when the thinker is next drunk, have taken on something of the force of prophecy.”
Not a classic by any means, but I’m always delighted to spend time inside an Alice Thomas Ellis book.