Scan barcode
A review by john_bizzell
A Map of the Damage by Sophia Tobin
3.0
In 1840 an elaborate building is being constructed in the City of London. One hundred years later the same building is being destroyed by bombs and incendiaries in the blitz. Sophia Tobin's book alternates between the two time frames, in both of which we find love triangles linked to the building's secrets and to each other. Sort of.
I'm fascinated by both these periods and I thought the central idea was so clever that I had high hopes for this - so much so that I left it on my TBR pile saving it for a time when I thought I'd need to lose myself in something really, really good. Maybe I built it up too much, but even if I'd had no expectations I think I would have been underwhelmed.
You'll never meet six more boring central characters so inexplicably infatuated with each other. Since all the motivations in the story arise from their overwhelming attractions to each other, if you don't believe them it's quite hard to get swept away by the weird plot, which becomes almost Dickensian in its coincidences and contrivances by the end.
The style is also quite overwrought. One of the things I find so compelling about stories set in such momentous times is that 'ordinary' people readily found themselves in extraordinary situations, but I want some sense of how that might actually have felt. Here the language occasionally borders on melodrama - women look at men and feel torn between kissing them or slapping them and men ask women in post-coital embraces: "who taught you how to take pleasure like that?"
I think if you like obsessional romances and don't mind the odd tenuous plot development, you might really enjoy this. She does capture the social mores of the two periods well and it's interesting how the differences are contrasted, but sadly it didn't do it for me.
I'm fascinated by both these periods and I thought the central idea was so clever that I had high hopes for this - so much so that I left it on my TBR pile saving it for a time when I thought I'd need to lose myself in something really, really good. Maybe I built it up too much, but even if I'd had no expectations I think I would have been underwhelmed.
You'll never meet six more boring central characters so inexplicably infatuated with each other. Since all the motivations in the story arise from their overwhelming attractions to each other, if you don't believe them it's quite hard to get swept away by the weird plot, which becomes almost Dickensian in its coincidences and contrivances by the end.
The style is also quite overwrought. One of the things I find so compelling about stories set in such momentous times is that 'ordinary' people readily found themselves in extraordinary situations, but I want some sense of how that might actually have felt. Here the language occasionally borders on melodrama - women look at men and feel torn between kissing them or slapping them and men ask women in post-coital embraces: "who taught you how to take pleasure like that?"
I think if you like obsessional romances and don't mind the odd tenuous plot development, you might really enjoy this. She does capture the social mores of the two periods well and it's interesting how the differences are contrasted, but sadly it didn't do it for me.