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deepwinterodd 's review for:
The Crossing Places
by Elly Griffiths
This is, in the main, a book about people who don't go to parties.
I myself do not go to parties. At the last party I went to I had a panic attack and abandoned my husband to fend for himself while I drove home, changed into my pj's, and lay down with a good book. This behavior, btw, is code to the dogs for "Swarm!" which they helpfully did.
Sometimes people do still invite me to parties, so I inevitably have to decline on the grounds that one of the dogs is sick. The dogs are not sick, of course, but I will be making the "Look sick! Like bleh!" sign at them in the background.
Pickles the TBI Pug can be reliably counted on to look sick because his sick look looks a lot like *worried* or *gassy*, which are his default expressions.
("No, not like that!" I hiss. "That's too Pooped on the Floor. Think Pre-Raphaelite! Think fainting couch! Fainting couch!")
And so I make my excuse and we all try to look sad about not going to parties and then I lie back down with a good book. The dogs swarm. Someone farts. Life is magnificent.
Ruth loves living at the end of the universe, at the edge of a salt marsh. She has cats, books, archeology and comfy trousers. Nelson loves being a dogged policeman and rushing about shouting at people while solving cases that take a very long time to solve. They are both very good at living their lives, despite all the people around them who take umbrage at the way they live. They're both grand at ignoring those people and getting on with living. The coast of Norfolk is also very good at what it does, which is be bleak and desolate and dangerous, and it too ignores people and gets on with this. Wonderfully, the author captures all these strands together and ties in the ends.
We lost a star-plus here for the ending, however, which is the typical mishmash of every last person in Norfolk running around trying to rescue Ruth instead of getting on with the washing up. Honestly, there's only so many people that can do rescuing, and if that's been nowhere in a character's line for the entire book, having them dart about yelling Ruth's name and running towards the ocean, unlike avoiding parties, makes no sense.
(tw:)
I myself do not go to parties. At the last party I went to I had a panic attack and abandoned my husband to fend for himself while I drove home, changed into my pj's, and lay down with a good book. This behavior, btw, is code to the dogs for "Swarm!" which they helpfully did.
Sometimes people do still invite me to parties, so I inevitably have to decline on the grounds that one of the dogs is sick. The dogs are not sick, of course, but I will be making the "Look sick! Like bleh!" sign at them in the background.
Pickles the TBI Pug can be reliably counted on to look sick because his sick look looks a lot like *worried* or *gassy*, which are his default expressions.
("No, not like that!" I hiss. "That's too Pooped on the Floor. Think Pre-Raphaelite! Think fainting couch! Fainting couch!")
And so I make my excuse and we all try to look sad about not going to parties and then I lie back down with a good book. The dogs swarm. Someone farts. Life is magnificent.
Ruth loves living at the end of the universe, at the edge of a salt marsh. She has cats, books, archeology and comfy trousers. Nelson loves being a dogged policeman and rushing about shouting at people while solving cases that take a very long time to solve. They are both very good at living their lives, despite all the people around them who take umbrage at the way they live. They're both grand at ignoring those people and getting on with living. The coast of Norfolk is also very good at what it does, which is be bleak and desolate and dangerous, and it too ignores people and gets on with this. Wonderfully, the author captures all these strands together and ties in the ends.
We lost a star-plus here for the ending, however, which is the typical mishmash of every last person in Norfolk running around trying to rescue Ruth instead of getting on with the washing up. Honestly, there's only so many people that can do rescuing, and if that's been nowhere in a character's line for the entire book, having them dart about yelling Ruth's name and running towards the ocean, unlike avoiding parties, makes no sense.
(tw: