Book #40: Fifty Paces Forward! by Colin Saunders
Fifty Paces Forward by Colin Saunders
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Colin Saunders is a walking tour organiser, and this is his first fictional novel, although he has written a number of walking guides. Not surprisingly, it is about a walking group.
So, at the start, a character called Dan decides to start a new hikers' group, and the book tells of the hikers' misadventures while out rambling. Among the walkers is Rosalyn, who has invited her widowed neighbour Eddie, who she has a crush on.
I had mixed feelings about this book; there was a lot of humour, which was often laugh-out-loud funny, and resulted in some farcical situations that put me in mind of the writing of P.G. Wodehouse. Unfortunately, it felt like too much of the humour was about people mishearing what others had said, mostly because of them having a foreign accent (for example, the character Joachim was constantly referred to as "Whack Him"). It made the humour feel a little dated at times.
Some of the farce elements felt a little contrived; for example a misunderstanding resulting from the hikers carrying a large piece of wood, which got mistaken by a woman for a carpet that she was expecting to be delivered. The humour came from the fact that the woman, Mrs. Wood, was short-sighted, and that for some unclear reason she referred to her husband by his surname, resulting in her repeatedly shouting "Wood! Wood!"
Other situations felt a bit too random, and were not properly explained. Some other chapters felt like they could have been fleshed out a bit more, and felt a bit too rushed. My only other real issue though was that I did spot one typing error that had been overlooked in proof reading ("analyses" instead of "analysed").
I generally enjoyed the characters in the book, and how they were written, but at times it felt like the book could have been written better. It felt more like a series of loosely connected short stories than a continuous narrative, with the only plot thread that continued through the whole book was the love triangle between Rosalyn, Eddie and the annoying Tsubarina, who spent most of the book making desperate attempts to get Eddie's affections.
The whole love triangle ended in a way that I doubt anyone would have predicted, which at least avoided a cliched ending.
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