AWW 2012 Challenge -- Little White Secrets by Catherine Jinks
review #2 and book #3 for the challenge. this is going rather well, actually.
I picked up this book last weekend when I was visiting Mum. Rather, helping Mum move flats. She had a box of books she plans of getting rid of and she asked me to go through them to see if I wanted any. (I did, of course.) Catherine Jinks' name was familiar to me because I'd read one of her Pagan novels during my MA studies. She's an excellent writer.
Unfortunately, this is not an excellent book. Well, the writing is excellent. And it's well-constructed. It's just... lacklustre. I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the novel. More, really. There are 14 chapters: a prologue, an epilogue, and 12 in between corresponding to one for each month of the year. And I was enjoying myself all the way up until the end of October. That's when I realised that nothing was going to happen.
Of course, it's not that nothing happens at all. It's just that I felt the novel was gearing up to something. It was like riding a slow wave, but still knowing that at some point we would reach the peak. And then you come down on the other side realising it wasn't a wave at all, only a gentle swell.
This is a very rich book. The characters are and relationships are incredibly detailed. On one level, this is a really wonderful novel. What's so frustrating is that Jinks simply doesn't do anything with what she's created. I admit that when I hit November, I skimmed ahead a little. And when I did I felt so frustrated that I almost didn't finish the last few chapters because there didn't seem to be a point.
Maybe I just had unrealistic expectations. I'm not someone who reads for plot, really, which is why I generally don't read mysteries or thrillers or any sort of novel where there is a specific question that will be answered. That said, from its very first page, Little White Secrets offers a certain type of mysteriousness that it fails to live up to. It's not that we don't find out what's behind it, it's just that it's... I don't really know if it's mishandled or if the answer is simply more mundane than I was expecting. Perhaps it's a bit of both. We're given 11 chapters of tension and build-up and when the answers are revealed they're simply dumped on us, gracelessly. Two more chapters, the end.
That said, I loved David and I loved Alice. Individually they're both lovely, and their friendship is also lovely. I wish there were a sequel, "Alice and David's Further Adventures" or something. I also loved David's culture shock in moving from Sydney to a small fishing town in Canada. There was a lot in this book I could relate to, understand.
It's just that the ending is so underwhelming that it undermines all the good preceding it.
--
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth. If you feel inclined, comment there using OpenID.
I picked up this book last weekend when I was visiting Mum. Rather, helping Mum move flats. She had a box of books she plans of getting rid of and she asked me to go through them to see if I wanted any. (I did, of course.) Catherine Jinks' name was familiar to me because I'd read one of her Pagan novels during my MA studies. She's an excellent writer.
Unfortunately, this is not an excellent book. Well, the writing is excellent. And it's well-constructed. It's just... lacklustre. I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the novel. More, really. There are 14 chapters: a prologue, an epilogue, and 12 in between corresponding to one for each month of the year. And I was enjoying myself all the way up until the end of October. That's when I realised that nothing was going to happen.
Of course, it's not that nothing happens at all. It's just that I felt the novel was gearing up to something. It was like riding a slow wave, but still knowing that at some point we would reach the peak. And then you come down on the other side realising it wasn't a wave at all, only a gentle swell.
This is a very rich book. The characters are and relationships are incredibly detailed. On one level, this is a really wonderful novel. What's so frustrating is that Jinks simply doesn't do anything with what she's created. I admit that when I hit November, I skimmed ahead a little. And when I did I felt so frustrated that I almost didn't finish the last few chapters because there didn't seem to be a point.
Maybe I just had unrealistic expectations. I'm not someone who reads for plot, really, which is why I generally don't read mysteries or thrillers or any sort of novel where there is a specific question that will be answered. That said, from its very first page, Little White Secrets offers a certain type of mysteriousness that it fails to live up to. It's not that we don't find out what's behind it, it's just that it's... I don't really know if it's mishandled or if the answer is simply more mundane than I was expecting. Perhaps it's a bit of both. We're given 11 chapters of tension and build-up and when the answers are revealed they're simply dumped on us, gracelessly. Two more chapters, the end.
That said, I loved David and I loved Alice. Individually they're both lovely, and their friendship is also lovely. I wish there were a sequel, "Alice and David's Further Adventures" or something. I also loved David's culture shock in moving from Sydney to a small fishing town in Canada. There was a lot in this book I could relate to, understand.
It's just that the ending is so underwhelming that it undermines all the good preceding it.
--
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth. If you feel inclined, comment there using OpenID.