Loss and memory

So after joyfully getting covered in little spots of green paint on Monday, on with those reviews.

The Rain Before It Falls made me quite sad to be honest. It's a good concept, each chapter telling the story of Rosamund's life through her description of a photograph and her surrounding memories, but there was something about the narration that wasn't entirely believable. I don't mean that the character or the story was unbelievable at all, far from it, but the style of narration... didn't sound like a woman on tape. It sounded like a man writing a novel. It was probably far more readable for it, and it seems like a bit nitpicking to say that was my overall impression... but... However, it made me sit and think and feel for all the characters without even the need for my iPod to drown out my fellow commuters after I'd closed the book for the last time somewhere between Queensway and Lancaster Gate on the way home.

From a Jonathan Coe novel to a Jonathan Coe recommended novel, What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn has been getting a lot of press of the 'first time author finally gets manuscript published after years of trying' (isn't this what happens to most people?). Exploring the lives of a number of people all connected to a shopping centre in Birmingham and the disapperance of a young girl a few years before, What Was Lost is another good one for devouring on the tube - and with its beginning mainly from the young burgeoning detective Kate's perspective, it 's bound to have people wanting to compare it to The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Nighttime. Surprisingly enough, it does have an almost Young Adult ('young adult' is a rubbish name for a genre really. I've read Young Adult books from about the age of 9 onwards...I get the impression literary types prefer 'crossover' now...) feel to it, and I don't mean that as a criticism. I loved the little inserts at the end of chapters from anonymous narrators around the shopping centre, and I think this is what the blurb at the front's referring to when it compares it to Douglas Coupland. O'Flynn isn't really anything like Coupland nor does it seem like Coupland's knowing, arch, dropping cultural references like an overfull Urban Outfitters shopping bag style is what she was aiming for. The fact the publisher wanted to highlight the comparison is a bit of a shame, then. In summary then: good read with some nice insights, but (and a bit like the Coe here) a slightly too clever wrapping up of the mystery at the end.

Next up: a second-hand non-fiction change of pace in John Pilger's Distant Voices. A present from the boyfriend, who has written 'It may be over-earnest, but I hope you like it anyway. To the bastille!' in the front...

To the bastille I go then. The bastille in 1992 at that. Let's see.