Books are like people .. You get along with some and you don't get along with some.. This book of Fay Weldon is the one that I didn't get along so well. Set on the patriarchal situation that prevailed, this novel is contemporary and written with great panache.
Although I didn't make friends with the book ( shall tell you why soon :P ) , I loved the style of the author. The whole story is written as diary of the protagonist Sappho who is a playwright. So it is like a novel within a novel. The character says her own story like a drama with dialogues.
The story alternates between pages from Sappho's diary and her mum Emily's opinion on the same. The story is quite gossipy and bitchy. 'You think truly dreadful things only happen in other countries, far away,' Emily says at the beginning of the book, 'but they also happen in your own back yard, to the nicest people, and at the hands of others who believe that they too are perfectly sane and nice, the kind who sort household waste and try to save Africa. This says it all. There are bad things going around.
Beware of the toxicity lurking around is all I can say. I kinda felt that there is lot of negativity in the book. Every character in the story can not be trusted and become friends for benefit. May be I am too gullible and hence cant take too much of manipulative and shady characters. Step mother characters are classic. We have read a lot of them from Ramayana to Cinderella . Story of wicked step children is something new to me.
The quotes of the psychoanalyst Freudian Emily and her Jungian boyfriend just made it more difficult to continue. I guess it is a little too much and doesn't add anything to the story except making it too painful.
I generally do not read two or three books at one point of time. I hate to leave any book unfinished. That is may be because I am not the avid reader types. I seriously regretted it this time because although I liked the style of prose , I couldn't read such negativity and pit holes after pit holes continuously. I should have picked a chic lit in between this serious stuff. Would have got along the book much better than this :P . It would have taken less time to finish this book at least.
If I have to give stars out of 5 , it would be generous 2 ** , just for the author's prose and style. I googled about the author and found her website with a lot of blog posts that I liked :-) . Follow it if you like .. http://www.fayweldon.co.uk/ . This one book is not gonna stop me from picking up her book again I think , what say ?
Although I didn't make friends with the book ( shall tell you why soon :P ) , I loved the style of the author. The whole story is written as diary of the protagonist Sappho who is a playwright. So it is like a novel within a novel. The character says her own story like a drama with dialogues.
The story alternates between pages from Sappho's diary and her mum Emily's opinion on the same. The story is quite gossipy and bitchy. 'You think truly dreadful things only happen in other countries, far away,' Emily says at the beginning of the book, 'but they also happen in your own back yard, to the nicest people, and at the hands of others who believe that they too are perfectly sane and nice, the kind who sort household waste and try to save Africa. This says it all. There are bad things going around.
Beware of the toxicity lurking around is all I can say. I kinda felt that there is lot of negativity in the book. Every character in the story can not be trusted and become friends for benefit. May be I am too gullible and hence cant take too much of manipulative and shady characters. Step mother characters are classic. We have read a lot of them from Ramayana to Cinderella . Story of wicked step children is something new to me.
The quotes of the psychoanalyst Freudian Emily and her Jungian boyfriend just made it more difficult to continue. I guess it is a little too much and doesn't add anything to the story except making it too painful.
I generally do not read two or three books at one point of time. I hate to leave any book unfinished. That is may be because I am not the avid reader types. I seriously regretted it this time because although I liked the style of prose , I couldn't read such negativity and pit holes after pit holes continuously. I should have picked a chic lit in between this serious stuff. Would have got along the book much better than this :P . It would have taken less time to finish this book at least.
If I have to give stars out of 5 , it would be generous 2 ** , just for the author's prose and style. I googled about the author and found her website with a lot of blog posts that I liked :-) . Follow it if you like .. http://www.fayweldon.co.uk/ . This one book is not gonna stop me from picking up her book again I think , what say ?
