by Joel Dicker
I think I may stir up something here - I wasn't that impressed with this book. I was quite desperate to read it as it's had amazing reviews, had won 3 French literary prizes, and has been plastered over nearly every broadsheet review page. Simon Mayo also tweeted that he thought it deserved Book of the Year. Not sure about that! What about the brilliant The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Half Bad by Sally Green, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and many more worthy nominees for such an accolade? Now, I did enjoy the story - upto a point. I read it on e-book and it was a massive 460 pages. I was looking forward to it ending, but it never seemed to! What I think is it's main downfall - ok, 2 main downfalls. Firstly, it's a translation from the French original. Some of the conversational parts are absolutely awful, the writing is dreadful, so that took away some of the enjoyment. The translator, Sam Taylor, also provided the translation for another bestseller 'HHhH'. I haven't read that, but my partner has, so I asked him what the book was like and how it read. He said it was good, he didn't notice anything about it. So perhaps conversation is quite tricky to translate into readable English...?Secondly, the plot -good as it is - is very complex. Twists and turns in a book are plauded and encouraged, but this has so many you feel you should have drawn a diagram with arrows pointing to 'suspected' 'exonorated' 'died'.
I'm making it sound like it's the worst book ever, but it definitely isn't that. It's worth a read, especially if you like murder mysteries. The style just wasn't to my liking. One character I did love though was Marcus's Jewish mother. She was hilarious. She should have her own chat show.
